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going. My father tells him proudly about my school marks and shows him my reports. Xavier offers him advice about life in France, and about how to make our money go further. They talk about everything. Except ‘papers’: my father quickly realises that Xavier’s had enough of hearing about asylum applications. And our family: Xavier realises even more quickly that it’s a subject that’s too painful for us. Then it’s time to play chess.
    â€˜OK Fahim, are you ready?’
    I feel a thrill of anticipation. We sit down facing each other across the chessboard. Sometimes Xavier makes me work on my own moves, and sometimes he makes me work on the moves of grandmasters like Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Bobby Fischer. We look at them together, do calculations, make up variants. I love thinking up moves, trying them out, advancing, but Xavier makes me slow down a bit:
    â€˜Careful now, think. Decide on your goals. What do you want to do: imprison the queen or aim for the king?’
    â€˜Um, a bit of both maybe? I dunno, we’ll see, whichever’s best!’
    Then he explains at length why I should take my time. Meanwhile I’m boiling over with impatience.

    XP : Fahim was gifted, no one could doubt that. His tactical skills were outstanding. But as a strategist he was something of a rough diamond. He had no idea about strategy, no conception even of what strategy was. He didn’t plan his moves ahead. There was a huge amount of work to do to get him up to standard in this area, so that he could deploy his talents to the full. As soon as his French was good enough, we got down to it.
    Without being a great worker, he was serious, motivated, conscientious and involved. But his progress was held up by his circumstances. In Bangladeshi chess clubs, members play each other every day. In France, they come just for coaching and competitions. People play each other online: the web has killed off the conviviality of clubs. All good players, even the youngest, have a computer. Fahim didn’t even have access to the internet.

    â€˜Fahim, do you know who said: “To win against me, you have to beat me three times: once in the opening, once in the middlegame and once in the endgame”?’
    â€˜It was Alekhine, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜Precisely so. What you need to do is to work on your endgames. And after that we’ll look at your openings.’
    â€˜But I’d much rather play whole games!’
    â€˜I’m sure you would. I’m not here to “play” with you, though; I’m here to improve your game.’
    Sometimes when he isn’t looking I watch Xavier. He’s the complete opposite of my father. He doesn’t care about his appearance, his shirts are all rumpled and his hair is too long – he often forgets to go the barber’s. I like it when he has his hair cut and wears a blue shirt that matches his eyes: it makes him look distinguished.
    â€˜When it comes to your endgame, Fahim, all you ever do is try to checkmate.’
    â€˜Well yes, I want to win, don’t I!’
    â€˜I can see that: your one aim is to destroy your opponent’s king.’
    â€˜I want to crush him, massacre him.’
    â€˜And yet there are other ways of winning the game. You can win through a promotion, by getting one of your pawns to the opposite side of the board and queening.’
    â€˜But while I’m doing that my opponent could checkmate?’
    â€˜Of course you need to keep your eye on your opponent! But if you concentrate your efforts on queening, you don’t need to go to checkmate: if he’s a queen down, your opponent might as well give up there and then.’
    â€˜Hey, I like it! Do you think I could do it without my opponent realising?’
    Xavier laughs.
    â€˜Are there other ways of winning?’
    â€˜Over the next few weeks you’re going to work on promotion. But you can also immobilise your