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 âpapersâ: my father quickly realises that Xavierâs had enough of hearing about asylum applications. And our family: Xavier realises even more quickly that itâs a subject thatâs too painful for us. Then itâs time to play chess.
âOK Fahim, are you ready?â
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:
âCareful now, think. Decide on your goals. What do you want to do: imprison the queen or aim for the king?â
âUm, a bit of both maybe? I dunno, weâll see, whicheverâs best!â
Then he explains at length why I should take my time. Meanwhile Iâm 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 didnât 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 didnât even have access to the internet.
âFahim, do you know who said: âTo win against me, you have to beat me three times: once in the opening, once in the middlegame and once in the endgameâ?â
âIt was Alekhine, wasnât it?â
âPrecisely so. What you need to do is to work on your endgames. And after that weâll look at your openings.â
âBut Iâd much rather play whole games!â
âIâm sure you would. Iâm not here to âplayâ with you, though; Iâm here to improve your game.â
Sometimes when he isnât looking I watch Xavier. Heâs the complete opposite of my father. He doesnât care about his appearance, his shirts are all rumpled and his hair is too long â he often forgets to go the barberâs. I like it when he has his hair cut and wears a blue shirt that matches his eyes: it makes him look distinguished.
âWhen it comes to your endgame, Fahim, all you ever do is try to checkmate.â
âWell yes, I want to win, donât I!â
âI can see that: your one aim is to destroy your opponentâs king.â
âI want to crush him, massacre him.â
âAnd 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
âBut while Iâm doing that my opponent could checkmate?â
âOf course you need to keep your eye on your opponent! But if you concentrate your efforts on queening, you donât need to go to checkmate: if heâs a queen down, your opponent might as well give up there and then.â
âHey, I like it! Do you think I could do it without my opponent realising?â
Xavier laughs.
âAre there other ways of winning?â
âOver the next few weeks youâre going to work on promotion. But you can also immobilise your
Calista Fox
Sandra Hill
Rita Herron
Bethany Lopez
Helen Thorpe
Thomas Fahy
Dick Lochte, Christopher Darden
Sandeep Sharma, Leepi Agrawal
Leslie Kelly
Carol Lea Benjamin