Read Online Bitter Almonds by Laurence Cossé, Alison Anderson - Free Book Online Page A

little bit every day. Édith gives her worksheets to take with her: the ten numbers, her telephone number,
FADILA AMRANI
,
RER A
,
RER B
,
RER C
—it is so little, she sees, when it’s written down in black and white like this. She gives herself a shake: two or three keys don’t weigh very much, either, yet they’re precious.
    â€œMaybe while you’re at your cousins’ someone could do some writing with you?” suggests Édith.
    â€œI no think so.” Fadila frowns.
    Perhaps at her age she really doesn’t feel like putting herself in the position of the pupil among members of her family, or letting them see how difficult it is for her to make any progress.

12
    Ã‰dith comes back to Paris at the end of August, shortly before the rest of her family. She has a job accompanying an American novelist whose books she has translated, to act as an interpreter.
    Fadila has been there in her absence. There was a mountain of laundry to be ironed. “Let me know how long it took you,” Édith had told her.
    As soon as she comes in she sees on the dining room table a yellow post-it which Fadila took from her pad next to the telephone: on it she has written
FADILA 4
. The
4
is a bit misshapen, it looks like a
K
, but it is clear enough.
    Â 
    They see each other two days later. Fadila is in a good mood.
    â€œThank you for your little note,” says Édith.
    â€œYou understand?” asks Fadila, radiant.
    â€œAbsolutely. You wrote down four hours.”
    â€œI writing too the old lady her code.”
    She explains to Édith that at number 16 on her street, where she goes three mornings a week, the electronic code to the entrance has just changed. The old lady called her two days ago to give her the new code. But she was very worried that Fadila would not be able to remember it.
    â€œHe say, you going remember? I say, I gonna writing. He say
B 24 09
and I writing.”
    â€œDid she say
B
or
P
?” asks Édith, equally concerned.
    Fadila pronounces her
P
’s like
B
’s; it seems to Édith that she has heard there is no
p
sound in Arabic.
    Fadila picks up one of Édith’s felt-tips, and takes a sheet of paper: “I making
B
my way,” she warns, writing a perfectly recognizable
B
.
    She adds the four digits of the code. These she remembers. And writes in her own way; it’s not that easy to tell the
2
from the
9
. But she manages.
    â€œDid it work? Had you written the right code down?”
    â€œIs working!”
    Â 
    She was sick in Morocco. She cannot stand the spices. “In Morocco I always getting sick.”
    â€œAnd besides that? Your vacation?”
    â€œBah.” She raises one shoulder.
    â€œDid things go all right with your cousin?”
    The cousin, yes, but not the cousin’s husband. Fadila winces. He’s Algerian, and she doesn’t like Algerians. “Moroccans is no liking Algerians,” she says bluntly.
    â€œDo you still have a house in Morocco?”
    â€œYes! Is big house on the mountain next to Essaouira.”
    â€œThe house where you grew up?”
    â€œYes, is my house. But is my brother living there with his wife.”
    â€œI thought you were an only child.”
    Her father and mother had no other children, she explains graciously. But when she found herself alone in Rabat with her three children, she had to earn her living. She left the house at seven in the morning and came home at eight in the evening. Her mother came to keep house and look after the children. “I loving my mother very much; since she die is all finish with me,” she says, word for word the same formula Édith has already heard.
    The two women were quite pleased with this arrangement, but someone who was not so pleased was Fadila’s father, who had stayed behind on his own in the village. He ordered his wife to come back, to no avail. She didn’t want to. So he took a second wife who gave him a