understand what they are: a fat wad of bank notes—of American dollars. And, rolled inside them, two small notebooks with the universal word “passport.” Inside the passports are lines written in an alphabet I can’t read.
“This passport is in your name: Blaise Fortune,” Gloria explains. “The other one is your mother’s passport: Jeanne Fortune. The pictures are missing, but we’ll get new ones before we board.”
“Board? But …”
I’ve grown up, it’s true, but I’m not sure that I understand. Gloria laughs when she sees the puzzled expression on my face.
“The one and only remedy against despair, Koumaïl, is hope! That’s what I have in my box: hope!”
She puts the lid back on, satisfied.
“We’re going to use the passports?” I ask in disbelief.
“Exactly!”
“But … you’re going to take my mother’s place, then?”
“Yes.” Gloria smiles. “And at last you will officially be Monsieur Blaise.”
I can’t believe my ears. Around us there is only snow, sky, and crows, a kind of hazy landscape without limits, where dollars and passports are of no use.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“To France!” Gloria answers cheerfully as she lifts the gear over her back. “So, are you coming?”
chapter seventeen
THE next million kilometers seem much easier to me. Knowing we have a destination is like having wings! Snowfields, gravel fields, bare forests where invisible owls hoot—it makes no difference. I walk relentlessly. And relentlessly I pester Gloria with questions: France, but where exactly? I want to know. There are so many towns! And what boat will we board? What is its name? Once we get to where we’re going, what will we do? And how is it that she has my mother’s passport?
Gloria explains that Jeanne gave it to her, together with mine, when she was in the train wreck, before she lost consciousness.
“You never told me that!” I protest.
“Well, now you know.”
“And the photos?”
“I was afraid. I burned them.”
I frown. “And the money?”
“Zemzem gave me the box. He wanted to give us achance to get away, to cross borders and controls. Being called Bohème is not enough to leave a country at war.”
“So that was his gift? A box and dollars?”
“Only part of the gift,” Gloria confesses. “I might tell you the rest … but later.”
I am both troubled and vexed that Gloria never mentioned these passports to me. What if she hasn’t been telling me the simple truth about the Terrible Accident and about my mother? I start to think. Yet I have no choice but to trust her.
We trek across villages with muddy streets and telephone poles whose torn cables swing in the wind like people hanged; we trek across flooded fields; we trek along roads that go nowhere and vast countryside where nothing grows.
The people we encounter have emaciated dogs and hostile faces. They lock their doors when they see us. Do they know that we come from Souma-Soula’s “dangerous zone”? I wonder. Is it written on our faces?
“Don’t pay attention to them,” Gloria advises me. “Move on as if you were a ghost.”
I do my best to imagine that I am nothing, just a draft of air.… But days go by like this and I begin to feel sadness weigh heavily again on my chest, worse than if I had swallowed a grapnel.
From time to time, having no strength left, we have to steal something to eat—some warm bread on a windowsill, some dry meat, or some pickles in vinegar.
Along the way we come across trucks covered with tarpsthat move more slowly than a hearse and are headed north with their loads of ashen-faced soldiers. No one makes the V sign.
At night we sleep in barns, in churches, even in henhouses. In the morning we stink of droppings and rotten straw.
“Courage,” Gloria keeps repeating. “We’ll be there soon.”
But I don’t see any port. Never mind a boat on which to embark. France is a faraway and out-of-reach dream, more so now that we don’t have
“This passport is in your name: Blaise Fortune,” Gloria explains. “The other one is your mother’s passport: Jeanne Fortune. The pictures are missing, but we’ll get new ones before we board.”
“Board? But …”
I’ve grown up, it’s true, but I’m not sure that I understand. Gloria laughs when she sees the puzzled expression on my face.
“The one and only remedy against despair, Koumaïl, is hope! That’s what I have in my box: hope!”
She puts the lid back on, satisfied.
“We’re going to use the passports?” I ask in disbelief.
“Exactly!”
“But … you’re going to take my mother’s place, then?”
“Yes.” Gloria smiles. “And at last you will officially be Monsieur Blaise.”
I can’t believe my ears. Around us there is only snow, sky, and crows, a kind of hazy landscape without limits, where dollars and passports are of no use.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“To France!” Gloria answers cheerfully as she lifts the gear over her back. “So, are you coming?”
chapter seventeen
THE next million kilometers seem much easier to me. Knowing we have a destination is like having wings! Snowfields, gravel fields, bare forests where invisible owls hoot—it makes no difference. I walk relentlessly. And relentlessly I pester Gloria with questions: France, but where exactly? I want to know. There are so many towns! And what boat will we board? What is its name? Once we get to where we’re going, what will we do? And how is it that she has my mother’s passport?
Gloria explains that Jeanne gave it to her, together with mine, when she was in the train wreck, before she lost consciousness.
“You never told me that!” I protest.
“Well, now you know.”
“And the photos?”
“I was afraid. I burned them.”
I frown. “And the money?”
“Zemzem gave me the box. He wanted to give us achance to get away, to cross borders and controls. Being called Bohème is not enough to leave a country at war.”
“So that was his gift? A box and dollars?”
“Only part of the gift,” Gloria confesses. “I might tell you the rest … but later.”
I am both troubled and vexed that Gloria never mentioned these passports to me. What if she hasn’t been telling me the simple truth about the Terrible Accident and about my mother? I start to think. Yet I have no choice but to trust her.
We trek across villages with muddy streets and telephone poles whose torn cables swing in the wind like people hanged; we trek across flooded fields; we trek along roads that go nowhere and vast countryside where nothing grows.
The people we encounter have emaciated dogs and hostile faces. They lock their doors when they see us. Do they know that we come from Souma-Soula’s “dangerous zone”? I wonder. Is it written on our faces?
“Don’t pay attention to them,” Gloria advises me. “Move on as if you were a ghost.”
I do my best to imagine that I am nothing, just a draft of air.… But days go by like this and I begin to feel sadness weigh heavily again on my chest, worse than if I had swallowed a grapnel.
From time to time, having no strength left, we have to steal something to eat—some warm bread on a windowsill, some dry meat, or some pickles in vinegar.
Along the way we come across trucks covered with tarpsthat move more slowly than a hearse and are headed north with their loads of ashen-faced soldiers. No one makes the V sign.
At night we sleep in barns, in churches, even in henhouses. In the morning we stink of droppings and rotten straw.
“Courage,” Gloria keeps repeating. “We’ll be there soon.”
But I don’t see any port. Never mind a boat on which to embark. France is a faraway and out-of-reach dream, more so now that we don’t have
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