Bitter Almonds by Laurence Cossé, Alison Anderson

woman!”
    Â 
    â€œSo by now the baby must be born, no?”
    â€œYes, is little girl, Betty.”
    â€œThey called her Betty?”
    â€œNo! Is name Camélia.”
    Ã‰dith thought she had heard Betty, in fact Fadila said pretty.
    â€œIs Christian name, Camélia?” asks Fadila.
    Not a Christian name, no, but quite common, now. Édith explains the fashion of naming girls after flowers or fruit.
    Camélia rings a bell with Fadila. “You knowing, one princess she dying . . . Camélia is old woman!”
    Ã‰dith doesn’t get it. A princess . . . “Diana?” she asks.
    â€œYes!”
    It dawns on her: Camilla. The old woman.
    â€œNo,” says Édith, “Camélia is not the same as Camilla. They’re two different names.”
    She repeats the names, accentuating the differences.
    â€œAnd is little animal, walking like this . . . Is little green . . .” With her fingertips Fadila imitates a little scampering creature.
    Once again it takes Édith a few seconds to grasp what she means. “A chameleon! No, that’s not the same word, either.”
    Camélia, Camilla, chameleon: to an ear used to Arabic dialects and the rarity of vowels, it must sound almost identical. Even the name Fadila can be written differently in French: sometimes it’s Fadela, sometimes Fedla.

10
    Summer has come, splendid. It is suddenly very hot.
“What lovely weather!” says Édith when she sees Fadila coming in.
    â€œIs horrible,” grumbles Fadila, tensely. “I no liking sun.”
    She vanishes for a moment, then comes back: “Monsieur he not here?”
    â€œNo, why?”
    â€œI taking off skirt.”
    She is in her panties underneath her AP-HP overall, buttoned down to the hem; panties that go down below the knee and which in France are called
corsaire
,
or breeches.
    â€œSun is horrible,” she says again.
    â€œBut it must be cooler here than in Morocco,” says Édith tentatively. “The women there must suffocate in their long robes.”
    Fadila assures her that they don’t, that you suffer less from the heat in Morocco than in Paris, “even with dress is this long and veil, too. I never getting hot there.”
    â€œBut when you were young, you didn’t wear a veil,” says Édith who, like everyone, has read that the veil has become more prevalent only recently with Islamic fundamentalism.
    â€œYes,” says Fadila, “like this.”
    She hides her face with a corner of her white headscarf, leaving only her eyes visible. “But I not getting hot.”
    â€œI thought that girls weren’t veiled in Morocco back then.”
    â€œNo, I always wearing veil. Is now is finish. Because of inter­net and all that. I no like it. People they say everyone do what they wanting. I no agree.”
    Â 
    She opens wide all the windows in the apartment. Édith doesn’t like the idea, since it is warmer outside than in. She prefers the Provençal method which is to have all the windows resting on the catch and the blinds lowered. “At least in the room where I’m working,” she pleads.
    â€œYou doing what you want in your house,” says Fadila, furious, turning on her heels.
    She leaves earlier than usual. Édith doesn’t mention reading. It would only give Fadila an opportunity to tell her to get lost, and their lessons along with it.
    Â 
    As she comes out of the kitchen where she went for a drink of water, she stops next to Édith and points to the books open on the table, the little computer, the draft copies, and asks, “What is work you doing?”
    Ã‰dith explains that she is a translator. She translates from English—novels, to be exact. No sooner has she said the word than she is sorry: Fadila is bound to know the difference between the Koran and all the other books, but probably not between novels and other genres.
    While she’s at it,