Bitter Almonds by Laurence Cossé, Alison Anderson Page A

she tells her she also works as an interpreter. “That’s why there are days when I’m not at home.”
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    The following week when Fadila walks by the table, she says to Édith that books are finished. There are too many of them. Before, it used to be good business, you could earn money with books. Not anymore. “Before is not so many people they writing books, now is many.”
    It was a lady who told her this. “A lady I working her place.”
    As she speaks she rolls her sleeves up above her elbows and for the first time Édith sees the very deep scar she has on the inside of her right arm, at least eight inches long.
    She was locked in, she broke a window pane to get out, and cut her forearm, she says, with no further explanation, then abruptly raises her chin.
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    Ã‰dith runs into Aïcha in the street, a festive fiftysomething, a grandmother in jeans. She congratulates her on the birth of her granddaughter. “A girl is better than nothing,” concedes Aïcha graciously.
    They are standing in line together at the boulangerie. Édith brings up what Fadila told her about her marriage.
    â€œShe was fourteen . . .”
    â€œIt was rape,” says Aïcha, not beating around the bush. “She used to do the laundry at night, did she tell you that? She was so afraid to go to bed with her husband that she began to do the laundry, when really it was time to go to bed. He called to her from the bedroom, shouting all through the house. She would say, I’m coming, but first I have to hang up the washing. She went up on the terrace and was as slow about it as she could be, hoping he’d fall asleep in the meantime.”
    She shrugs: “I don’t know why she goes around saying she doesn’t know how old she is. She had me when she was fifteen. I’m fifty, she can just count on her fingers.”
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    Even at the end of the afternoon it is hot. They drink some orange juice in the kitchen then move into the dining room and sit down to work. Édith says, “Can you write your name for me in your head?” and Fadila complies, without any mistakes.
    Ã‰dith is exultant and claps her hands.
    â€œIs no important,” says Fadila.
    â€œWhat do you mean! You write your name without hesitating, and absolutely correctly: I call that important!”
    Three and a half months to get this far: Édith’s no fool, it has taken a long time. But at the rate of fifteen minutes a session—twenty minutes now and again—it isn’t so long, really.
    â€œAnd now it’s time to start on your last name,” she says, writing out
AMRANI
in capital letters.
    Fadila knows that, like everyone, she has a first and last name. She knows that she is not the only one with the last name Amrani, and that there are a lot of Fadilas as well, but, she says, “Is only one Fadila Amrani.”
    Ã‰dith deconstructs
Amrani
into three syllables, more out of habit than conviction. With a pencil she draws a circle around each syllable. She says them out loud,
AM
,
RA
,
NI
and tries to get Fadila to say them; Fadila isn’t in the mood.
    She points out that the first syllable is made up of two letters, the
A
that she now knows well, and an
M
. Édith holds Fadila’s hand and explains the graphic composition of the letter as she writes it with her: a straight line from top to bottom, then a little slanted line this way, another slanted line the other way, and then yet another big straight line from top to bottom.
    Fadila can’t get it. “Keep trying,” says Édith. “It will come.”
    Fadila draws two parallel vertical lines and then, between the two of them, the two slanted lines, perfectly correctly.
    Ã‰dith sits up straight, raising her hands: “That’s great! You’ve got it. You’ve found your own way of writing it, that’s a good way to learn. Go on, do another one.”
    For their next lesson,