You Changed My Life by Abdel Sellou

intelligence, you could make a place for yourself.
    I didn’t realize that Belkacem and Amina were watching over me, in their own way. Whatever you might say about it, they accepted their role with what little they had, and I accepted them. And I called them Papa, Maman.
    â€œPapa, buy me a new comic book.”
    â€œMaman, pass me the salt.”
    I asked them for what I wanted by giving them orders. I didn’t know it was supposed to happen any differently. They obviously didn’t know it either, since they didn’t correct me.
Again, they didn’t have the instructions. They thought that loving parents let their kids do anything. They didn’t know that you sometimes had to forbid them things and that it was for their own good. They didn’t have a good handle on the rules of proper society, the kind that require politeness all the time and emphasize the importance of behaving at the dinner table. They weren’t going to teach me these rules, or ask me to respect them.
    I came home many an evening with punishment homework. My mother watched me copying tens, hundreds of lines: I must be quiet and stay seated during class. I must not hit my classmates during recess. I must not throw my metal ruler at the teacher . I’d clear off a corner of the kitchen table, spread out my papers, and start my writing marathon. Maman, who was making dinner next to me, might dry her hands on her apron, come up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder, and look at my chicken scrawl piling up on the paper.
    â€œThat’s a lot of homework, huh, Abdel? That’s good!”
    She could barely read French.
    So she didn’t read the comments at the bottom of my report card. “Difficult child who only thinks about fighting,” “Attends class as though he’s a visitor . . . when he attends,” “Child in total rejection of the educational system.”
    She also didn’t read the summons from the teachers, the school director, later the junior high principal, the vocational school director. To all of them, I said:
    â€œMy parents work. They don’t have time.”
    I forged my father’s signature.
    Even now, I’m sure that only parents who know the
French school system and have actually gone through it attend the meetings and appointments for their kids. You have to know how school works and accept the way it works to be a part of it. And most of all, you have to want it. Why would Amina want something she didn’t even know existed? For her, the roles were clear: Her husband worked and brought home the money. She did the cleaning, cooking, and laundry. School took care of our education. She didn’t consider her son’s character, which couldn’t tolerate any kind of rule. She didn’t know me.
    Nobody really knew me, except maybe my brother, who was afraid of everything. I used him sometimes, for little jobs that didn’t require any courage. Other than that, we barely talked to each other. When he was deported, in 1986, it made no difference to me. I looked down on him a little: he got himself kicked out of the only country he’d ever known over administrative paperwork. You had to be pretty dumb . . . I hung out with pals from the projects. I say pals because we weren’t friends. What’s a friend good for? Talking to? I didn’t have anything to say because nothing got to me. I didn’t need anybody.

    At home, I didn’t open the letters from Algeria. The people who wrote them didn’t interest me. They weren’t part of my world anymore, and couldn’t even remember their faces: they never came to France and we never went there. My parents—Belkacem and Amina—were simple people, but not stupid. They knew we lived better in Paris than in Algiers; they weren’t nostalgic about
their hometown. They never piled the mattresses on top of the station wagon for the big summer migration. I had three sisters and a