A King in Hiding Read Online Free PDF Page B

than you can imagine. I have a lovely coat with a red collar that my father had bought me in India, but even with my jumper on underneath it I’m still cold. My father finds a hat and gloves for me. I’m sure it won’t be enough to stop me freezing to death.
    So we go out as little as possible. We stay in the foyer. All day. With nothing to do. Ten hours a day. Ten long hours of endless boredom. In the foyer. In the corridor. In the icy draughts. Sometimes standing up, sometimes sitting down. Sometimes in front of a television screen showing rolling news bulletins that I don’t understand.
    We’re not the only ones. There are other people waiting with us. People of all ages and colours. People from all over the world who have ended up here by an accident of fate, like us. Occasionally, not very often, they talk. In whispers almost. As if it’s against the rules. They speak in languages I don’t understand. We can’t even communicate with each other: we come from different corners of the globe.
    I’m raging. I want to go back to our room, to sleep, have a shower, warm up. To play chess with my father. But I don’t complain: I can see that he’s fed up too. I don’t want to heap my unhappiness on top of his. So I keep quiet. And I wait.
    We only go out when we need to buy something to eat: a little rice, chicken or fish. Then we have to wait ages for our turn to use the kitchen. When the food is ready, we eat. My father cooks well. Though obviously not as well as …
    When evening comes at last, we go up to our room. I go straight to bed and fall asleep. To forget.

    After a month, we go to a different hotel. Out towards Valenton. It’s a day I’ll never forget. I’d never seen snow before. I’d heard a lot about it and I couldn’t wait to see it. People in France are lucky. Well, that day it was snowing. Really snowing. And it didn’t take me long to realise that I detested it: it was freezing cold, the pavements were all slippery, and we struggled with our cases. Now I could see that snow was completely pointless, that it was just a pain for everyone.
    We had to find the bus station, the bus for Valenton, the stop to get off at, the hotel. It’s so hard living in a country when you don’t speak the language!
    At Valenton, our life gets better. We’re allowed to stay in our rooms. So I flop in front of the television. I drug myself up with cartoons and mangas. When I’ve had enough, I turn the TV off and do nothing. I stretch out and think. I’d like to have friends. To play with them. Is it possible to have friends in France?
    The hotel is in a remote district miles from anywhere, where there’s nothing to do and the streets are deserted. There’s a massive shopping centre, but it’s always empty. I wonder how the people who work there earn a living. My father and I go there regularly to buy provisions. Since we don’t have a refrigerator, we keep our food on the windowsill. In Bangladesh it would go off in no time.
    We get to know a Bangladeshi couple at the hotel. They arrived on the same day as us, and will leave with us too. I don’t know yet that they will get their papers long before we do. I like them: we speak the same language. They and my father talk together. I hear them say that we may be in France for a long time. A very long time. That I might have to live here for ever. That I might never go home again.
    So I decide to live a life with no regrets, not to look back to the past any more, not to think about Bangladesh any more.

    A month later the news comes. They’re expecting us at the Créteil hostel. Another move, more chaos. It’s pouring with rain. The gutters in the street are overflowing. Our bags are heavy. We’re soaked.
    As we arrive at the hostel, a handful of people in the foyer watch us vaguely. A woman smiles at us. I feel intimidated. My father makes straight for the