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laborious than writing. Édith does not exclude the possibility that it will be easier for her to make Fadila read than to get her to write. It’s not that Fadila is more at ease with reading, if anything she is less so, but it goes faster. Failure is fleeting, they can quickly move on to something else.
    And after all, what Fadila needs is to read. Writing is not indispensable, whereas reading would change her life.
    Ã‰dith is troubled by the way Fadila crams her papers loosely into her tote bag, then pulls them out all in a wad—summons, bills, and writing exercises all jumbled up. Every French schoolchild learns early on how to take care of papers, how to fold them properly, or better still, how to protect them in a sleeve, or a rigid folder, in other words how to be respectful of the written object, even in its loose-leaf form.
    Isn’t it paradoxical, thinks Édith, to want to keep everything written that comes your way, because you know it might be important, then you go and treat it as if you didn’t care at all? So she buys a big notebook and explains to Fadila that from now on they will use one page after the other, so she must take the notebook home with her and bring it back for each lesson. But Fadila leaves the notebook behind. Édith brings it up again the following time. Fadila says she would rather take loose papers with her: she thinks the notebook is too heavy.
    Ã‰dith has been careful not to mention schoolchildren and their notebooks, so as not to imply that there is anything childish about her work with Fadila. But Fadila has probably come up with the comparison all on her own. Maybe that is what is holding her back.

5
    Time to get down the nitty-gritty, the combination of letters. B-a-Ba, the incredible open sesame. One letter + another letter = a phoneme, phonemes make words, there are twenty-six letters, a few dozen phonemes and with these few elements you can make an infinite number of words.
    Â 
    To make words, vowels are not enough. You need to start adding consonants.
    On a sheet Édith writes,
a, e, i, o, u.
“Do you recognize these five letters now?”
    Fadila nods doubtfully.
    â€œThese are the letters that sound loud,” continues Édith. “Remember? They’re called vowels. In Fa-di-la, what sounds loudest is
a
,
i
,
a
. Go on, say it.”
    â€œFed’la,” says Fadila, the way it is pronounced in Arabic, the first
a
and the
i
sounding very much like an
e
, with hardly any stress.
    â€œIn French, we pronounce it a little bit differently, you know: Fa-di-la,” says Édith again, stressing each syllable equally, and pronouncing the
a
and the
i
in the French way.
    Of the five vowels in a row on the sheet, she underlines the
a
and the
i
in red.
    â€œFa,” she says, pointing to the
a
, “di—”she points to the
i
—“la”—and back to the
a.
    She writes
fadila
beneath the vowels. She underlines the two
a
’s and the
i
in red.
    â€œBut there are other letters in
fadila,
too,” she explains, underlining the
f,
the
d
, and the
l
in green.
    â€œThese letters, listen, they make another sound, much quieter. Ffff . . . Dddd . . . Ddddi. Llll . . . Lllla . . . Do you hear it? Let’s learn this letter,
f.
”
    She points to the
f
at the beginning of
fadila
and writes it directly underneath.
    â€œIt’s the first letter of your name, you see? It’s at the beginning of Fadila.”
    â€œLooking like 8,” says Fadila.
    â€œYou’re right. You know your numbers. The
f
looks like an 8. Let’s write it. It’s a big letter. It takes up seven whole lines, here, look. You start on the line in the middle, do a loop at the top and a loop at the bottom, and you get
f.
”
    There is no point in asking Fadila to try on her own right from the start. There is no point putting her through such an ordeal. Édith takes Fadila’s right hand in hers, wedges the green