Bitter Almonds Read Online Free PDF

felt-tip in her fingers, and makes her draw a big
f
that fits nicely within the lines over six spaces.
    â€œIt looks nice, don’t you think? That’s the
f
.”
    â€œ
F
,” echoes Fadila.
    â€œYou want to try to write it on your own?”
    â€œI do at home.”
    â€œAll right. Take this sheet and copy it a few times. Let’s stop now. But can we read a bit first?”
    A
,
i, o
: Fadila seems to have gotten better at recognizing them. But she is tired, or fed up. She gets to her feet.
    Â 
    She doesn’t stop by every time she leaves the house of the old lady in number 16. It wouldn’t hurt if she did; it would make her work on her reading four times a week. In fact, after a month has gone by, Édith reckons that Fadila comes, on average, once a week in addition to the Tuesday. Twice is better than once, but it’s only twice a week, and not on a regular basis.
    *
    By the fourth week, on a Tuesday, they’ve reached the point of associating consonants and vowels.
    â€œDo you recognize this big letter?”
    â€œIt’s an
f.
”
    â€œAnd this one?”
    â€œ
A.
”
    â€œVery good. Well, if we add the
a
to the
f
, like this, with the
f
first, then the
a
, we get
fa.
”
    â€œ
Fa
.”
    â€œAnd if we put first the
f
, then the
o,
we get
fo.
”
    Fadila manages, just about every other time, to identify the
a
, the
o
,
fa, fo,
on her sheet of paper.
    But at the following session, Édith holds her hand to write an
f
with her, then attach an
a
, and she asks her: “What does that make?” And Fadila replies, “
Fa
.”
    Ã‰dith takes her by the shoulders: “You’ve got it! That’s how words are made, by attaching the letters,” and Fadila smiles.
    That day, however, she leaves behind the sheet she should have taken home to work on. It’s the first time.
    Â 
    The next time, Fadila has the excuse that she has forgotten her homework to get out of her fifteen minutes of reading.
    Â 
    â€œWhy didn’t you go to school? Was there too much work at home?”
    Fadila doesn’t understand. Édith rephrases her question: “When you were a little girl, did you have work to do at home, or in the fields? Or with the animals?”
    â€œWhat work?” asks Fadila, as if stung. “Not me!”
    In her family they had everything they needed. It was her father who worked, not Fadila. She was an only child. “We have everything, big house, goats, donkey . . .”
    Mountains, she says. No, not very high. Fields, olive trees. “Is not far Essaouira.” But there was no school in the village. No one knew how to read or write, except for a shopkeeper—the only shopkeeper, the one who sold seeds and tools, sugar and salt.
    â€œWhat did you do all day long?”
    Fadila didn’t think much of Édith’s question. She was busy, the way you are busy when you don’t work: you’re with others, you talk, play, cook, laugh. She spent her time with her mother. “I love my mother. Since she die is all finish with me.”
    As a child she was as happy as could be.
    â€œNow other people my age all reading,” she says, changing her tone. She’s seen it on television. There are schools everywhere, now. The king launched a major adult literacy campaign, and it included women. If she had stayed in Morocco she would know how to read.

6
    They work on the word
fadila. Fa-di-la. D, l. D, i, di .L, a, la.
Together they write, over and over,
a, i, f, d. La, li, fa, di, da, fi.
    A word is a gold mine. The day Fadila knows exactly how to read a word, how to deconstruct it into letters and syllables, how to write the six letters and the entire word, then combine the letters and syllables in other ways, she will know how to read and write. The rest of the learning process will be a breeze.
    For the time being, what worries Édith is that she is not at all sure that Fadila has understood