Bitter Almonds Read Online Free PDF Page B

how the letters are combined. There are days when it’s clear to her, but others, not at all.
    Â 
    Fadila comes in, murmurs hello and sets to work.
    She reappears an hour later. She has to leave, she says.
    â€œShall we do a bit of reading?” says Édith tentatively, pointing to the textbook and the papers that now have their regular place on the sofa in front of the window closest to the table.
    â€œNo, today I no doing.” Fadila’s expression is impenetrable. “I no can sleeping last night. I going outside two times.”
    â€œYou went out twice last night? To go to the pharmacy?”
    That wasn’t it, explains Fadila, it was her anxiety. She has such terrible panic attacks that she has to get some fresh air. She cannot stay in her room. She goes out into the courtyard of her building. Sometimes she’ll go and wake up a friend who lives nearby, and spend the rest of the night at her place.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” asks Édith.
    It’s nothing new, says Fadila. Ever since she came to France, it has been happening on a regular basis. “Is the family.” She doesn’t give any details.
    â€œIs not easy stay all alone at night in the little room,” she adds.
    â€œWhen you sleep at your children’s, do you have panic attacks there, too?”
    â€œOf course not!” She shrugs, as if that were perfectly obvious.
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    She can copy certain letters, even syllables, with varying degrees of success. But she still cannot write a single letter from memory.
    She holds the pen awkwardly, with four fingers and not three. Édith has to push her hand down to remind her to place it on the paper. How does she hold the pen when she is trying to write at home?
    At times she makes a gesture of annoyance when she sees what she has written. At least she can see the difference between the model letter and the letter she has copied herself.
    When Édith writes there before her, Fadila raises her hand in admiration. “Look at that!”
    â€œBut I’ve been writing for forty years,” says Édith, “and you’ve been writing for five weeks!”
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    One Tuesday bus number 80 doesn’t show up, so Fadila decides not to go to work that day. To make up for it she goes on Wednesday. But Édith is away that morning. On Friday Fadila does not have the time to stop by Édith’s. They do not meet that week.
    Â 
    â€œThis one is a
d
. You know it. Do you remember where it is in
fadila?
That’s right, there it is. If I add the
i
to it, what does that make? Look,
d
and
i.
”
    â€œ
Fa
,” says Fadila.
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    Ã‰dith decides that maybe the whole language method might not be so bad after all. If Fadila cannot grasp that
d
and
i
make
di
, she’ll have to go on showing her
di
until she recognizes it (and
fa
, and
la
). Maybe later she will understand that
di
is made up of
d
and
i, fa
of
f
and
a,
and so on.
    From time to time Fadila brings in a sheet with letters she has written herself on the days she happens to wake up very early, she says. She’s fine with the
i
, now. The
a
less so. The
f
seems totally out of reach. The
o
remains a pleasure.
    Â 
    One Tuesday Édith spends all day at UNESCO. When she gets home there is a message from Fadila on the answering machine: “Like other day is no good. I no coming yesterday, I going to my friend in the night, at midnight I going out my house. I no can do all alone. Excuse me. Even if I coming I no strong enough to work is no good.”
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    Three days later she comes by without having let Edith know. She is feeling better. The friend whose door is open to her at all hours is an elderly Moroccan woman who is retired and has stayed in France. She has a room near the Place de Clichy, half an hour’s walk from where Fadila lives. If someone wakes her up in the middle of the night—if Fadila wakes her up in the middle of the night—it’s no big deal as far