A King in Hiding by Fahim Read Free Book Online Page A

this he stops playing chess and disappears from my life.

    My lessons are getting more and more amazing. Xavier is nothing like any chess coach I’ve ever known. Behind his grizzled beard, he’s anything but a boring old teacher. He smokes cigars and rides a motorbike. He’s laid back, cool and funny, full of life and fun.
    At first I don’t understand his jokes, but I like watching the others laughing at them. Then I begin to grasp a few words, a few phrases, and finally everything. Well, nearly everything.
    â€˜Frankly, Charlotte, your variant is camel’s piss.’
    â€˜Variant’ I knew, but ‘camel’s piss’?
    â€˜Cécile, if you pull back your king it will be as disastrous as the Flight to Varennes during the Revolution.’
    Or:
    â€˜Bravo Louis and Loulou, my two louis d’or !’
    What about me, could I be his ‘ Fahim d’or ’?
    Xavier loves his quotations, particularly Chinese sayings.
    â€˜Well done Keigo! Now you’re getting interesting, kid! You’ve worked out that “the greatest generals are those who gain victory without giving battle”.’
    â€˜Was it Confucius who said that?’
    â€˜No, it was Mencius.’
    â€˜Whatever, it’s always either Mencius or Confucius with you.’
    â€˜Or Lao Tzu.’
    Everyone bursts out laughing.
    Xavier doesn’t just teach us chess, he tells us all the stories that go with it too. He’s the type of coach who can spot a position played years ago in a historic game – he must know them all – in a nano-second, and who can then effortlessly slip in some anecdote to do with it.
    â€˜Tell Fahim the story of Bobby Fischer and the journalist!’
    â€˜Why don’t you tell him?’
    â€˜You’ll like this one, Fahim. A journalist was interviewing Bobby Fischer – you know, the world champion – and asked him, “What do you talk about with your opponent?” To which Fischer replied: “When I arrive I say hello. When I leave I say checkmate.”’
    Sometimes, especially when everyone wants to answer a question at once, Xavier raises his voice:
    â€˜Woah! Shouting won’t make your moves any better. Chess is like life: shouting louder doesn’t put you in the right. That’s why it’s so interesting.’
    But hidden behind that scary booming voice is a really good guy.

    XP : A few days after I first met Fahim and Nura, I remember I went to see the film Welcome , the story of a young asylum-seeker in Calais who decides to learn to swim in order to get across the Channel to England, and of his swimming teacher, who is prosecuted for the ‘crime’ of helping an asylum-seeker. Like many others, I’d been appalled to discover that there was a law that made it illegal to offer someone hospitality, a law that turned normal human values on their head.
    It was a period when there was a lot of talk about ‘selective’ immigration and national identity, and there were mass expulsions of Roma people. France seemed to be able to remember the first part of the Socialist politician Michel Rocard’s famous pronouncement on immigration (‘France cannot take in all the world’s poor and dispossessed …’) while conveniently forgetting the second part (‘… but she should be proud to play her part’).
    When I came out of the cinema, I had the impression that the film was carrying on in real life, for me and my young pupil. From the outset, my involvement had gone beyond simply teaching him to play chess.
    During the spring holidays, I took Fahim and his father on a long walk through Paris. We went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, then we walked through the Trocadéro gardens, Place de l’Etoile and the Tuileries. I remember Fahim’s expression of amazement as he stood looking up at the Eiffel Tower, and his puzzlement at the trees pruned into square shapes on the