A King in Hiding Read online

  Sometimes my mother and sister used to take me to the cinema. We would queue up to get in and it was always jam-packed. The films were always love stories (with a little dance) with a happy ending (and a little dance). Even when the hero died, he would come back for the finale (and a little dance). I liked animations better.

  My sister was four years older than me. Her name was Jhorna, which means ‘waterfall’. I was always arguing with her, which used to make our parents cross:

  ‘Dad gave that money to me to buy a snack.’

  ‘No! He said we had to share it.’

  ‘That’s not true! He said I could spend it on what I wanted!’

  Every morning it was a race for the bathroom:

  ‘I’m going to have my shower.’

  ‘No, I said I’m going first.’

  ‘Too late!’

  If I complained to my mother, she would punish us both.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more!’

  We were always yelling at each other, but we loved each other very much. I loved my little brother too. His name was Fahad. At the clinic when he was born, everyone wanted to hold him: my father’s mother and my mother’s mother, who looked like the prime minister of Bangladesh, and all my aunts, uncles and cousins. Even I was allowed to hold him. I was happy and amazed: I’d never seen such a tiny baby.

  I spent more and more of my time playing chess. Every day my father would teach me new things: how to work out moves in advance, how to avoid making mistakes and how to avoid traps. The pieces of this giant jigsaw began to fall into place, the muddle started to sort itself out, and I got better. Soon I was begging my father to enter me for a tournament. I’d heard that the top thirteen players would win lessons from a FIDE World Chess Federation instructor. I was five and had only been playing for two months, but my father quickly agreed.

  On the day of the tournament I was excited and fought like a lion. I won three games out of six. In the last round, my opponent was very laid back. He knew I was a beginner and assumed I wasn’t that good. So I took advantage of it and beat him. When I found out I was the thirteenth finalist I was stunned.

  My father was so happy he hugged me. His friends had come to watch me play, and they congratulated me and gave me beaming smiles. Back at home, I told my mother the good news. She was really impressed.

  My first lesson with the FIDE instructor showed me more about the world of chess: it was a real jungle, with all the jungle’s dangers and predators, and all its hiding places and traps. I explored every inch of it, and got on so well that my parents decided to pay for me to have private lessons. Although he’d played every day for 30 years, before long I was beating my father.

  I took part in several tournaments in Dhaka, playing against both children and adults. I won trophies and sometimes even medals, and I was so happy to take them home to my mother – except for the time when I left my medal on the bus by mistake, and I was so furious I nearly cried. My parents loved it when I won, but when I lost against weaker players my father would scowl at me. One day he was so angry with me that he refused to take me back for the rest of the championship. My mother asked her brother to drive me instead. Upset, I won the last five rounds. A government minister awarded me the trophy. The newspapers began to talk about me, and I was even on the television.

  I was six years old when I asked my father if I could take part in a tournament in India. He agreed, but my mother was horrified:

  ‘But it’s too far away! It takes too long to get there! He’ll be worn out by the journey! He’ll get lost in the streets of Kolkata!’

  ‘Amma, it’s only for a week. I’ll be careful.’

  I begged and begged her, and in the end she gave in.

  ‘You won’t do anything silly? You’ll eat properly? You’ll sleep? You won’t go out on the streets alone?’

  I promised her everything, and ran off to tell the news to the whole neighbourhood. I couldn’t wait, I was counting the days. At last the day came when it was time to set off.

  Kolkata! I was lost in wonder at this city of riches, with its vast shopping centre, its lights everywhere, its Metro and its smart hotels. Our room had a television and a bathroom.

  It was a strange city too. People there spoke Bengali with a peculiar accent that I tried to imitate. There were traffic jams like at home, not because of the traffic but because there were people walking about all over the roads, and cows wandering through the streets wherever they wanted to go. There were lots of other surprising things, like the street sellers offering strange red fruit called strawberries. And I nearly fell over in amazement when I passed a woman on the pavement and she was walking about smoking like a man!

  I came second in the championship, and it wasn’t difficult to persuade my father to let me go again. A few months later, I was the winner. When I got home, in the middle of the night, my mother ran to me and gave me a big hug.

  ‘Amma, Amma, I won the tournament! I beat grown ups! I beat Indians!’

  Next day, she told the whole neighbourhood about my triumphs. She said that one day I would take part in the world championship, she was sure. People congratulated me. I felt proud.

  That evening my father brought the newspapers home. There were stories about me: ‘Bangladeshi Boy (7) Wins Kolkata Chess Tournament’, and ‘A Champion in the Making’!

  Life was good.

  Chapter 3

  MY LIFE IS OVER

  XP: Bangladesh is a young country with a troubled history. East Bengal was first established when Bengal was divided in 1946; when India gained its independence the following year, East Bengal became part of Pakistan. From 1955 it became East Pakistan, and in 1971 it declared independence as Bangladesh. The political life of this new state was punctuated by a succession of military coups, assassination attempts and violent rivalries between the two main parties. It was in the run-up to a presidential election, when political tensions were running particularly high, that more personal events were to impinge directly on Fahim’s family and tear his peaceful life apart.

  People were talking on the radio about the coming elections, which were constantly postponed, and about demonstrations. Soon we could hear gunfire in the streets. The army was firing on the protestors. It sounded like there was a war going on. Our parents said we mustn’t go out, first of all in the evening because of the curfew, and then, when it got too dangerous, in the daytime too. The streets were deserted.

  The grown-ups would talk about what was going on. They were frightened. The more frightened they became, the more they talked. They said the police were hunting down the protestors. That they were going into houses, beating the people who lived there, searching them, turning everything upside down looking for weapons, stealing money. When they found the people they were looking for, they treated them like criminals. They made up robberies, murders, whatever, so that they could arrest them, throw them in prison, and sometimes have them executed.

  My father seemed preoccupied. He spent less and less time playing chess and more and more time on the telephone. He talked to people I didn’t know. He looked serious. Sometimes I would overhear snatches of his conversations with my uncles or my grandfather, about people who were jealous of the club’s success, and about the tournaments I was winning.

  Several times people came to our house, forcing their way in and demanding to see my father. They asked lots of questions that I didn’t understand. They searched the house, made lots of noise and woke up the baby, who started to cry. Jhorna and I would hide behind our mother. They went away, and then they came back again. They shouted, asking again where my father was, but my mother said nothing and stayed calm, even when the baby really screamed. Before they went away they looked at me, and I was scared. I didn’t know what they wanted. After they’d gone my mother went and hid, and I found her crying. That made me angry. No one had the right to hurt my mother. I hated those men. If I’d been bigger, I would have stood up for her. But I didn’t even know how to comfort her.
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br />   There was a family meeting to discuss it all, with my uncles, aunts and grandparents. One evening, my parents called me into the living room. Looking grave, they explained that I mustn’t go outside any more. Not for any reason. Not ever, not even to go to school. Too bad, I could study at home. They explained that some very serious things were happening, and that they were afraid I might be kidnapped. I didn’t know what made them think that, but they looked very serious. And things like that did happen in our country. If people wanted to hurt someone, they’d take it out on his son. Ever since I was little I’d heard stories of children being snatched away and never seen again. But this time the child in danger was me. And the only way to avoid the danger was never to set foot outside the house.

  In the mornings I would stay inside. In the afternoons, when my friends came home from school, I would be allowed to play in the courtyard. But only in the courtyard. Never in the street. Never anywhere near the street. From the doorway, my mother would watch me constantly.

  My life was awful. I was bored. I was frightened. Whenever I looked at my mother, her red-rimmed eyes would make me feel sad. At night I would imagine men pouncing on me, kidnapping me, selling me as a slave in a faraway country where I would never see my family again. When I finally got to sleep, different men, wearing masks and dressed all in black, would come in and stab me to death.

  One morning, an anonymous letter arrived. That is, it didn’t say who’d sent it, but we knew all the same. My parents didn’t read it to me, or even show it to me, but they told me about it. It said that some men were going to kidnap me because I was so good at chess.

  I didn’t understand why these people were attacking me, I just knew that I was too young to die. That night in bed I heard voices:

  ‘His life is in danger, you must take him far away.’

  ‘But all five of you can’t go, you’d be spotted in no time.’

  ‘A family with three children, one a baby, is bound to attract attention.’

  ‘They’ll track you down, even in India.’

  ‘You’ll need to cover your tracks. If it’s just the two of you it will be more discreet.’

  ‘But what will you do for money? Travelling is expensive.’

  ‘Leave the rest of them behind, nothing will happen to them. It’s Fahim who’s in danger.’

  ‘We’ll look after them. Go somewhere safe, you and Fahim. You can send for them later.’

  I was outraged. I clenched my fists. I wanted to punch the men who were threatening me, the cowards who were attacking me without daring to show their faces. I didn’t want to leave Jhorna and the baby. I didn’t want to leave my mother. I couldn’t imagine life without her, far from her arms, her voice, her smell, her smile, the way she looked at me.

  My father called me into the living room. My mother was pale and silent. My father told me that the next day he and I would have to go away. He said I was too young to understand, but that we had no choice. And I didn’t dare to ask any questions.

  The neighbours came round. The evening was sad, like when someone has died. Except the dead person was me, and I wasn’t dead. Not yet. I’d be dead if I was killed. If I was kidnapped. If I was taken away from my mother.

  I cuddled up close to her. I wouldn’t leave her. We didn’t even think of going to sleep. In the morning, she hugged me tight. She was weeping. Over and over again she kept saying:

  ‘Take care of yourself, my son, I love you. Don’t forget me. May God reunite us very soon. I’ll think of you every day. I’ll always be with you. You will be in my heart for ever.’

  We left. Just the two of us, my father and I. It was 2 September 2008, the worst day of my life.

  I was eight years old.

  I was lost.

  My life was over.

  Chapter 4

  AN ENDLESS JOURNEY

  It was all so confused. In my memory everything is all jumbled up. There were buses. Aeroplanes. Kolkata. New Delhi. Life on the run. Journeys that went on for ever, that put me off travelling for good. My father searching. Making calls. Always making calls. Trying to get as far away from Bangladesh as we could. Embassies, consulates, trying to buy tickets to get out of Asia, far away. So that no one could ever find us. An airport. An ancient Aeroflot plane. A night flight. A stopover in Russia, maybe?

  I forgot it all as soon as it happened, blotted it out of my memory. My father and I would never talk about those days and nights, the running away. We’d put it in a box and shut the lid on it. Much later, when I came to work on this book, I would find that my memory had kept all of the pain, but had mixed up everything else. Because that wasn’t really what happened.

  My father had gone on ahead to make all the arrangements. He wasn’t at home to tell me that we had to run away. It must have been one of his brothers. In the morning, it was my uncle, along with my mother, my brother, my sister and my grandmother, who took me to the border, where my father was waiting for us.

  So it was on the border with India, far away from Dhaka, that I kissed my mother for the last time. Everyone seemed to be crying: my mother, my grandmother, Jhorna, everyone. Except for me. The only person who didn’t cry was me. I don’t like to show my feelings. I don’t like feelings.

  But I don’t remember any of it. I’ve blotted out my memories. Shut them in a box. Even my grief, my overwhelming grief. More impossible to bear with every mile we travelled. Every morning when I woke up. Every night when I went to bed. Every time I had a nightmare. Even the pain. Week after week of pain, month after month, sometimes intense, sometimes dull. I don’t remember anything. Anything at all, except the feeling that I would never see my mother again.

  To blot out my memories I slept, I slept all the time. Even today I can’t talk about the day that I lost my mother. I can’t even talk about her.

  My father decided we would go and join a friend of his in Madrid. In Spain he was bound to be able to find work and get papers, it would be easy. But he didn’t manage to get a visa and we fell back on the Italian embassy: the idea of a father wanting to take his son to Rome seemed normal enough. We got stamps in our passports: free movement for a month in what they called the ‘Schengen area’. Apparently the flight was very long for me. Apparently we spent a week in Rome, with a friend of my father. Apparently I was ill. I don’t remember anything until our journey took us to Budapest.

  It was dawn one morning in October when we got off the bus. All of a sudden the air was so cold I could hardly breathe. It was as though the Hungarians had turned the air-conditioning up full in the streets and the thermostat had got stuck.

  Budapest was so different from Dhaka. I examined it eagerly. Everything was clean and tidy. The traffic was orderly and well behaved, even if everyone did insist on driving on the wrong side of the road. It was nothing like the chaos of Dhaka. The people walking along beneath the tall buildings looked strange. Of course I’d seen white people before, in films. Even in real life. But never so many at once.

  We wandered around looking for our hotel. In Dhaka, any bus driver could tell you where to go. In Budapest, nobody understood me, even when I asked in my best English, the English I’d learned at school. Nobody had heard of our hotel, and later on nobody had heard of the chess club. When he was in India, my father had entered me for the First Saturday chess tournament in Budapest in October. Although I was so sad, I still felt a little thrill of curiosity at the thought of my first tournament in Europe.

  It was raining. We got lucky when a lady went out of her way to show us how to get there. She pointed out a building that was way too quiet. On the other side of the street, outside an official-looking building with a flag flying on it, a soldier was marching up and down, swinging his boots right up to his waist.

  The entrance hall was dark. Instinctively I shrank back. My father squeezed my hand. We went up to the first floor. As soon as I opened the door my fear melted away: a crowd of cheerful people turned to look at us. They smiled.

  XP: We can only imagine
the world of difference between the Dhaka club that Fahim was used to going to with his father and the offices of the Hungarian Chess Federation. Within this period building in the historic centre of Budapest lay a sequence of small rooms cluttered with tables inlaid with chessboards, jewels of the art of marquetry, and lined with bookcases containing a selection of venerable magazines and a library devoted to the vast literature of chess.

  A bearded giant rushed towards us, his arms flung wide open.

  ‘Hello Mr Nura,’ he said in English, lifting my father off his feet. ‘I am Nagy Laszlo.’

  The organiser of the tournament had never seen my father, because he had communicated with him online. But he couldn’t help but recognise us: we were the only non-white people there.

  ‘Do you want a drink? Something to eat?’

  He introduced us to the players and the referee, and everyone gave us a warm welcome. They congratulated my father on his courage. Did everyone in Europe know that he’d saved my life?

  The tournament lasted a week. There were dozens of players: teenagers, adults, even old people – but no other children. I was the youngest player and also the smallest, and I had to sit on top of a stack of chairs in order to reach the table. I was competing in a group of six players, which meant I played ten games, two against each of my five opponents. With a point for each win and half a point for a draw, I decided to aim for five points, five out of ten.

  In the first round, I played against the best player in my group, a Hungarian who had a bumbag holding secret treasures that I could only guess at. The game didn’t last long. He was nice, but you could tell that inside he was angry, especially when I checkmated him. Nagy Laszlo was delighted. He threw his arms around me, and it was my turn to fly up into the air: