“I’ve got two more questions, but they’re not so important.”

“Go on then.”

“OK, well, to start with, I can’t help wondering how teachers can buy their toilet paper in public, in front of other people…”

“I asked myself the same thing at your age. I still don’t know the answer. What’s the other question?”

“What are we eating tonight?”

“Frogs’ legs.”

3

I was full of admiration for the way my Egyptian friend and his Turkish father had managed to memorize an impressive number of historically important chess matches. Very late in the evening, or very early in the morning, they could choose to replay the 1973 Bagirov–Gufeld match, or the games that set Reshevsky (who was my dear friend Haisam’s favourite player) against Averbakh in 1953, or against Bobby Fischer in 1961. In this way, Haisam travelled through time and circled the world over and over again, without ever leaving those sixty-four black and white squares. He would give me a running commentary, as if I was able to make head or tail of this complicated game, which he calls the game of kings and the king of games. And I was anxious to show that it was worth his while.

“You see,” he would explain to me quietly, “Reshevsky gave nothing away. And he had a completely unpredictable style. He wasn’t interested in seeking harmony or clarity: he loved to play weird-looking moves that completely destabilized his opponents!”

“I see…”

“That’s right! He was also very fond of the Nimzovich Defence as a way to avoid doubled pawns…”

I tried to look as though I understood and was just as much of an expert on the subject as he was.

“Do you see roughly what I mean?” asked Haisam.

“Well, of course I do!”

My friend’s eyes were smiling behind his huge spectacles.

Obviously, he must have been pretending to believe I could understand such a complicated game – even more complicated than equations, and they’re bad enough – and that was very kind of him.

He pointed towards his father, who had just made a move. “You see,” he said, “Averbakh was criticized for that move because the knight is now positioned on g3. He would have been better off playing 8 … c5.”

“Just what I was thinking…”

Once I asked him what the point was of rehashing games that had already been played, since everyone knew the end result.

“It’s like revising multiplication tables…”

“Are you saying that for my benefit, to encourage me?”

“Of course not, it was just a comparison…”

“Your player there, what’s he called?”

“Reshevsky?”

“Yes, well, I bet he didn’t have any problems with multiplication tables or with equations containing variables…”

“I should think not. When he was six he was already playing simultaneous games with twenty adults. He was known as the Escape Artist because his survival instinct got him out of completely desperate situations.”

“He was an expert … like Alexandre Dumas.”