Reading Handout – Year 10 brave and very careful.

Her father had murmured that only the men

were in danger, not the women, not the children, and that he
TEXT ONE:
would hide in the cellar every night.
The girl was the first to hear the loud pounding on the door. Her
“Open up! Police!”
room was closest to the entrance of the apartment. At first, dazed
She asked herself if the police had found Papa in the cellar.
with sleep, she thought it was her father, coming up from his hiding
Was that why they were here? Had the police come to take Papa to
place in the cellar. He must have forgotten his keys, and was
the places he had mentioned?
impatient because nobody had heard his first, timid knock. But then
The girl padded fast on silent feet to her mother’s room,
came the voices, strong and brutal in the silence of the night. It had
down the corridor. Her mother awoke the minute she felt a hand on
nothing to do with her father.
her shoulder.
“Police! Open up! Now!”
“It’s the police, Maman,” the girl whispered. “They’re
The pounding grew louder. It echoed to the marrow of her
banging on the door.”
bones. Her younger brother, asleep in the next bed, stirred.
Her mother swept her legs from under the sheets. The girl
“Police! Open up! Open up!”
thought she looked tired, old, much older than her thirty years.
What time was it? She peered through the curtains. It was
“Have they come to take Papa away?” asked the girl, her
still dark outside.
hands on her mother’s arms. “Have they come for him?”
She was afraid. She remembered the recent, hushed
The mother did not answer. Again, the loud voices down the
conversations; her father’s nervous voice and her mother’s anxious
hallway. The mother swiftly took the girl by the hand and went to
face. They spoke their native tongue, which the girl understood,
the door. Her hand was hot and clammy, like a child’s, the girl
although she was not as fluent as them. Her father had whispered
thought.
that times ahead would be difficult. That they would have to be
 “Yes?” the mother said timidly, without opening the latch.
A man’s voice. He shouted her name.
“Yes, Monsieur, that is me,” she answered.
“Open up. Immediately. Police.”
The mother put a hand to her throat and the girl noticed
how pale she was. She seemed drained, frozen. As if she could no
longer move. The girl had never seen such fear on her mother’s
face. She felt her mouth go dry with anguish.
The men banged again. The mother opened the door with
clumsy, trembling fingers. The girl winced, expecting to see
green-gray suits. Two men stood there. One was a policeman,
wearing his dark blue knee-length cape and a high, round cap. The
other man wore a beige raincoat. He had a list in his hand. Once
again, he said the woman’s name. And the father’s name. He spoke
perfect French.
“Then we are safe,” thought the girl. “If they are French, and
not German, we are not in danger. If they are French, they will not
harm us.”
The mother pulled her daughter close to her. The girl could
feel the woman’s heart beating through her clothes. She wanted to
push her mother away. She wanted her mother to stand up straight
and look at the men boldly, to stop cowering, to prevent her heart
from beating like that, like a frightened animal’s. She wanted her
mother to be brave.
“My husband is . . . not here,” stuttered the mother. “I don’t
know where he is. I don’t know.”
The man with the beige raincoat shoved his way into the
apartment. “Hurry up, Madame. You have ten minutes. Pack some
clothes. Enough for a couple of days.”
The mother did not move. She stared at the policeman. He
was standing on the landing, his back to the door. He seemed
indifferent, bored.
“Monsieur, please–,” she began.
The policeman turned and there was a hard, blank
expression in his eyes. “You heard me. You are coming with us. Your
daughter, too. Just do as you are told.”
Abridged from Sarah’s Key
TEXT TWO:
It had been ten months since I moved to this town. The place I was
to go was bluer, my father had told me. And to him, everybody’d
reassured I’d be ten times finer away from a place that’d inevitably
boil in its coming days.
But it was different here; it was much colder. I didn’t even
go to a regular school anymore. Aunt Fato took it upon herself to
teach me Islam, English and science along with basic coding she had
picked up from a co-worker. Uncle Saeed taught me math, politics
and how to play ping-pong.
The decision to home-school me came about after an
incident or two took place in the neighbourhood. Some of the
neighbourhood kids would meet up for a local game called Hit the
Ball around five every evening. The local park was being remodelled
and wouldn’t be done until two months later. I was accustomed to
watching it from my bedroom window. The rise and fall of the kids’
voices stimulated me; a stillness when the ball would roll, an uproar
that danced across the air when the batsman would strike it, and a
muddle of cheers and groans when it was found. I captured this
behind the tainted window, sometimes having to catch it over the
duct-taped crack. But one day, on an impulse, I watched it from the
house gate.
There was one kid who was the most respected when it
came to batting. He hit the ball so hard it was forever before it was
found. Sometimes, you’d wonder if he was too good for street
games, often dragging it till right before dusk. While the game
halted on these occasions, I internally debated whether to join in
on the hunt or not. Most times, somebody spotted the ball before I
made my mind up and the game would resume. It was only when
the sombre mood of the rainy season arrived that the hours I’d
enjoy watching the game were cut short. This helped me finally
resolve to find the ball myself. Nobody protested at my
volunteering.
I jogged down the street, looking at both sides for it. Tall,
blocked structures towered over my body like beanstalks over Jack.
The walls wore banners of monochrome graffiti; drawings of houses
with raised roofs and target symbols, inscriptions that read Poor
kings and Anonymous. Tombstones were painted, each
encompassing a letter that finally read the names of junk food. At
last, I found the ball under a fire escape staircase.
 Just as I bent down, a shadow hovered over me, appearing
from the nearby door. It was dense and unmistakeable. Looking up,
I found a sunken face with white scruff and red eyes. It sounded like
he was hissing behind his teeth. I gathered the words and gradually
made sense out of them; I was near his property and us kids should
stop making such a racquet.
I sought to reply but, in that moment, words stopped at the
tip of my tongue like timid sheep. What finally took the leap was
not what I wanted.
‘Ana ‘asaf,’ I blurted.
The man stared at me, wearing an apparent countenance of
irritation and impatience. I didn’t understand why he started yelling
at me. Perhaps it was my lack of response that made him spit in my
face, turn and shut the door behind him. The saliva cascaded down
my nose and before it could drop any further, I wiped it off with the
sleeve of my t-shirt.
My throat burnt, almost as though it was clogged. I didn’t
want to look in front of the other kids so I sucked in my mucus and
hoped my nose wasn’t too red. I picked the ball up and sponged the
dirty water with the edge of my t-shirt. Turning on my heels, I found
the street nearly empty. Most of the kids had left except for two,
who looked embarrassed to have been witnesses. They soon
walked away.
I figured the old man must have frightened them all. I didn’t
tell anybody about what happened. So, during the regular traffic of
players the next day, I stood my position as spectator as though
nothing was wrong. On cue, a ball disappeared and I volunteered to
find it. As I was walking towards where I thought it might be, I
heard snickering, as soft but distinct as a clock’s dial on a quiet day.
Two boys caught up with me, rooting themselves in front and soon,
other kids gravitated towards me like bees swarming around nectar.
‘Hey!’ a boy hollered. ‘It looks like we got a trespasser.’
A few smirked. One replied in gibberish, contriving his voice
to quiver. He was fuelled with amusement.
‘What’s a bag for the trash called?’
‘Your mom!’
‘She’s for the dumps!’
I wondered how they knew my mother before coming to a
conclusion that they must have mistaken Aunt Fato for her. It was
not that I planned to correct them but my slow realisation had me
off guard when a boy kicked me in the shin. I dropped on my side
with my ribs belting against the ground. A smell of clammy bodies
enveloped me and soon the familiar sensation of foreign saliva
trickled down my face. I curled my body and tried securing my face
behind my arms as they stomped on my head, ears and calves. My
cheeks and forearms were moist with mud. A boy screeched into
my face, penetrating through my groans and wails. Further screams
of wanting a turn caused me to coil up even more.
I became so in tune with my own violent heart that I did not
apprehend when I could hear the pigeons, profoundly loud and
restless above. Or when the punches ceased and the warmth of
shadows disappeared. My body was being shaken. This time, gently
yet urgently. It took some time before I realised Aunt Fato was
crouching over me. She eclipsed a large, deep-coloured cloud that
was looming above her. Her mouth was moving but I could barely
decipher.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘What happened? What
happened? Asal, are you okay? Oh, God! Saeed! Saeed, come
quick!”
No, Baba. The skies were grey here.