chapter one

MY name is Blaise Fortune and I am a citizen of the French Republic. It’s the pure and simple truth.

I was almost twelve years old the day the customs officers found me in the back of the truck. I stank as badly as the garbage shed where Abdelmalik slept, and all I was able to say was “Mynameisblaisefortuneandiamacitizenofthefrench-republicitsthepureandsimpletruth.”

I had lost nearly all of my precious belongings along the way. Fortunately, I still had my passport; Gloria had made sure to stick it deep in my jacket pocket when we were at the service station. My passport proved that I was born on December 28, 1985, at Mont-Saint-Michel, on the French side of the English Channel, per page 16 of the green atlas. It was written in black and white. The problem was my photo: it had been removed, then glued back, and even though Mr. Ha had faked the official seal with the greatest care, the customs officers didn’t believe that I was really a French boy. I wanted to explain my story to them, but I didn’t have the vocabulary. So they pulled me out of the truck by the neck of my sweater and took me away.

This is how my childhood ended: brutally, on the side of a highway, when I realized that Gloria had disappeared and that I would have to cope without her in the country known for human rights and for the poetry of Charles Baudelaire.

After that I spent countless days in a triage zone, then in a shelter. France was just a succession of walls, fences, and doors. I slept in dormitories that reminded me of the Matachine’s attic, except that there was no dormer window to watch the stars through. I was alone in the world. But I couldn’t let despair eat away at my soul. More so than ever, I had to go to Mont-Saint-Michel to find my mother! It was easy to explain it all, but I didn’t know the language. I couldn’t give details about the Terrible Accident or the hazards of life that had brought me here. And when you can’t express yourself, it’s like dying of suffocation.

Things are different today. Many years have gone by, and now I can name everything; I can conjugate verbs, use adjectives and conjunctions. I have a new passport in my pocket—all in good order, as required by the laws of the world.

Not long ago I received a letter from the French Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, saying that they might have tracked down Gloria. That’s why I’m sitting at a Charles de Gaulle Airport gate with a suitcase, a heart that beats madly, and the crazy hope that I will see Gloria again. But, before anything else, I must put my thoughts in order.

Let me begin: My name is Blaise Fortune. I am a citizen of the French Republic, even though I spent the first eleven years of my life in the Caucasus, a vast region located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, per page 78 of the green atlas. At the time I spoke Russian and people called me Koumaïl. It might seem strange, but it’s easy to understand. I just have to tell my story. All of it. And in the right order.