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Sylvain Neuvel

THE TEST

To kind people

1.

THE LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM TEST

QUESTION 1: WHO IS THE PATRON SAINT OF WALES AND ON WHICH DATE IS HIS FEAST DAY?

I know the answer! It’s Saint David, on March first. I met Tidir, my wife, on March first. It is our meeting anniversary. I remember that day. She came in for a root canal and I fell in love. Not with her—I didn’t know who she was and she didn’t exactly talk a lot with the mouth prop on. I fell in love with her teeth. She had striped canines. Horizontal discolouration of the enamel, right down the middle. Her teeth look like Neapolitan ice cream. Neapolitan cuspids. I knew right away.

We met again in a café weeks later. I asked if I could sit with her, and she said yes. A month later, we were married. If you ask her why she married me, she’ll say she was in pain before she met me and I made it go away. I did fix her tooth. The rest of it runs deeper than I can reach. She’s been through a lot. It’s for her that we had to leave.

We celebrate our meeting day more than we do our wedding anniversary. We both chose to get married, but that root canal, that was the will of Allah. I decorate the house, cover the kitchen floor with rose petals. Sometimes I use tulips, but I don’t tell her. I make my Fesenjān, if I can find nice pomegranates. Our first year in London, our neighbour asked if we were celebrating Saint David’s day. He’s from Wales. I think that was supposed to be a joke, but we have been best friends ever since. Now we celebrate together. Fesenjān and Welsh rarebit. This question is a sign. This is going to be a great day!

It didn’t start so well. They gave me a physical when we first arrived. I hate physicals. I have no problem with needles if I’m the one holding the syringe, but I get queasy staring at the receiving end. It was over quickly, though, and then they took us here.

Wow. You say immigration office and I think grey building, bad lighting, yellowed walls. I imagined taking the test on an old school desk with chewed pieces of gum underneath. This place feels like a fancy hotel. Gorgeous lobby. Absolutely gorgeous. Old meets new, stainless steel and mahogany. They had the same paper slippers we used at my practice in Teheran. Tidir doesn’t like those, but I do. I like the feel of the floor on my toes. It was still early and we all got a fresh pair from the clean pile.

There was an Asian man screaming at the receptionist when we walked in. He called her a racist, kept saying she stole money from him, gave him less change than what he was owed. I told him he was being impolite and sent him on his way. He may have been right, about the change that is. When I paid the fifty pound fee for the test, the receptionist gave me back a twenty pound note instead of a ten. I had to explain her mistake to her twice before she took it back. I almost told her it was a tip. I didn’t. These people have no sense of humour whatsoever. It must be a requirement for working at Immigration. Hello! My name is Idir Jalil, this is my wife Tidir…. Nothing. Not even a smile. Idir and Tidir. That usually gets us a chuckle, at least. Not here. I did not give up. You can change the world with one smile. Do you know the difference between a customs officer and a dentist? There isn’t one. They both do cavity searches. No sense of humour, I tell you. There was a redheaded man in the waiting room who made a crude joke about the receptionist’s cleavage. His joke wasn’t funny, but I have a lot of good dentist jokes. What does the dentist of the year get? A little plaque…. They showed me to the test room.