Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,10

Bea said.

‘And you don’t have a beard.’

Bilal laughed. ‘Maybe children can tell about these things. Today the Hadaoui stops here. And from tomorrow I am working as a builder.’

‘Here? Staying here?’

‘Yes. The Hadaoui must have a holiday. So I become a builder. Here in Marrakech.’

I looked over at Mum to see if she was as excited as me that Bilal wasn’t to be going away. She was smiling, but she looked as if she might have known all along.

Bilal came to live with us in the Mellah. Every morning he went out early to work on a building site. In the afternoons when it was too hot to work he took us to the square. Best of all he liked to watch the acrobats. There were a troupe of boys, all about seven or eight years old, dressed in red and green silk like little dragons, who did double somersaults from a standing position and tricks so daring the people gasped and clapped and threw coins into a hat. Bilal instructed us to watch them very carefully.

One day over lunch in our cool tiled kitchen Bilal revealed his plan. ‘We will have our own show in the Djemaa El Fna!’ he declared triumphantly. Bilal was to be Ring Master. Mum was to make the costumes from silk on the sewing-machine we’d brought with us from England, and Bea and I would be the star guests, performing acrobatic tricks. ‘People will love to see the English children do the tricks.’ Bilal’s eyes sparkled. ‘We will have a crowd as big as the Hadaoui and we will collect many coins.’

‘But I can’t do any tricks,’ I said, frightened of diminishing his enthusiasm, but unable to restrain my anxiety.

‘Bea can you do any tricks? At all?’

Bea shook her head. ‘I can do a handstand.’

Bilal was undeterred. ‘I train you. We start today. Very soon you will be doing this.’ He demonstrated with a backward somersault right there in the kitchen.

That afternoon we dressed in shorts and T-shirts and spread a blanket over the paving-stones. ‘Soon,’ Bilal said, ‘you won’t be needing any carpet.’

We started with roly-polies. Head over heels. The names made Bilal laugh. Our attempts to perfect this simple trick did not. My version of a roly-poly was a slow tumble which culminated in a star, as I lay flat on my back, my legs and arms stretched in different directions, staring up at the sky. The best part of it, I thought.

‘You must end up on your feet.’ Bilal frowned. ‘Watch me.’ From a standing position Bilal took a couple of quick steps, then, tucking in his head, rolled through the air, his bent back barely touching the ground, and he was upright again. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘A flying rolly-polly.’

We kept working at it, Bilal was patient and encouraging. As part of our training he took us regularly to the square, where we sat and watched the acrobats. For me they had taken on a new majesty. They were tiny and fluid and without fear. They cartwheeled through hoops, formed themselves into pyramids and triple-somersaulted off the top, their bodies bending in half as they flew through the air. I imagined Bea and myself dressed in silk, our hair plaited out of the way, dextrous and skilful, taking a bow to the applauding crowd. We would have so many coins to collect that when we sent enough to Bilal’s family in the mountains so that he didn’t have to work on the building site any more, there would still be some left over. I took hold of Bilal’s hand. ‘I promise to practise every day, because…’ And I felt a rush of excitement as the beginnings of a great plan unravelled in my mind. ‘Because I’ve decided that when I grow up I want to be a tightrope walker. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ Bilal nodded. Bilal was someone I could trust.

That afternoon we walked home through the busy streets. I sat on Bilal’s shoulders high up above the crowd and from time to time I asked him to let go of my legs so that I could practise balance.

We began going to the park for our training. Mum thought it would be better to practise acrobatic tricks on grass. As the weeks went by, our bodies didn’t turn into the fearless, weightless ones Bilal had hoped they would. Or at least Bea’s did a little more than mine, but not enough. We began to spend more and more