Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,11

time playing leapfrog, which anyone could do, or lying on the grass telling stories.

Bilal continued to work on the building site. I realized that in order to be a tightrope walker I didn’t necessarily have to be an acrobat. So I kept to my own secret plan and practised balancing whenever I got the chance.

CHAPTER SIX

As promised, Bilal took us to visit his family in the mountains. We travelled through a whole day on a bus packed with people and then shared a taxi with a man Bilal knew and was happy to see. We had presents of a large packet of meat and three cones of white sugar for Bilal’s mother.

The whole village was waiting to greet us at the end of a narrow track that joined the road. ‘They welcome you like a wife,’ Bilal whispered as Mum stepped out of the taxi. She was dressed in a swirling blue cloak of material that covered her hair and swathed her body in folds that reached the floor. When she walked she drew up the cloth and let it hang over her shoulder.

Bilal introduced us to his mother. She was a large lady with a throaty voice that billowed out from under her veil. Bilal’s father was really an old man and half her size.

The women threw flower petals into the air and sang a low lilting song as we walked back along the path. From time to time they let their fingers brush against my hair. I held tightly on to my mother’s hand.

The village was a cluster of low white houses at the foot of a hill that was almost a mountain. We followed Bilal into the dark inside of his family’s house. Bilal’s family trooped in after us, and we all stood about smiling. Bea nudged Mum and she remembered and handed over the meat and the sugar.

‘You see, she likes the presents,’ Bilal whispered as his mother nodded, unwrapping and rewrapping her gifts. I had tried to convince him that she might prefer a Tintin book or a clay drum.

That night Mum, Bilal, Bea and I all slept on rugs in the room that was the house, and Bilal’s parents, his brothers and sisters, their wives and children all slept outside in the garden. It was a clear warm night and very light from so many stars.

‘I wish we could sleep in the garden too,’ I said to Bea and she agreed.

‘Where’s Abdul?’ Bea asked next morning over breakfast. We were drinking coffee sweetened with the sugar we had brought. Abdul was Bilal’s youngest brother and the same age as Bea. We had tried to teach him hopscotch the evening before.

‘Abdul goes to look after the sheep,’ Bilal said. ‘He is up before the sun.’

‘Where?’ I asked, looking round for even a single sheep.

‘On the other side of the mountain.’ Bilal pointed into the hazy distance. ‘Over there are all the sheep of the village.’

‘Are there other people helping?’

‘No, just Abdul.’

So Abdul was a shepherd. I had seen a shepherd that wasn’t old and frozen and on the front of a Christmas card. By lunchtime he was back from his day’s work. He sat with the sun on his back and ate bread and tajine, his feet covered in dust from the long walk home.

‘Bea, would you like to be a shepherd?’ I asked her.

‘No, not really.’

‘What would you like to be then?’

‘I don’t know. Normal, I think.’ She was marking out a new game of hopscotch with the toe of her plastic sandal.

*

The next morning when I woke, Bea was not there. Mum was sitting on the end of my bed sewing.

‘She went into the hills.’

‘When?’

‘At sunrise. She wanted to see what it was like to be a shepherd.’

I was close to tears. ‘But you knew I wanted to go.’

‘I did try and wake you.’

I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her. ‘Wouldn’t I wake up?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You just started talking in your sleep.’

‘Did I?’ I cheered a little at this. I liked the idea of talking in my sleep. ‘What did I say? Please remember.’

‘Something about roofracks, I think,’ she said, folding up the dress she was making for Akari the Estate Agent’s little girl. He said it could be rent until our money arrived from England. Roofrack. That was a good word. Roofrack. Roofrack. Hideous kinky. Maybe we could teach Abdul to play tag.

It was midday and I sat at the edge of the village and waited for them to