Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,12

come down from the hills. Eventually two specks turned into stripes and then into Bea and Abdul, both barefoot and in shorts. I ran to meet them. As I neared, I stuck out my hand and, touching Bea’s shoulder, shouted, ‘Roofrack!’ Picking up speed, I circled away for the inevitable chase. I ran hard for a few minutes before I realized she wasn’t following. I looped back round, keeping a little distance in case it was a trick.

‘Aren’t you playing?’

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working, haven’t I?’ And she marched on towards the village.

I followed them to where lunch was being served. The whole family ate from one enormous bowl. It was couscous with a sauce of seven vegetables. I tried to copy the exact movement of Bilal’s hand as he collected the tiny grains of couscous in the crook of his finger, swept them into a ball with his thumb, and placed it in his mouth without a crumb being spilt or wasted.

‘Tomorrow can I go to the mountains with Abdul?’ I asked him when the meal was over.

Bilal shook his head. ‘No. Because tomorrow we are going to the festival of the marabouts.’

The festival was a little like a market.

‘What’s a marabout?’ I wanted to know.

Mum pointed out a small white building with a domed roof and a bolt on the door. ‘Marabouts are holy men, like saints, who live in these little houses.’

‘Is he in there now?’

Mum wasn’t sure. She asked Bilal.

‘Oh yes. He’s in there.’

‘Will he come out once the festival starts?’

Bilal looked amused. ‘No. It is only his spirit we celebrate.’

We walked towards the building. I peered on tiptoe over the white wall surrounding it.

‘For many years,’ Bilal said, ‘he is lying dead inside.’

Mum and I both pulled away.

Bilal’s brothers were erecting a large white tent. It was a tent like others that were going up around the edges of the festival. Round and cool inside. The women from each section of the family were laying out rugs and cotton spreads of material to sleep on. They sat and talked from under their veils while their smallest children slept.

‘They wanted Mum to wear a veil,’ Bea whispered.

‘Who did?’

‘The mother and the brothers and everyone else.’

‘Why didn’t she then?’

‘She said she wouldn’t.’

‘Are they angry?’ I looked over at the women resting, their eyes sharp above a square of black.

‘It’s hard to tell,’ Bea said.

If you stood very close to the veil you could see through the black and tell whether someone was wearing lipstick or not. I wondered if it was a special magic cloth.

‘Nylon,’ Mum said when I asked her.

When I woke, Ahmed had arrived. Ahmed was Bilal’s brother-in-law.

‘Ahmed is married to Bilal’s sister,’ Mum explained.

‘No,’ Bilal corrected her. ‘Ahmed is divorced from my sister.’

Ahmed had two other wives with him and several children. They spread out their belongings near to ours and the youngest wife tried to settle her baby who was crying. As she wrestled with her child, her veil floated up and I saw her face. She was pale and looked a little like Bilal’s sister Fatima who was fourteen and wearing a veil for the first time.

The baby kept on crying. Ahmed’s other wife took it from her and began to walk around the tent, rocking and soothing it with words.

Bea and I wandered out into the warm night. The circle of white tents had grown, stretching away round the marabout’s shrine. Outside each tent fires were burning and meat roasted on twisting sticks. Ahmed, Bilal and Mum sat by our fire. They were smoking a clay pipe. Passing it from one to another in a circle.

Ahmed began to sing. His voice was sad. He sang the Egyptian songs that played in the outdoor cafés in Marrakech. His voice rose and fell and caught in his throat with such pure sorrow that I was surprised not to see tears running down his face. Bilal joined in on a lower note with a smile on his lips as if to say it wasn’t his sad story he was singing.

I crawled on to Mum’s lap and basked in the melancholy music and the warmth of the fire. The sour smell from the burning pipe mingled with the roasting meat turning on its spit. It looked like a sheep and I wondered whether or not it was one of Abdul’s. If it was, I decided, thinking of Snowy, I would refuse to eat it. Much later that night, when the singing had