Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,13

spread from tent to tent and supper was finally ready, I forgot about my earlier resolutions and, along with Abdul, held out my hands for a kebab.

Mum washed my feet and hands in a bowl of cold water and insisted I change into my nightie. Abdul and his cousins were sleeping where they’d fallen, wrapped tight in their djellabas.

‘Can I have some powder on my feet, please?’ I asked, as much to keep Mum in the tent as to feel it, silky smooth between my toes.

She took a tin of Johnson’s baby powder out of her bag and sprinkled me a ration. Ahmed’s youngest wife, still rocking her tireless baby, watched us darkly from behind her veil. As I patted each toe dry, she laid her baby down and slowly unwrapped its clothes, revealing a damp red ring around its neck. Mum leant over and offered her the tin. She stared uncomprehending, until Mum shook a fine layer of white on to the baby’s neck. She smoothed it gently and the crying seemed to quiet a little. The lady held on to Mum’s hand. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said in Arabic.

Mum pressed the tin into the woman’s hands. ‘Sprinkle a little every day,’ she said, pointing at the baby.

‘What about me?’ I hissed at her.

‘Shh.’

‘But it’s our only tin.’

Mum glared.

I put my head under the blanket. ‘I want Bilal,’ I wailed. When I refused to come out even to kiss her goodnight she relented a little and promised to ask Linda to bring some powder with her when she came to visit.

‘When will that be?’ I asked.

Mum tucked me in and sneaked a butterfly kiss that tickled before going out to rejoin the party.

‘Who’s Linda, anyway?’ I asked Bea, when she eventually came to bed.

‘You know… Linda.’ Bea said.

‘Linda?’

But Bea said she’d only tell me if I told her a story first and by the time I’d finished ‘The Adventures of a Spooky Carpet’ she was asleep.

There was everything for sale at the festival. Donkey-loads of water melons, pomegranates, blood oranges – the insides of which you could suck out through a hole in the skin. There was a stall with hundreds of pairs of babouches, the softest most beautiful shoes. They were mostly in yellow or light brown leather but some were black and patterned with stars of silver or gold. There was one pair, red with a zigzag of green, the toes of which curled up like magicians’ slippers, that made my eyes burn with wanting them. I was frightened to pick them up or even touch them, and the old man who sat among his slippers gave me no smile of encouragement.

‘If you could have any babouches you wanted in the whole world, which ones would you choose?’ I asked Mum.

She bent down to finger the leather. ‘I was thinking of making you and Bea some sandals…’ she said.

My heart fell.

‘Out of leather. With rubber soles. They’ll be very nice.’

‘But they won’t be like these.’

‘No, they won’t be quite like these,’ she said, and she drew me away.

By that evening news of Mum’s miracles with the baby powder had spread throughout the tent.

‘Oh yes, she is the wise woman from the West,’ Bilal said proudly, and he put his arm around her.

‘There is a lady Ahmed wants you to help,’ Bilal told Mum on our last night around the fire. Ahmed had been particularly impressed by the baby-powder cure. ‘He has invited us to visit with him.’

The white tent came fluttering down. We said goodbye to Bilal’s family who we would see again in a few days, and to Fatima who was my favourite sister and Abdul. We set off in a different direction with Ahmed and his two wives and their children. The baby’s rash had almost vanished, but it still screamed unceasingly. No one took the slightest bit of notice.

During our journey on a bus crowded with people who had all been at the festival, Ahmed explained through Bilal what he wanted Mum to do. ‘There is an aunt of Ahmed,’ he said, ‘who is sad because she has lost her favourite nephew in a car crash. Since he is dead she will not be happy to live.’

‘But what does he want me to do?’ Mum asked.

Bilal didn’t translate her doubts to Ahmed. ‘Just talk with her,’ he said, smiling assuredly. ‘Just visit and talk with her.’

The old lady lived in a room at the back of Ahmed’s house, which was large and airy