Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,23

turning to sand. A flower began to appear on the corduroy in shimmering blue and green thread, a pink leaf curling round the side of it. As the hours slipped by and the sun beat through the metal walls of the bus, a bird grew, perching on the flower’s top in profile, its tiny claws clinging and its beak open in song. The talk and laughter of the other passengers faded away as the driver’s recorded prayers turned to harsh readings of the Koran that boomed through the bus at top volume.

The bus jolted to a stop. The driver gave a long shout and turned off the engine. We were in a red and green town. The street was one long arched terrace of rust-coloured houses with green shutters over every window and green tiles in a row just below the flat roof. We shuffled sleepily off the bus. We were expected. Men busily fried skewers of meat over roadside fires, and the small round loaves of bread for sale were still warm. There were hard-boiled eggs with a sprinkling of salted cumin that came separately in newspaper twists and deep-fried sweets made with orange-flower water. Bilal ordered us each a bowl of soup in a painted clay bowl. It was ladled up from a vat above a tiny flame.

‘What is it?’ Mum asked as we stood by the side of the road and dipped wooden spoons into the brimming white stew.

Bilal tasted it and smiled in delight. He went into a rapturous explanation.

‘Tripe,’ Mum said when he had finished, and refused to elaborate.

After lunch Bea and I sat in the shade of the arched houses and looked through her book. She was teaching me the animals.

‘Which one do you think is a tripe?’ I asked.

She didn’t know. ‘It might be a relation of the turnip,’ she said, and pointed to another animal whose name I had forgotten.

‘Helufa!’ I shouted in triumph when we arrived at the pig with the curling tail.

The bus driver, who had started up his bus, blasted alternate warning notes on his two horns, and as he rumbled slowly out of town everyone ran, clinging to the doors, to pull themselves back on.

‘Was that the Barage?’ I asked Mum.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That was just lunch.’

The Barage was not the seaside but an enormous lake. If you stood on the shore in the early morning before it became too dazzlingly hot, you could see the other side, but for most of the day it was easy to forget there was anything out there at all.

The bus set us down on a sandy stretch of land where pine trees grew in clusters. We were the only people to get off. It was late afternoon and the sand was still hot enough to scorch the soles of your feet. We threw our luggage down at the foot of a tree that was one of a circle of five and Mum began to spread out the rugs and blankets. She made a soft bog of bedding wide enough for us all to sleep in.

Bilal picked up the saucepan and whistled. He turned inland and trudged off through the sand. He also had a large plastic bottle with a screw top and a canvas flask that hung from his belt. Bea and I followed him up the soft slope of the beach into a cool ridge of trees. We walked single-file along a path, taking deep breaths of pine-sweetened air and stamping hard from time to time to watch the salamanders disappear into nowhere. I could see the lake, blue and shimmering a little below me on one side, and on the other the road down which our bus had passed.

Bilal helped us over a low wall into an amber dry field full of sheep. The sheep raised their heads to watch us as we passed. They flicked their lashes against a swarm of flies, and kept their eyes on us. In the corner of the field, shaded by a clump of palm trees, was a high circle of stone.

‘A well,’ Bea shouted, leaning in. Her voice echoed. ‘Well-ell-lll.’

It gave off an ancient damp smell. A shiny black reflection bounced back at me as I stared into its depths. There was a plastic bucket tied to the wall by a length of string. Bilal let the bucket drop. Silence. Then a sharp splash as it hit the water. The bucket floated far away on the surface, sinking slowly until with a