Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,31

them in his arms. They smiled down on him, tall and gentle and shimmering blue-black against his dusty face.

The drummer girls called to us as we passed. ‘Waa, waa.’ They leapt up from their display of painted drums and surrounded us, flapping like butterflies in their brightly coloured caftans. They unstrapped Mob and carried her off to crawl among their rows of drums while they tapped out tunes for her on the tight skin tops. The drummer girls had lengths of braid plaited into their oiled hair and mostly their earrings were a loop of plastic wire hung with beads. They pressed the drums we admired into our hands and before we had a chance to refuse, Mob had smashed hers on the cobbles and was cramming the pieces of broken clay into her mouth. One of the girls who had a baby of her own shook Mob till her hands and mouth were empty and helped to restrap her on to Bea’s back. I caught Bea’s eye as we moved away.

‘They are forever giving the children things,’ Mum had despaired to Linda, ‘and they must be so poor.’

‘Poorer than Khadija’s mother?’ I had asked.

But she had gone on mumbling. ‘Nothing, they have nothing, and they give the drums away…’ As if she could unravel the mystery with words.

Clutching our drums we passed among the stalls of fruit. Water melons, oranges, prickly pears that were too dangerous to eat. We passed the women at the mouth of the market who sat like sentries in their high boxes with bread for sale. Some sold round white loaves, and others black. An old lady squatted by a pile of six oranges and while we watched she sold one, taking the coins and stowing them carefully away inside her djellaba, before settling back to wait patiently by her five remaining oranges for the next customer to pass.

‘What do you think happens if nothing gets sold?’ I asked Bea as we passed a man dozing in front of a box of peppers.

‘They just eat them,’ she said.

Khadija, Zara and Saida were engrossed in tormenting a tourist. ‘Tourist, tourist,’ they chanted. We watched as a man bought a cup of water from the waterman and a woman in a blue dress stood back to take a photograph. ‘Tourist, tourist.’ They held out their hands.

‘Tourist,’ I muttered under my breath, but my newly washed trousers with BilaPs patch blazing on the knee stopped me from joining in.

‘Waa Khadija.’ We called them. ‘Waa Saida, Waa waa Zara.’ And they ran over to us, leaving the couple to wander unchaperoned back to their hotel. We squatted in a circle to exchange news. Mob stared into the black eyes of Khadija’s baby sister as her head bobbed against Bea’s shoulder. Saida inspected Bilal’s patch. Saida was smaller than me and thin with big black eyes and straight shiny hair. She began to pick at the patch with her fingers and then when it wouldn’t come loose she held out her hand for it. I looked at her, my mouth dry, and shook my head so violently she pulled away.

That evening as I sat on Bilal’s knee begging a scrape of majoun, I asked, ‘Can I keep my trousers and just wear them when we live in England?’

‘If they still fit you,’ Bea said.

‘Yes, of course,’ Mum agreed and ordered another pot of mint tea.

The square was lit with the lights of a hundred stalls of food. They appeared at sunset and were set out in lanes through which you could wander and choose where to eat your supper. There were stalls decorated with the heads of sheep where meat kebabs grilled on spits, and others that sold snails that you picked out of their shells with a piece of wire. There were cauldrons of harira – a soup that was only on sale in the evening – and whole stalls devoted to fried fish, and others that sold chopped spinach soaked in oil and covered in olives like a pie. Each stall had a tilley lamp or two which they pumped to keep the bulbs burning and metal benches on three sides where you could sit and eat. Single women crouched in the reflected light of this maze of restaurants and sold eggs from under their skirts.

I leant against Bilal’s shoulder. ‘When we do live in England,’ I continued, my mind on another life, ‘will you be coming too?’

Bilal closed his eyes and began to hum along with Om