Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,34
colour rose. ‘I should have told you, during Ramadan, I think… I have decided, I am also going to fast.’
‘And pray?’
Mum paused. ‘Yes, and pray. In fact I am very interested… how shall I say it? I want to become a Sufi.’
‘Does that mean I won’t be allowed to have lunch either?’ I wanted to know.
‘The Sufis do not pray five times a day like us,’ Luna warned, ‘they pray seven times.’
Luna set down a tray of tiny honey-filled pastries in front of me.
‘Where’s Umbark?’ I asked her.
‘He was called out to a woman who is sick.’
‘Is Umbark a doctor?’
‘All the Gnaoua have special healing powers that have been passed down through each generation,’ Luna said proudly. ‘They stay by the side of the sick and pray and play their drums. They burn incense in the mijmar until the sick one goes into a trance and then they beat the devil out.’
‘How long does it take?’ I crammed a pastry into my mouth.
‘That is never the same. Sometimes a few hours and sometimes days and days.’
‘And do they see the devil actually coming out?’
‘No, they just see the sick one becoming well again.’
‘Even if you get bitten by a scorpion?’
‘Especially if you get bitten by a scorpion. The Gnaoua have magic powers to draw the poison out.’
I wanted to ask more questions about scorpion bites and if there was a cure for dog ticks and whether or not you could die from body lice, but Mum wanted to talk to Luna about the Sufi. Luna said that Sufi was the unorthodox side of Islam. The mystical side.
‘During Ramadan the Sufis begin their prayers, like us, at sunset. They pray after dark, at sunrise, at midday, mid-afternoon and then again at sunset. And’ – Luna screwed up her eyes in concentration – ‘they perform a ritual washing of nose, ears and arms before each prayer and it is important to remove your shoes.’
‘Oh Mum, please…’ I was prepared to beg. ‘Please don’t be a Sufi.’
Mum took me with her when she went to buy her prayer mat. There were thousands to choose from, packed so tightly in multicoloured columns of wool that it seemed impossible to choose one without disturbing a whole tower. Mum was dressed in her haik, pulled halfway across her face for the occasion. As we passed down the lanes of carpet, the stallholders called to us, sliding the rugs expertly out and holding them up for our inspection.
She chose a small wool mat. ‘So I can take it with me when I go out,’ she said.
I wanted her to choose a thick woven carpet, too heavy to leave the house.
‘Children are always embarrassed by their mothers.’ She guessed the reason for my dragging feet. She held the mat rolled like a scroll under her arm. ‘My mother used to put her lipstick on on the top deck of the bus.’
I kicked against the road as we walked and continued to resist the warm fingers of her hand as they reached for mine.
For weeks the city was calm and quiet and hungry during the day, but each evening once the prayers from the mosque had faded into night a party broke out. Mum was keen to abide by the rules of Ramadan, and she rose at dawn, washed, prayed, and got back into bed. Sometimes I would wake to hear her mumbling a mantra of long vowels, a little like the song I had sung for Charlie on the Barage, and that usually succeeded in lulling me to sleep again.
Mum managed to persuade Linda to join her in her fast, but as far as praying was concerned Linda said it was bad enough being on a diet that didn’t make you any thinner, without having to get up at the crack of dawn to mumble words you didn’t even understand. Bea, Mob and I were allowed to eat and drink whatever we liked as long as we did it behind closed doors.
Mum looked on with a scornful smile as Linda spooned apple purée into Mob’s open mouth. ‘One for you and one for… me. One for you and one for… MUMMY.’
‘It’s not eating,’ Linda said defiantly, ‘it’s just encouragement.’
At night Mum broke her fast with a bowl of harira at a café in the Djemaa El Fna. We sat up late into the night drinking, syrupy mint tea and talking to the people who drew chairs up at our table: mea from the Gnaoua we had come to