know through Umbark, Linda’s blind poet who would occasionally appear, and Akari the Estate Agent, always in a bustle of excitement over what he called his ‘business’, and who would inevitably greet us with detailed reports of Snowy, our old black hen and stories of her seven newly hatched chicks.
‘Do you think she’d remember us if we came to visit?’ Bea asked him after a story which involved Snowy rescuing his youngest child from a dog.
Akari clapped his hands and turned hurriedly away to tell Mum about an outside cinema he had just built in his home village. Our darkest suspicions were confirmed.
‘Snowy’s been eaten,’ Bea proclaimed and she made me promise not to talk to Akari ever again.
Bea and I left Mum drinking tea and nibbling on a lump of majoun and wandered off to play games in the square. Hideous kinky tag was still our favourite, and we kept a good eye out for Luigi Mancini at all times.
Mob was usually too sleepy even to be carried and Linda would wrap her in a blanket and lay her under the table. On nights when my eyes began to swim and my legs shiver with the cold, I draped myself in Mum’s burnous and, using the hood as a pillow, crawled down beside her.
One night as we stumbled home, me moaning on my mother’s hand to be carried, we found that we were being followed. A man trailed us through the streets, the shadow of his peaked hood looming darkly against the walls of houses. We hurried on, our ears sharp and listening for the flapping of the man’s babouches as they kept a steady pace with ours. Mum gripped my hand, and Mob was hoisted on to Linda’s other hip. Bea’s skipping walk became a run as she twisted in her tracks to check our chances of escape. I flew on my mother’s hand, my fingers white in hers, the toes of my sandals sparking as they grazed the road.
Breathless, we reached the tall doors of the hotel and as we slid through into the safety of the courtyard, Bea stopped and called out, ‘Look, it’s only the Fool.’
‘It’s the Fool, it’s the Fool,’ I repeated in a swirl of relief and the Fool bowed his head and raised his hands in a greeting.
The Fool became our private escort, following us home if we stayed out after dark, so that soon we were so accustomed to his silent presence we wondered how we’d ever dared go anywhere alone.
Bea continued to go to school. She knew the name for every picture in her book, even the words for lampshade, wheelbarrow, and a plaster cast for when you break your arm.
‘I’ll never be allowed to go to school,’ I said, watching as Bea skirted the edge of the playground. There was a fight between two boys from the school next door and a third, who stood on the outside kicking the one who was losing. He was kicking him in the back of the knees. Bea dodged the fight and arrived at the gate where Mum and I were waiting.
‘How was it today?’ Mum asked.
‘All right.’ Bea swung the cotton sardine bag she still used as a satchel.
We followed her out into the street.
‘But I won’t ever, will I? Will I?’ I insisted on an answer.
‘What?’
‘Be allowed to go to school?’
‘Not quite yet,’ Mum said to my secret relief, but I persisted anyway.
‘But when then?’
‘When you’re a little older.’
‘When will that be?’
‘I don’t know at the moment.’ She was losing patience.
‘Never,’ I muttered under my breath.
I thought about the boy with the stick and the girl who was too frightened to ask to go to the toilet. Never, I decided. Then I began to worry about how if we ever did go home I wouldn’t know anything. Not how to read. Or write my name. Or tell the time. Or anything.
Bea and I were eager to arrive at the hotel before Mum’s next prayers were due. A few days before, on our way back from the flea market by the old gate of the city, Mum had stopped abruptly, looked up at the sun and, unperturbed by the fact that she had forgotten her prayer mat, knelt down in the street to pray. She mimed her intricate washing procedures and stretched out her arms to Mecca. Without a word we hid ourselves behind a wall. We agreed firmly that, if asked, we’d never seen or heard of her before. From