we going to get for Mum?’
All I could think of was a clay drum.
‘A clay drum?’ I suggested.
‘No.’
Hard as I tried I couldn’t think of anything else. We walked in silence through the streets away from Aunty Rose’s house, surreptitiously eating biscuits and trying to avoid the swishing tail of a donkey that was walking just in front. In the Djemaa El Fna we searched for anything that might transform itself into a possible present for our mother. There were Berber women selling bracelets with blue stones and a man from the mountains with a cloth covered in pendants of carved amethyst.
Bea counted our money. It was the money left over from shopping. Thirty-five centimes. We looked at the spice stalls and the loaves of black bread, the water melons, the pomegranates and potatoes, the almonds and peanuts in their shells, the pumpkin seeds, pistachios and chickpeas. Then I saw it. A stall that had never been there before. A stall of ripe, red strawberries.
‘Strawberries!’ Bea’s voice was a whisper of admiration.
The strawberries were sold in wicker cornets. A cornet cost fifty centimes. Bea asked if we could buy half a cornet but the man said no. She tried to swop two oranges to make up the extra fifteen centimes but the strawberry man wasn’t interested. We gazed longingly at the strawberries for nearly half an hour, hoping to be taken pity on. Eventually we gave up.
As we walked despondently away through the square we saw the same woman as before dozing by her pile of oranges.
‘Come on.’ Bea pulled me towards her. A row of people squatted by their makeshift stalls. ‘Come on.’
We arranged our six oranges, carefully balancing them into a pyramid, and when we were satisfied with the display we sat proudly back and waited. Waited for business to begin. Bea said that if we sold each orange for five centimes we’d only have to sell three oranges to have enough money to buy the strawberries;
We made bets on the passers-by. ‘I bet the fifth woman who passes will stop and buy…’
‘What?’
‘Three oranges.’
When the fifth woman hurried past, eyes averted, we started again.
‘I bet…’
We’d been playing this game for what seemed like a very long time when we realized the fifth woman walking directly towards us was Mum. She was approaching too fast for us to get up, pack up our oranges and run, so we bent our heads, letting our hair hang down over our faces, and pretended to be deep in conversation. Bea in Arabic, me in the language I had perfected for the singing of my songs – something I now used as a way of acquiring otherwise unobtainable possessions. Mum’s ankles swished under her haik as she passed just feet in front of us. She passed our stall and strode purposefully on, stopping only to buy a loaf of bread. Then she rounded a corner and disappeared into the maze of narrow streets that led away from the square.
We were so busy discussing our triumph of disguise that it took some time to realize we had a customer. It was the Fool. He had on a new djellaba, and since he danced with the Gnaoua every afternoon and was their friend he also wore something underneath. He bought one orange. Bea let him have it for four centimes. He sat with us while he ate it, sucking the juice out through a hole he made with his thumb. He only had one tooth. It was brown and pointed and was right at the side of his mouth. Bea asked him what had happened to his other teeth, but he shook his head and said he never had any other teeth. ‘Just this one, only ever this one.’
The Fool was still sucking on his orange when a woman stopped and began to barter. She wanted to give us ten centimes for four oranges. Bea refused to sell unless we got twenty. Finally a deal was struck: four oranges for fifteen centimes. When she had gone, we peeled the remaining orange and split it three ways before going off to buy our strawberries.
Convinced that I’d never really been asleep I woke at dawn to inspect my stocking, which was in fact one of Linda’s babouches with the heel flattened down. I had chosen Linda’s shoe because Linda had the biggest feet. It was dark in the room and I had to search silently with my hands for the shoes which we’d left propped up near