Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,57

them, shimmied across the roof of the circus tent on a hairline wire.

I would have to practise. I glanced over at the washing line. It drooped, wall to wall with drying clothes.

I could learn to juggle. I thought of my frustrated efforts in the garden at the Mellah as I tried to catch the bruised and sagging orange as it plummeted from one hand to the floor. Bilal had been encouraging at first, but as the days went by and the heap of squashed and abandoned oranges piled up in the garden he remained silent.

I decided I would teach myself to walk on my hands.

I began training that afternoon in a deserted yard behind the outside kitchen. It was where the sheep was dragged, its hind legs rigid in resistance, to have its throat cut with one slash of a knife.

‘Hup, hup, hup,’ I yelled, raising my arms for a flying dive as I raced across the yard, but at the last moment, as my hands touched down, my legs, which had been ready to soar into the air, lost confidence. They clung to my body at a pathetic angle, so that the flying leap that was to result in a handstand ended in yet another head-over-heels.

I lay on the ground and stared up at the sky. I thought about balancing acts on Bilal’s shoulders and the well at the Barage where I had learnt to somersault from such a height. I dreamt about the acrobats that performed like red and green lizards in the square in Marrakech and how happy I would be if only I’d been born into their family. I lay in the sun and thought about the people who believed me when I told them I remembered my last life and how it had been lived out as an angel. I wondered if them believing me meant it could be true. I made a decision. I would start sleeping in the afternoons. If I slept in the afternoons I could stay awake at night. Then not only would I be on guard at the moment when the Black Hand rattled the handle of our door, but I would have a way of proving to Mum that I was too old to need a plastic sheet.

My plan seemed to me a great success. That first night I was convinced I had stayed awake till morning and even congratulated myself on getting up to pee in the bucket by the door. But even though I felt the shiver of the cold metal on my flesh, and remembered distinctly the sound of water drumming, I caught myself off guard, waking up to find it had only been a dream. There was the warm and familiar smell of my nightie sticking damply to me, and the bucket was empty.

‘I think it would be nice to get home in time for Bea’s birthday,’ Mum said one day as we waited for prayers to begin. I had curled up on the floor of the mosque for my regular afternoon sleep. ‘Would you like that?’

I was so excited I couldn’t answer.

Bea’s birthday meant that very soon it would be my birthday. Bea did everything first. It was useful because once Bea had done it I always knew what to expect. That was what was wrong with the Zaouia. Bea hadn’t done it first. Or ever. If Bea were here, sleeping on a mattress on the other side of the room, maybe the Black Hand would turn itself back into a horror story in John’s voice, loud and pretending to be scary.

Last year on my birthday we went on a picnic to the woods outside Marrakech in a horse-drawn taxi. Bilal had been there and Linda and Mob. Mum had given me a wooden box with leaves carved on it. I wondered what had happened to it. I leant against the damp wall of the mosque, perspiration dripping into my turban, and tried to remember what we had done last year on Bea’s birthday. I knew it had been a surprise and, after two weeks of waiting, mine, even with the horse-drawn taxi, was a disappointment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Mum and I boarded the same train for Marrakech we’d jumped from all those weeks before. Selina came to the station to see us off. I watched her hopefully as our train gathered speed, convinced that at the last moment she would relent and let fly at least one white dove from the sleeve of her djellaba.

It was