Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,65
Bea looked at her over a wedge of bread. She didn’t say anything. Bilal eased a rubbery snail out of its shell. He didn’t seem to have heard. Bea continued to chew thoughtfully and Mum stopped eating to smoke.
When the meal was over and our plates had been cleared away, Bea, without warning, sank her head on to her hands and burst into tears. I stared at her bobbing head. I couldn’t remember ever having seen Bea cry. Bea didn’t cry. It was me and Mum who cried.
‘If we do go home,’ she sobbed into the table, ‘does it mean we won’t ever be able to come back?’
Mum put her arm around her. She stroked her despairing head. ‘If you look up at the sky,’ she told her, ‘you can see seven stars that make a pattern.’ Bea raised her head and I followed her gaze. The sky dripped with stars, they hung in a mist behind the orange glow of the city. ‘Those stars are the seven brothers of the seven prophets and whoever makes a wish to them, it will come true.’
Bea lifted her head high, her tears already drying on her cheeks. ‘Oh that’s all right then,’ she said, and she closed her eyes and with her face tilted up towards the seven stars she moved her lips silently in a long and complicated prayer.
‘I think it would be nice to buy Khadija a present,’ Mum suggested. It was the day our money had arrived at the bank.
‘And Zara and Saida,’ Bea added.
We found the three friends sitting in a circle around an empty bottle of Fanta. ‘Waa, waa,’ they called to us as we approached. Mum took Saida by the hand and led us around the edge of the Djemaa £1 Fna and into the covered market on the far side. We followed her down aisle after aisle of slippers and purses and gold belts until we came to the stall where I had bought my first caftan. I was wearing it now and the orange-and-raspberry pink of the cloth seemed hardly to have faded. Khadija, Saida and Zara looked up at the rows of dresses with longing eyes.
‘Choose one,’ Mum urged, and they looked at Bea and me for confirmation. ‘Choose one. Choose one,’ we insisted.
The man in the shop would not let them touch. They pointed and giggled and sighed over each dress as he held up one after the other for their inspection. Khadija chose a pale green dress with the crescent-shaped pattern of leaves embossed into the material. She wanted to put it on right then, but Mum insisted that it be wrapped in paper, and she carried it under her arm. Zara and Saida both chose dresses in thick, shiny nylon. One in blue and pink and the other in a swirling paisley of red and yellow. Mum held all three packages under her arm and we followed her on down the avenues of everything you ever dreamed of.
Mum wouldn’t say where we were going. She walked fast through the old city and we followed her, all five dancing and. skipping to keep up. She stopped at the doors of the Hammam. ‘Have you been here before?’ she asked them. They hadn’t.
They peeled off their ragged dresses which was all they wore and Mum took a bottle of shampoo out of her bag. She stood them in a line and poured water over their heads. Bea and I showed them how you could stand your hair on end when it was thick with the lather of the shampoo so that you looked as if you had seen a ghost or you were a ghost. Mum rubbed us down with the Hammam stone and then she left us in a warm and steamy room to drip and chatter while she washed her own hair which was much too long and heavy to ever stand on end. When we were dry she combed our hair through with almond oil. Otherwise, she said, it would break the hairbrush. I wished we still had our tin of powder so that they could know how silky it felt between your toes but, when Mum unpacked the caftans and dropped each one overj their heads, Khadija, Zara and Saida looked at themselves with such wonder that nothing else mattered.
The following morning a woman tapped on our door. She had grey hair and a bent back. She was Khadija’s mother. She thanked Mum over and over, and every