Hideous Kinky

by Esther Freud

  ‘There was a strange man in Mum’s bed last night,’ I told him when I had recovered my breath, but he just tickled the soles of my feet until tears rolled down my face and I begged and pleaded with him to stop.

  Bilal was my Dad. No one denied it when I said so.

  ‘Did you really used to know Luigi Mancini,’ I asked him, ‘when you wore silver and gold waistcoats?’

  Bilal didn’t think so. He didn’t remember. He was working on a plan to make money out of my songs.

  We went to the square to do research. ‘Maybe Mum could sit inside a tent and tell people’s fortune while I sing behind a curtain,’ I suggested.

  ‘And what would she tell them about their fortune?’

  ‘She could find out from her I Ching book. Or maybe she could go to people’s houses and heal the sick,’ I said, remembering Ahmed’s aunt in the mountains. ‘And then I wouldn’t have to sing at all.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ Bilal set me down in front of our favourite acrobats as if to remind me that in his country children also have to work for a living.

  Khadija came and squatted beside me. Her thin cotton caftan was ripped right along a seam and it made me think how in all the time I’d known her I’d never seen her in any other clothes. She rested her solemn face on her knees and watched the show. I wanted to give her something. I almost cried at the thought of the lost amethyst. If I’d only been able to carry some home I could have given her a splinter of purple glass to hang on the empty loops of plastic thread she wore as earrings. Even the drummer girls had beads.

  On the morning of my birthday I was taken to the Henna Ladies to have my ears pierced. It was what I had asked for. ‘Really it won’t hurt a bit,’ Mum assured me as we walked along the terrace. ‘Just think of all those babies with little gold studs in their ears.’

  ‘Will I have little gold studs?’

  Mum paused. ‘One day you will.’

  The Henna Ladies sat me down on a mound of cushions. One of them began to thread a needle. The needle was a particularly fat needle, and knotted to the length of plastic thread that hung from its eye were three orange beads. I sat on my cushion and waited. I was expecting some kind of miracle so that I wouldn’t be scared. I watched the point of the needle as it came towards me. The nearer it got, the further into the cushions I sank. The Henna Lady reached down and took hold of my ear and as the cold flat point of the metal pressed against my skin I began to scream.

  ‘My God. What a fuss,’ Mum said when we were safely back in our room.

  ‘Maybe on my next birthday,’ I said doubtfully.

  Even if I’d gone through with the ear-piercing I still wouldn’t have had anything to give Khadija. Three orange beads – I was scornful – and the promise of a gold stud.

  It was the day after my birthday that Bea’s lips went blue. She came home from school looking as if she’d been blackberry-picking.

  Mum inspected the inside of her mouth. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Of course it hurts.’

  When Bea was ill there was nothing you could say. She had a way of turning things around and making you feel stupid.

  ‘I have a mouth infection,’ she said.

  All Bea could eat was soup. Cold soup. Bilal suggested taking her to Umbark and the Gnaoua to see what they could do, but Bea refused point-blank. She sat with her hand over her mouth and scowled indignantly at us as we scooped up grains of couscous with our fingers and attempted to swallow them without appearing to chew.

  That night when we were in bed Bea told me that if she closed her eyes and imagined biting down on a piece of toast she felt as if she were going to be sick. I’d never been sick. I asked her to show me how it was done. Bea turned towards the wall with one glum sweep of her blanket and refused to speak to me again.

  Soon Bea’s mouth had swelled up like a bluebottle. The bluer her lips became the whiter her face. Mum took her to see Aunty Rose. Mum had never met Aunty Rose, but she said she sounded like the kind of person who might know what to do.

  Aunty Rose looked at Bea’s lips and inspected the inside of her mouth. ‘She has a gum infection.’

  ‘You see,’ Bea narrowed her eyes.

  ‘All I can suggest is that you gargle with hot salt water. I don’t expect you have any medical insurance?’

  Mum said she didn’t.

  Aunty Rose made me open my mouth too. She tutted and put one finger right in. ‘Thank heavens they’re only your baby set,’ she said.

  Aunty Rose boiled a kettle and showed Bea how to gargle. ‘Ow, ow, ow,’ Bea moaned between mouthfuls of salt water.

  ‘If I were you, my dear’ – Aunty Rose looked at Mum as if she were a child – ‘I’d think about getting home.’ She said ‘home’ in a certain way that made me know she wasn’t talking about the Hotel Moulay Idriss. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ she said as we left.

  Aunty Rose was a Christian. She had been living in Morocco for twenty years and she had one convert. Mum didn’t like her much. She didn’t say so, but she was quiet on the way home. We walked single file, Bea with her hand over her mouth in case she saw anyone from school, and me furious that I hadn’t had a chance to mention my birthday.

  Mum boiled water over the mijmar and Bea stayed home from school to gargle and spit into a bucket. Bilal brought her goat’s yoghurt and figs from the market and I offered to give up one of my dolls. Bea wasn’t interested in dolls. She lay on the mattress in the darkest corner of the room and made me tell her stories. I told a story about Aladdin and his friend Bea the Bad who overheard Aladdin mumbling ‘Open Sesame’ in his sleep. Bea the Bad used the magic password to open the stone walls of the secret cave and steal all the treasure. Bea the Bad became Bea the Beautiful and moved into a palace next door to Luigi Mancini where they lived happily ever after.

  When I finished the story she said, ‘Just one more. Go on. I’ll owe you.’ She never even minded if I told her the same story twice.

  On the day Mum took Bea to the doctor she owed me twenty-two stories. I waited at home with Bilal. We sat in the courtyard under the banana tree and Bilal smoked and I watched the Henna Ladies talking to their men on the upstairs landing. One of them was wearing Mum’s stolen trousers under her caftan. I could see the pink velvet bell-bottoms flapping when she walked.

  Bilal was still racking his brains for a plan to make some money. He scratched little patterns in the dust and when Moulay Idriss crossed the courtyard he didn’t lift his eyes to greet him but hissed, ‘Don’t stare or he’ll start asking for his rent.’

  When Bea came home from the doctor, she went straight upstairs and lay down on her bed. I stood in the doorway.

  ‘Did he give you any medicine?’

  At first she didn’t say anything but then, when I went on standing there shuffling my feet, she mumbled furiously, ‘If you really want to know, my teeth are going to fall out.’

  ‘All of them?’

  Mum was very worried. She made Bea take the different pills the doctor had prescribed and stayed in with her all day. She rubbed cream from a tube on to her mouth. Bea lay still and waited. Whenever she woke, she stared hard at her pillow as if she expected to see it scattered with little lumps of tooth. For a week we waited for them to drop out. Mum even promised that as soon as we had enough money we would go back to England where you could get a false set on the National Health.

  Bilal and I spent our days wandering through the market looking for soft things for Bea to eat. Sometimes the Fool came too. I studied him carefully at mealtimes, hoping to pick up some useful tips. But there was a difference: the Fool had one tooth, whereas Bea’s doctor had said ‘All’. The Fool just spiked his food and swallowed.

  One day I looked at Bea and realized that her lips were no longer blue. I had been waiting so patiently for her teeth to drop out that I hadn’t noticed she was getting better. I tried to hide my disappointment. I liked having Bea at home and even though I made a show of protest, being bullied into telling her stories was in fac
t my favourite pastime.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bilal wanted us to leave the Hotel. Secretly. At night. He said he would show us the ancient city of Fes and take us to the beach at Agadir. Mum wouldn’t agree. ‘We’ve hardly got enough money for food,’ she said, ‘and anyway Moulay Idriss is our friend.’

  That was when Bilal hit upon his plan. It was the plan he had been searching for in his head since before my birthday. Bilal demanded a pen and a piece of paper. He rested the paper against a book and began to write. He wrote slowly and carefully.

  ‘What does it say?’ I leant across his back. The writing closely resembled the black squiggles in Bea’s schoolbook. She tried to make it out, but couldn’t.

  Bilal wrote until he reached the bottom of the page and then he handed back Mum’s pen. He stood up and read his letter like a proclamation. The letter was in Arabic. Bea creased up her eyes and listened.

  ‘It’s begging,’ Bea said when he had finished, and she turned her back and walked out on to the landing.

  ‘There are five pillars that every good Muslim must stand by,’ Bilal explained. ‘He must say his prayers. Study the Koran. Fast. Go to Mecca once in his life if he possibly can. And give alms to the poor and hospitality to strangers.’

  Mum listened. She wasn’t angry like Bea, but she wasn’t sure. If Mum wasn’t sure, there was nothing Bilal could do. He rolled the letter into a scroll and tied it with a ribbon. He set it neatly in the corner of the room.

  The days were not so hot as they had been and sometimes it even rained. I kept wondering if we’d missed Christmas. Bea and I decided to visit Aunty Rose to see if her clay figures were out on display. No one answered the door when we knocked. We peered through the windows. The furniture was covered in white sheets and Mary, Joseph and the cradle were nowhere to be seen. We waited patiently for her to reappear, but when it began to grow dark and there was still no sign, we gave up and headed for home.

  I was walking a little behind Bea, re-examining in my mind the great injustice of Aunty Rose and the pyjamas and how such a mistake could be overlooked. I was wearing my pyjamas now under my burnous, and even though I had grown taller in the last year the trouser legs still needed turning over twice. ‘Hideous kinky,’ I muttered and I felt for the rash on my arm to remind myself of left and right so I could begin a marching song with my feet. ‘Left, left.’ I scratched my arm. ‘Left my wife and five fat children. Right, right.’ There was no rash on my right arm. ‘Right in the middle of the kitchen floor.’ Bea stopped short ahead of me and I marched on into her. Her breath came in gasps through her nose and she put out her hand to hold me back.

  Through the darkness between two buildings a man was reeling. He was bent over, staggering backwards and away from a figure that glimmered like steel and, as the man who was an old man thudded against a wall, his attacker lunged forward and struck him hard. His head cracked against the stone and he fell forward. As he fell his babouche slipped and twisted through the air, and then for no reason I knew it was the Fool. It was the Fool and I had never thought before what an old and fragile man he was. Through the darkness that was no longer dim but clear and fine like silk I could see the strength of the other man, I saw his shoulders flex under his light djellaba and a swift, brown leg pull back. Bea gripped my arm and forced me on along the street. I wanted to run screaming into the fight and save the Fool and take him home, but as we dragged ourselves away, I saw his raised and clinging hand flutter to the ground and the beating of his limp and broken body rang in my ears. Bea let go of my hand and I raced after her up the staircase to the second landing. There was no one home. Bea lit a candle. A note lay just inside the door. ‘Luna’s baby has arrived. Be back later. Mum.’

  Bea tore the note into tiny pieces and scattered them over the floor. Then she lay down on her bed. I went over to check on Mary, Mary-Rose and Rosemary. I remade their beds and smoothed their clothes and regretted that their hair was made of wool so that it frayed and frizzled if I brushed it.

  I didn’t say anything to anyone about the fight. I waited for Bea to mention it, or for someone to notice that the Fool no longer danced with the Gnaoua in the afternoons, or silently escorted us at night. Nothing was said. Occasionally I looked at Bea to see if she was running over those events like I was, the sound effects living their own life behind her eyes, but she gave nothing away.

  It was raining a warm rain that slanted down in showers when Mum agreed to go along with Bilal’s plan. Moulay Idriss had visited us in our room and it seemed there was no time to waste. First Bilal went to check his letter with Abu Kier. Abu Kier was a man who was concerned with his spirit, Mum said. People understood about Abu Kier. He sat in the market in his tattered djellaba and they gave him food and money. Abu Kier gave his blessing to Bilal’s letter.

  Now Mum was in a hurry. She draped my burnous over my shoulders and buttoned its one cloth button at my neck. My burnous was camel-coloured. Bea’s was made from darker, thicker wool like the coat of a donkey, and Mum’s was white. We stood in the street with our hoods around our ears while Mum kept the letter under her cloak to stop it from getting wet. Bilal wasn’t coming with us. When I asked him why, he explained that it wasn’t part of the plan.

  Bea and I followed Mum towards the Djemaa El Fna. She held us each by the hand and walked fast, heading for the shops that surrounded the square. We passed Khadija, Zara and Saida talking to the waterman, but Bea pretended not to see that it was them and, as I turned to call out, Mum tugged my hand to keep me from falling behind.

  We stopped by a shop that sold carpets. The sun struck out from behind a cloud and splintered through the rain in a dazzling shower of gold. She held the letter out in front of her so that the carpet merchant would know why we were there and wouldn’t try and sell us any carpets. He took the letter. He had a kind face and he lifted me up on to a tottering mountain of prayer mats before he read it. He read carefully and nodded while he did so. Mum had told me what it said: ‘In the name of God I am a stranger in your town, fallen on a hard moment . . .’

  Bea’s face was blank. ‘Hideous,’ I whispered at her but she wasn’t playing.

  The carpet man handed the letter back to Mum and without a word took some coins from a box at the back of his shop and presented them to her.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I said once we were outside. We had left home before the mijmar was alight and I couldn’t remember having had any breakfast.

  Mum hurried on towards a shop which sold things made from brass – weighing-scales and pots and pipes in different shapes and sizes. There were two men smoking inside the shop. They looked like brothers. Mum took a deep breath before she entered. Once the brothers had read the letter, each in turn, they insisted we sit down and they called to a woman to bring us mint tea. Bea shrugged her shoulders at me and asked for a second cup. The men in the brass shop were very generous. They gave Mum a handful of dirhams, which she put with the others in her purse.

  We only visited the larger shops that sold carpets or boxes and bags made from leather, and the more money Mum collected the more courageous she became. As we moved through the streets between the shops, she held the letter out in front of her for everyone to see.

  Bea and I kept our eyes on the ground.

  People stopped. They glanced at the letter and stared at us, but before they moved away they always added at least a centime to our collection.

  The only person who questioned us was an American. He scrutinized the letter. Who was Mum? Where was she from? Why didn’t she have any money? He said he wanted to help us, but until he was utterly convinced by our story he didn’t feel he could. At first Mum tried to answer his questions. Then she became irritable. ‘You are interrupting my begging time,’ she said. ‘Can’t you see I’m working?’ And she took Bea and me by the hand and moved away.

  We worked all day. We moved around the square, traipsing in and out of shops and standing in the street to stop the people who were coming from the market. We
never even paused to talk or drink coffee with our friends. Once I saw Abu Kier watching us from the corner of the street. I tried to point him out to Mum, but in the moment that I looked away he’d vanished. As the day wore on I didn’t mind so much about the letter and the fact that we were begging, and from time to time even Bea forgot and lifted her eyes from the ground.

  Mum’s purse was full. It rattled when she walked. She rolled the letter back into its scroll and tucked it inside her burnous.

  ‘That is a once in a life-time kind of thing,’ she said, to my relief.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Moulay Idriss was waiting patiently. He watched us as we trudged up the corner stairs. Mum tipped the money out on to the floor and Bilal began to count. He heaped the coins into separate piles, arranging them into towers of various size and colour. When every coin was in formation, Bilal jumped up and called Moulay Idriss in to take away his rent. He put his arms around Mum and held her close.

  ‘Bilal, Bilal,’ I said after more than a minute. I had crawled across the floor and was hanging on to his leg. ‘What are we going to do with the rest of the money?’

  Bilal let go of Mum. He picked me up by my feet and dangled me upside down. I could see four towers of coins swimming.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I said between gulps of laughter. ‘And Bea wants a Mars Bar.’ Bilal didn’t know what a Mars Bar was. ‘When we go to England,’ I said, ‘I’ll buy you one with my pocket money.’

  It was some time since we had eaten in the square and we ordered meat kebabs and snails and bowls of oily spinach. ‘If our money ever does come through,’ Mum said, once we had started to eat, ‘maybe we really should think about getting home.’

  She wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular. 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.