Does My Head Look Big in This? (12 page)

But as Uncle Joe cautioned me about “blending in with the crowd”, some weird sensation started raging through me. I don’t know what it was. Defiance? Anger? Pride? I can’t define it. Whether I choose to be an astronaut, a pilot, a lollipop lady, a scientist or a Tupperware party host, this piece of material is coming with me. Whether Uncle Joe likes it, or not.

10

“
R
emember our first days in Australia?” my mum asks Aunt Cassandra, looking at Yasmeen and me with a twinkle in her eyes as we sit around our rumpus room on Friday night after a family dinner. My dad and Uncle Tariq are on the terrace, playing chess. Uncle Tariq’s got his water pipe (he takes it along with him everywhere he goes) and is smoking apple-flavoured tobacco. I begged him for a try but my dad told me it wouldn’t taste the same posthumously.

Aunt Cassandra and Uncle Tariq aren’t related to me but in Arabic culture most adults who are family friends are addressed as uncles and aunts. Their children are “cousins”. It makes for a pretty large extended “family”.

“Of course I remember,” Aunt Cassandra says.

“You wouldn’t have experienced this, Cassandra,” my mum says, “but oh the problems I had with English! We felt so disabled. I remember going to the supermarket and asking for a kilo of mashed meat. The boy could not understand what I was saying and called somebody over to help. I kept insisting I wanted mashed meat. When they finally realized I meant minced, they couldn’t stop laughing at me. I felt so embarrassed.” We all laugh.

“Yes, it’s funny now. But then we were young and new and people looked at us as though we were aliens. And some people were so impatient with us and our language barrier.”

“I had people not understand my English accent,” Aunt Cassandra says.

“That’s because it is hard to understand sometimes, Mum!” Yasmeen says.

“That’s because you have selective hearing. When I’m offering you pocket money you can understand me perfectly, but if I’m asking you to make your bed I’m suddenly incomprehensible!” Aunt Cassandra grins at us.

“Anyway, I remember people being very rude and calling me a bloody pom and telling me I was speaking gibberish. The fact that I was also wearing the veil – well, a beanie – and married to a Pakistani caused a lot of eyebrow-raising too.”

My mum shakes her head.

“Oh, we had our fun too. Kissed in public and made people uncomfortable.”

“Eww!” Yasmeen cries.

“Sometimes it could be very funny,” my mum tells us. “I’ll never forget when Mohamed took me for a barbeque at a park when we were engaged. He came running to me in a panic, shocked that there were people eating dogs, and they were eating them hot. I didn’t realize what he meant until I saw a family standing over a barbeque, talking about cooking hot dogs. We were horrified. When we later learnt what they were, we were in hysterics.”

We can’t stop laughing and my mum rubs her eyes as tears of laughter run down her face.

“We cursed this wretched country where people ate dogs, and we wondered whether cats were meals too!”

“I had to get used to curry!” Aunt Cassandra says. “I became so adapted to hot, spicy food that I started carrying little chilli sachets in my handbag for those times I ate takeaway food. Imagine this English girl, who grew up eating bangers and mash, suddenly whipping up spicy sambusas and roti bread and adding chilli to her hot chips!”

“It took time, didn’t it, Cassandra?” my mum says. “Your dad, Amal, he used to tell me, if somebody teases you, just start swearing at them in Arabic. At least you’ll get the frustration out.”

Aunt Cassandra grins. “Exactly what I used to do. Whenever somebody gave me a hard time I’d whip out an Urdu swear word and they had no idea what I was saying.”

“Mum!” I say. “How could Dad
encourage you
to swear, he has convulsions if I say—”

Mum gives me a stern look. “He didn’t think it was rude because they wouldn’t understand what we were saying.”

“And times were different then,” Aunt Cassandra adds.

“Exactly,” my mum says. “I was cursing people’s moustaches!”

“
Moustaches?
”
Aunt Cassandra asks incredulously.

“Standard Arabic curse. God damn you and your moustache.”

“Because that would make you aggro, hey Yasmeen?” I snort. “Ooh! I’m so insulted.”

“You were hatched here, you wouldn’t get it,” my mum says.

But I find it hilarious. I mean, insulting somebody because of his facial hair? It must be a lost in translation thing. Another Arabic curse that cracks me up is the one my parents use whenever they go aggro at me. Instead of cursing me, they curse themselves! When Dad yells out “God damn your father” I’m absolutely chicken pox itching to tell him that he really is missing the point. Mum once went for the “God damn your mother” curse because I’d thrown a mega tantrum at her for dumping all my
Cosmo
magazines in the bin. When I pointed out to her that she was really cursing herself, she flipped. I got the lecture on respecting parents, talking back, insolence, and I had to hear all about how she spoke to her parents and how they spoke to their parents. Boy was I exhausted by the time she finished.

“Anyway,” my mum continues, “I used to swear at them and then I’d go home and pray to God to forgive me because I’d damned their relatives!”

“See, girls,” Aunt Cassandra says, “we were young once and we had our own challenges adapting our lives to a new country. If we can do it, you will have no problem because you were born here. You can cope with whatever obstacle comes your way.”

“Exactly,” my mum says.

“Yeah but
you
got to swear!” Yasmeen says.

“That’s right,” I add. “We’ve been deprived of your number one secret weapon.”

Our mothers look at us, grin, and then tell us, Aunt Cassandra in Urdu and my mum in Arabic, to grow up.

During the week I catch the train to Leila’s house. Yasmeen is there when I arrive. Every time the three of us get together, we hug and scream hello like we haven’t seen each other in months.

Almost immediately Leila’s mum insists we eat “a snack” and starts shovelling food down our throats.

“Amal, you have not eat any sheekon,” she scolds me.

“This is my second piece, Aunty.” (Leila’s mum is another quasi aunt.)

“You no like my sheekon,” she moans.

“It’s delicious, honest.”

“Then have more piece.” She serves another helping on to my plate, adding rice and salad because I don’t think this woman would wake up tomorrow if I ate chicken without rice and salad.

“Yasmeen, you want bread?” Before Yasmeen answers, Leila’s mum puts a round of pide bread on Yasmeen’s plate. Yasmeen and I look at each other in exasperation and Leila wails to her mum to stop feeding us like we’ve just broken the forty-hour famine.

“Amal is good girl,” Leila’s mum says, darting a look at Yasmeen. “She wear hijab. She good girl.”

Yasmeen ignores the stares and continues eating.

“It’s only a piece of material, Aunty,” I say through gritted teeth. “What’s in your heart is what counts.”

I could have been speaking in Spanish. She puts another spoon of salad on my plate, pats my shoulder and says: “Why you no wear it too, Yasmeen? Be good girl like Amal.”

“I’m allergic,” Yasmeen says as she takes a bite of food.

“Pah! No excuse. More reward for you. Don’t you want to be good girl and go to heaven?”

“Mama!” Leila cries. “Stop with the bogus preaching will you! Leave Yasmeen alone, for crying out loud.”

“Don’t you yell at me, Leila! You so rude. So rude sometime. Ya Allah! Please bless my daughter and make her good girl. Don’t punish her. I forgive her, Allah. She make me cry every night. Give me migraine. Oh, big migraine. But I forgive her. No punish her please.” She sneaks a look at Leila, but she’s washing down her food with Coke, flipping through the TV guide.

Her mum walks off into the lounge room, still moaning about a migraine.

Soon after, the kitchen door is thrown open and Leila’s brother, Sam, who was born Hakan but has been calling himself Sam since high school, comes in.

“Hey,” he mutters, nodding at us as he opens the fridge.

“Hi,” we say, our conversation ending abruptly.

“What’s to eat, Leila? I’m starving. Make me a plate.”

“It’s on the stove in front of you. There’s chicken and rice and salad.”

He slowly turns to look at her. “Don’t give me attitude and don’t think you’re too good because your friends are here. I
said
make me a plate. I’m going to get changed. Leave my plate in the oven. And where’s my blue shirt? Mum better have ironed it. I’ve gotta be in the city in an hour.”

He gives her a threatening look and storms out upstairs.

“Jerk,” Leila mutters, getting up to serve out a plate for him, her face pink with embarrassment. “Shit-faced pig. Ya Allah, I don’t know how I’m related to this idiotic family.”

We don’t say anything, only sit at the table, awkwardly playing with our food.

“I’ll give him all the leg pieces because he loves the breast,” Leila whispers. “I’ll hide the rest in the back of the fridge. He’s too lazy to look there anyway. And he doesn’t need the tomatoes and cucumbers in the salad. I’ll just pick them out like so and leave him with the lettuce. Hurry up and drink that Coke, girls. We don’t want to leave any now, do we?” She turns to us and grins. “I can get my own back, don’t worry!”

Five minutes later we’re in Leila’s room, clutching our stomachs and groaning about how we ate like buffaloes.

“She would have cried if you refused another helping,” Leila tells us. “It’s her one pleasure in life, feeding people. Thank God I’ve got good genes or I’d be arriving at school in a truck.”

Yasmeen sits in a beanbag and starts playing DJ with Leila’s stereo.

“Leila!” Leila’s mum calls out.

“Yes, Mama?”

“Come vacuum.”

“Can’t Hakan do it?” Leila cries back limply.

“Eh?” she snaps, storming in to the bedroom. “Why your brother do it when he have sister?”

“Because the last time I saw, he wasn’t a quadriplegic and it’d be nice to know he does something around here apart from farting and channel surfing!” Leila’s fuming, her eyes popping out with anger. Yasmeen and I dart looks at each other. It’s always uncomfortable sitting in somebody’s home while they do battle in the family war zone.

“Don’t talk big English to me. Don’t think I no understand what you say . . . you fart too.”

We all burst out laughing and Leila’s mum raises her eyebrows at Leila.

“Vacuum.
Now
.”
She walks out and Leila punches her pillow.

“See what I have to put up with?”

“A farting brother?” Yasmeen says, giving her a hug.

We laugh, knowing that there’s not much to say except to reassure her it will all be OK, even though we’re not so sure of that ourselves.

11

I
n school the next day, at lunch time I go to the girls’ toilets to do my
wuduh
before prayer. As I’m washing my feet Tia walks in with Rita Mason. I ignore them.

“What are you doing?” Tia asks me in a mocking tone.

“What does it look like?”

“I don’t know. You’re not walking in the desert, you know. We do have shoes in this country.”

I ignore her. “I’m washing for
prayer
.”

“Oh! Looks a bit complicated. You actually wash your
feet
,
just so you can, ah, what was it, pray?”

I stand up to my full height, one sock off, one sock on. Very dignified.

“That’s right. See, Tia, I wash my feet five times a day. So that means that at any given time of the day, my feet are cleaner than your face.”

“
Touchy!
”
she snarls, storming off with Rita.

“Are you putting your name down for debating?” I ask Simone as we walk to the school gates to wait for the bus.

“Uh-uh.” Simone shakes her head. “Way too stressful. We’ve got enough work as it is. And getting up in front of all those people? Ew, gives me the creeps. Especially rebuttal. I hate when you’ve got, like, five minutes to come up with a way to knock their arguments. I’m too busy panicking about whether my hands will shake or my voice will crack.”

“Oh come on! You’re brilliant at English and Legal Studies.”

“No way,” she says, looking flustered.

“Why?”

“Dunno. Too embarrassed. Everybody staring at the fat chick with a rebuttal argument.”

“Simone!” I growl. “Don’t say that about yourself! It’s all in your head. Nobody’s thinking that. You’ve got to learn to love yourself!”