Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud Read Free Book Online Page B

preparation.
    The women poured a heap of green powder into a bowl and, with Bea’s water, stirred it into a thick mud that smelt like mud but with something sweet and something sour mixed in. They patted the henna, cold and slimy, into every strand of my hair, coiling it up on top of my head so that when they’d finished I felt like I was wearing a soft clay helmet. They dipped the corner of the towel in water and wiped away the streaks of green from my face and ears.
    I was led triumphantly back on to the balcony, where Mum was still sipping wine in the sun. She laughed when she saw me.
    ‘Isn’t Bea going to have her hair hennaed too?’ I asked, desperate suddenly not to be the only one, the only experiment. The women smiled, and as sharply as if I had ordered it they took her inside.
    Soon Bea and I were both sitting in the sun, weighed down and sleepy with the mud cakes drying on our heads. We had resigned ourselves to a long, hot day on the terrace of the Hotel Moulay Idriss, watching the comings and goings of the various inhabitants and from time to time catching a glimpse of Moulay Idriss himself when he emerged from the gloom of his office on the ground floor.
    ‘Can I take it off now?’ I asked Mum, once she had started to prepare the evening meal, but she shook her head and said, ‘It would be best to keep it on until tomorrow morning.’
    I began to protest.
    ‘That’s what the Ladies said. If you keep it on until the morning, your hair will grow thicker and longer than anyone else’s.’
    ‘The morning!’
    I sat against the wall between the doors of our room, playing with Mum’s box of buttons and beads, thoughts of Rapunzel dancing through my mind, and wondered how I’d be able to get to sleep that night.
    The next morning when I tapped at the top of my head it echoed like a clay drum. Mum sent us round to the Ladies to have the henna taken off. The hardest pieces were cracked away, catching and pulling at strands of baked hair, and the rest was soaked out in a bowl of water. The water, when I looked at it, was a dark, steamy red that grew thinner and paler with every rinse. When the water was clear and my hair had been combed straight down on either side of my face, I was sent outside to look at myself in a tiny round mirror.
    At first I thought it must only be a reflection of the sun beating down through the banana leaves, but once I’d pulled my hair around in front of my eyes, I was not so sure. I looked at it hard, then again in the mirror, then attempted to match up the two colours, which were in fact one colour. The colour of my hair. Orange.
    Still clutching the mirror, I ran along the landing to find Mum.
    ‘Look. They’ve tricked me,’ I sobbed, throwing myself down on the floor. ‘It’s horrible. I hate it. And I hate them.’ And I hate you, I added to myself, for conspiring in this master trick against me.
    Mum knelt down and lifted up my face. She pushed the still-damp hair out of my eyes. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she soothed. ‘Beautiful. It’s a rich dark red, it’s copper, it’s auburn…’
    ‘It’s orange,’ I wept.
    ‘Haven’t you noticed,’ she continued, ‘all the most beautiful girls in Marrakech have hennaed hair?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘You haven’t noticed? I’ll take you for a walk and show you.’
    Just then Bea appeared in the doorway. She was a dark shadow in a blazing halo of red and gold.
    ‘What do you think?’ she said.
    The sun behind her picked out a thousand colours in her hair and set them flying against one another like the fighting flames of a torch.
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ Mum and I both said in one breath and she squeezed me tight in spite of myself.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    ‘Will you run and bring our towel back,’ Mum asked Bea, as we were about to leave for the square. ‘And take the Ladies’ mirror… and say thank you,’ she shouted after her.
    We waited in the courtyard. I had tucked all my hateful hair up inside a hat in the shape