Does My Head Look Big in This?

  Eileen has a point. I’ve been strong and defiant in some situations and an absolute wuss in others. Like the time I took the day off school to avoid playing in a final basketball match that I was freaking out about. On the other hand, I remember attending a Grade Six camp dance wearing a dress when everybody else was wearing jeans and runners.

  All the girls had planned to dress up and then somehow the plans changed without me knowing. I’d fought with my mum to buy me a dress and shoes and even though she’d warned me that nobody would wear a dress at a farm camp, I insisted and she spent about one hundred dollars on an outfit. I felt so guilty that I’d made her fork out all that money that I decided to wear the dress anyway. I’ll never forget everybody laughing at me when I walked in to the barn with my heels and polka-dot black-and-white dress. There was hay on the floor, a Spice Girls track booming and denim in every corner. It’s one of those humiliating memories which will be forever etched in my mind.

  But the point is, maybe people have to go through a lion and mouse syndrome at different points in their life. One thing seems certain. If I survived a polka-dot dress experience on a primary school camp then something tells me that I’ve got it in me to survive wearing the hijab.

  On Sunday morning my dad and I are dumped with a list of Mum’s neurotic cleaning chores so that she can concentrate on cooking a banquet for tonight’s dinner with her younger brother, Uncle Joe, and his family. This time my dad’s stuck putting our DVDs and video tapes in alphabetical order. But he draws the line at organizing them in categories.

  Afterwards, I help Mum out in the kitchen. Peeling veggies, rolling the vine leaves and doing whatever other support-staff work she needs me to.

  Whenever someone’s invited to our house, my mum cooks as if she’s feeding the entire southern hemisphere. There are no discount percentages on fat content, no carb-free sauces, and don’t even dare to suggest salad dressing with a low GI index. My mum is into making an impression when she cooks and her diet regime is therefore non-existent whenever we have visitors.

  Uncle Joe and Aunt Mandy crack me up. Big time. Uncle Joe is the complete opposite of my mum. He was born Ismail and my Aunt Mandy was born Aysha. I’m still trying to figure out where Joe and Mandy came from.

  They’re not into Islam or Arabic culture like we are. They’re more into changing their names, peroxiding their hair and acting like they were born in Wagga Wagga and not Jerusalem. They’re always freaking out about us being “fanatics”. For example, in Ramadan, we’re “mad” to fast. When it’s prayer time, they ask us why we bother. When we buy halal food, we’re “too extreme”. I remember the time we went to a buffet dinner and my mum asked the chef if the pork was carved on the same cutting board as the lamb. Uncle Joe just about had convulsions, and went aggro at my mum for being so “embarrassing”. So my mum laughed in his face, walked up to the manager and told her that her brother, the man with the heavy gold chains eating the potato salad, was wondering if it was possible for them to start to use a separate cutting board as a courtesy to those who don’t eat pork. The manager immediately walked up to Uncle Joe and started sucking up to him, saying sorry about ten times in the space of one minute. Uncle Joe was livid.

  My cousins are Samantha, who’s in her second year at uni, and George, who’s nine and quite possibly the most irritating human being in the world. As soon as he walks into our house tonight he rolls back his eyelids, sticks his tongue out at me and then yells out that Samantha had the runs on Tuesday. There has to be a scientific research centre that will agree to conduct a study on this kid.

  Samantha and I are pretty close. I only see her at family things, as she spends almost every weekend hanging out with her boyfriend, Martin. I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s a real spunk. Seriously, ten out of ten. They’re crazy about each other. Although her parents may be really laid-back about religion and culture they’d never accept Samantha having a boyfriend. So whenever Samantha’s out with Martin, her parents are fed a story about her being over at a friend’s house for a study session.

  Because we’re all just family I’m not wearing my hijab when they come over. So, up until dinner, I’m still the relative with flowing locks and “normal” looks.

  My mother has gone all out tonight. She’s cooked a Palestinian dish called mansaf, basically rice mixed with pieces of chicken and pine nuts, dressed with a hot yoghurt soup. It’s in a plate that has the circumference of a semi-trailer tyre. She’s also made a massive bowl of fatoosh, salad topped with pieces of bread dipped in olive oil, with side dishes of pickled cucumber, radish and chillies, minced meat pastries and warak aneb, which are vine leaves stuffed with spicy rice. Everybody’s digging in when my mum announces that I’ve decided to wear hijab.

  “But why?” my aunt wails.

  “Yes, Jamila, why would you go and make her do that?” Uncle Joe shouts. “Isn’t it enough you wear it, so you have to force your daughter to as well?”

  “What? Nobody made me! It was entirely my decision.”

  “Jamila!” my uncle hisses in a tone which makes it obvious he’s ignored me.

  “Oh, Ismail, just shoosh,” my mother says, rolling her eyes at him and helping herself to another serving of food.

  “Dad’s name is Joe, Aunty!” George cuts in, hitting his fork on the table in protest.

  “Oh shut up, will you?” Samantha groans.

  “Maa! Samantha swore at me!”

  “Samantha, don’t be rude to your brother.”

  “Uncle Joe, I said it was my choice! Oh put a sock in it, George!”

  “But Amal, honey,” my aunt says in a sickeningly patronizing tone, “why would you go and hide your hair? You’ve got such gorgeous hair.”

  “Well, Aunt Mandy, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m losing my hair. The doctor said that my hair follicles can’t withstand excessive sun exposure, and if I don’t cover up I’ll be bald at my Year Twelve graduation ceremony.”

  My dad snorts with laughter. My aunt and uncle don’t look amused. George sticks his tongue out at me and I go cross-eyed at him. After dinner Samantha and I lock ourselves up in my bedroom and sit on the window ledge. Samantha smokes, so we’ve got the incense candles burning, the Listerine handy, a can of air freshener, and the window wide open. Samantha’s also wearing gloves so her hands don’t smell. We’ve pretty much perfected the after-dinner routine.

  Samantha inhales and quickly sticks her head out the window, directing her exhaled smoke into the open air. “Want a drag?”

  “Nah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Nah, I’m right. Anyway, Mum and Dad would smell it on me even if I had a bath in disinfectant.”

  “I think my parents know I smoke.”

  “Yeah. I just reckon they’re in denial.”

  “Big time. . . So tell me Miss I’m-In-Love, what is it about Adam?” She takes a last drag and closes the window, spraying her body with perfume and my room with air freshener. We jump on to my bed and lie down.

  “He’s a great kisser.”

  “WHAT? You kissed?” She jumps up on the bed and I collapse into a fit of laughter.

  “Ha ha, very funny. Sheez, you gave me a heart attack. For a second there I thought you’d broken your code of drool don’t touch!”

  “Yeah, all the time. Recess, lunch, after school.”

  “There’s more chance of Mum admitting she’s a fake blonde than of you doing that.”

  We lie on our sides and face each other.

  “So what is it about him then?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t define it.” I lean my head back against the bedhead. “He’s really smart and ambitious and cute, and there are lots of guys like that but one day I just felt this connection and after that . . . I don’t know, I started to notice stuff about him.”

  “Like?”

  “Like . . . the time I was wai
ting for the bus after school and I saw him walking across the quadrangle. One of the girls from Prep was running and stacked it on the ground. Adam helped her up, dusted the asphalt off her knees, had her laughing in a second. It was so different to how he usually is, you know, all macho and stuff in class and with the guys.”

  Samantha cocks her head to the side and grins at me. “That is without doubt the corniest thing you have ever said! GAG!”

  “Tell me about it!” I groan. “Man, I feel corny all the time! He says hi to me and I’m gliding for the rest of the day. It’s disgusting! But he’s just so cute.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get you. Martin and I are there too. Hey! You’re not going to believe what happened last weekend!”

  “What?”

  “I got busted.”

  “For what?”

  “I got home after four. No big deal. But Mum and Dad were waiting for me, like you see in the movies. Sitting on the couch, legs crossed, all pissed off and geared up for an argument. I walk in and first thing I want to do is laugh because Dad’s wearing this black satin robe with love hearts on it.”

  “Oh my God, that’s gross.”

  She shudders. “Don’t remind me.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Some idiot told Mum they’d seen me at a bar with a guy. She freaked out. They told her they’d seen us with our hands all over each other. It must have been an X-rated description because she went all I’m too ashamed to repeat the details! It was so embarrassing, Amal. Guess who told her?”

  “Who?”

  “Remember Rahul? The guy I dumped in the first year because he kept making me pay for everything and borrowed money off me to buy me a birthday present! The one whose dad is Indian and his mum is Egyptian. My mum knows his mum. Come on, you know the one!”

  “Tight-arse Rahul? The one whose breath stunk? Every time we all went out he’d forgotten his wallet in the car or was waiting for a pay cheque from work!”

  “Yeah, that idiot. Apparently he was at the same bar, saw us there, rang his mum and casually mentioned it to her! Within bloody seconds she’s squawking it to my mum on the phone!”

  “No way! What did your parents say?”

  “They went mental.”

  “Were they pissed off about the whole bar scene?”

  “Nah. They know I drink. That’s not a problem to them. It was me being with Martin. They think we’re sleeping together. God knows how detailed Rahul’s mum got with my mum. She’s such a bitch!

  “Then, imagine this. Dad springs the cultural theory on me! He kept going on about how it’s not part of our culture. I couldn’t handle it from there. I mean, he can’t just use the culture argument whenever it suits him. For two decades we get the ‘we must be assimilated’ crap lecture and then in a minute we’ve suddenly got Arabic roots and cultural expectations.”

  “Uncle Joe actually said that?”

  “Would you believe it? This is coming from the man who thinks the word ‘foreign’ is the f-word of our times. All our lives George and me get it rammed down our throats that we’re to forget our culture and live as Aussies, whatever that means. But then when I do something that he doesn’t like, he does a three-sixty turn.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  She groans. “I’m still in shock. Anyway, change the topic. Hey, I noticed after dinner Dad cornered you into a big pep talk about following in his footsteps and going into IT. Man, he doesn’t stop talking about how the whole family’s counting on you getting top marks and making the family proud.”

  “Like my parents’ pep talks aren’t enough to handle,” I say.

  “He raves on about how smart you are and your debating awards and how you’d never settle for only an Arts degree like me.”

  I guess Samantha didn’t hear Uncle Joe telling me that he thinks that I’ve got no hope of a future if I continue to wear the hijab. According to his theory, in today’s climate Muslims are better off retreating and concealing their identity not only because they need to assimilate but also to get ahead in society.

  Boy does that give me the creepy crawlies. OK, I know I said that I had it in me to “survive” but when an adult questions your ability you suddenly get butterflies. Is Uncle Joe right? Sure, I sometimes feel a strong temptation to retreat and to withdraw to the safety of anonymity. With the flick of a safety pin my hijab will fall off my head and I’ll look like an unhyphenated Aussie.

  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

  “Remember 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, Cas
sandra?” 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.”