Muddy People

by Sara El Sayed

  ‘Excuse me,’ called a voice from behind. The lady from next door, the chickens-and-flagpole side. She was wearing horse-riding boots, and her hair was coiffed in a ponytail that pulled her forehead taut. She looked like she would smell overwhelmingly perfumed. She must have been watching me burying the capsule, but had kept her distance. When she spoke, she sounded polite: ‘Your rubbish doesn’t belong on our street.’

  BABA

  Only one nurse comes back to talk to my father. She is Māori – I can tell by her accent and the tattoo on her chin. When Mohamed got a tattoo of the Sphinx on his arm, my father said he would go to hell, then kissed him on his head and bought him lunch. I wait for my father to say something about the nurse’s tattoo, but she speaks first.

  ‘What do we have here?’ she says, looking him in the eye. She is holding a heat pad in her hand. ‘I’m told your veins have been playing hide and seek.’

  ‘I’m so tired,’ my father says. ‘I’m so sick of it. I want to go.’

  She smiles at him and places the heat pad on his arm. ‘Hold it there. Two minutes,’ she says, before walking out again.

  My father gets sweaty when he is stressed. He says he’s been waking in the middle of the night with a drenched pillowcase. He says the doctor tells him it’s due to the cancer. He removes his cap, pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket with his free hand and wipes his bald head, plus the very little grey he has on the sides. He leaves the handkerchief on his head and replaces his cap.

  I’ve broken the unused coffee stirrer in two; it’s splintered in my hand. When the nurse pulls back the curtain, I register the stillness of the trees outside. The ward smells of alcohol wipes and sugar. The woman sitting across from my father is eating malt sticks.

  Her name is Rita, the Māori nurse. It is on the ID card hanging from her neck. Rita takes the heat pad off my father’s punctured arm. He starts praying as she takes a needle and slides it in. It goes in easy, like he’s made of tapioca. He flinches, but it’s only out of habit.

  ‘Like magic,’ says Rita. ‘All it takes is a little warmth and a little time.’

  My father looks at the line in his arm and the sack of clear liquid. To the untrained eye, it could be water. But water gives life, and this stuff does opposite, despite its intentions.

  My father smiles. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘you are magic.’

  RULE #2

  GOOD GIRLS DON’T WEAR BIKINIS

  I stood in front of the bathroom mirror after my shower with nothing but a towel on my head. Baring all but my hair. This is what I’d look like if I wore hijab, I thought. I didn’t look bad. The towel framed my face well, and my nose sat nicely in the middle. At seven years old, it hadn’t reached its full potential, size-wise. It was an at-risk nose, but not as bad as Mohamed’s. Not yet. I twisted the towel up in a turban, like a sister who wears hijab for fashion. Pious and chic. I could pull it off if I wanted to.

  But here is the thing: I didn’t want to wear hijab. And Mama didn’t want to, and Nana didn’t want to either. We had flown to Brisbane four months after 9/11, and Baba told people at the mosque that Mama didn’t wear hijab because the times were sensitive and our names had given us enough trouble at the airport. This was half true. But the full truth is this: some people don’t wear hijab, for no reason other than they just don’t want to.

  It’s hard to know who your people are; walking around with a hijabi wife or daughter makes it easier. I had watched Baba at the Underwood Shopping Centre – thirty minutes’ drive from where we lived, but the only place in Brisbane with a halal butcher – nod at every man who had a hijabi woman by his side. A strong nod, and a smile, as if to say just so you know, I’m one of you too. Despite the exposed curly hair on the girl beside him. We made it harder for Baba to connect with his people. We knew this, and if we really wanted to, we could have made it easier. But I didn’t, and neither did Mama.

  My mother was engaged to another man before marrying my father. When I ask her about it, she says, ‘He was handsome. A dentist. A very handsome dentist.’

  Maybe if Mama had married a very handsome dentist instead of Baba, I would have had better oral health, and my nickname would not be Soos.

  ‘Then why didn’t you marry him?’

  ‘He wanted me to wear hijab. And I didn’t want to.’

  Nana interjects. ‘You know, he called me and said, “I insist your daughter wear a scarf or I won’t marry her.” And I said, “I insist you stick a shoe up your arsehole.” Ibn el kelb.’ Son of a dog.

  ‘He also had a lisp I couldn’t stand,’ says Mama.

  ‘Soos, whatever you do, do not marry an Egyptian man,’ says Nana. But Baba is an Egyptian man, and he didn’t force Mama to do anything.

  ✾

  The first day of school was an itchy type of hot. Mama dropped Mohamed and me at the gate with little more than ‘Yalla, see you later.’ Aisha had been bawling in the back seat and wouldn’t let go of my new school hat, so I had to leave it with her. The silhouette of the wide brim mocked me as they drove away, and I swear she raised her tiny, two-year-old hand up to the glass and flipped me off. She is the youngest, and she gets what she wants.

  Morningside Primary was different from our school in Alexandria. That was a tall structure hard to distinguish from an office building. Morningside, in comparison, was flat. It was not one building but multiple wooden-clad blocks on stilts, spread liberally across land, as if the people who built it were trying to claim as much space as they could.

  Mohamed and I walked up the steps to reception, where a lady with long nails sat behind an expansive counter.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘It’s our first day here and we don’t know where to go,’ said Mohamed.

  ‘Oh. Is your parent with you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mohamed.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mohamed.’

  The lady typed slowly into the computer. She stared at the screen for a long time.

  ‘M-O-H-A-M-E-D,’ he spelt.

  We were told to wait in reception. I watched as students came in late and were signed in by their parents and kissed goodbye as they ran out the door, knowing exactly where to go, knowing exactly who was waiting for them in their classrooms.

  A blond boy with dirty shoes entered. He spoke to the office lady, who pointed at Mohamed.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, holding onto my brother’s bag strap as he stood up. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  He pulled my hand away. ‘Don’t be a baby,’ he said, and left with the boy.

  The office was silent but for the tapping of the keyboard from behind the desk. I read the names of past students on the boards mounted on the walls behind the receptionist. They were embossed in gold and sparkled with reputation. None of them read anything like M-O-H-A-M-E-D.

  Finally, the door opened, and in came a girl with pink-and-white sneakers. She looked like Lisa from The Saddle Club. Not in the way that people told me I looked like Carole just because I was brown; this girl really looked like Lisa. A charm dangled from the loop of her shoelace. From afar it looked like a question mark, but as she got closer, I could see it was half a heart. She had a friend, somewhere, with the other half.

  ‘I have to take you to class,’ she said. Her heavy Australian accent made each word peel off thin and long, like string cheese. I got up, keeping my eyes on her shoelace.

  We walked across a courtyard, up some wooden stairs, and along what I would call a balcony but was told was a ver-an-dah. Along the verandah sat wooden shelves filled with a variety of schoolbags, varying degrees of filth on the base of each. Someone had left their zip open, and a pink plastic lunchbox poked out like a baboon’s bottom. In my backpack was a plastic bag with a shami roll in it.

  The classroom was big, with desks set up in groups. Students were sitting in a circle on the blue-grey carpet, listening to the teacher. The girl with the shoelace charm joined the circle.

  ‘Hello,’ said the teacher. He was wearing
a black-and-red striped t-shirt and glasses that were too big for his face. His hair was blond and floppy, falling across his eyes. Something about him made him look untrustworthy. I decided he reminded me of the Hamburglar. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘My name is Mr R. Lilly, will you scooch over, please? Make some room.’ I figured Lilly was the girl with the charm on her shoe, and that ‘scooch’ meant ‘move your arse’.

  ‘There’s no room,’ said Lilly.

  ‘Can everyone scooch back and make the circle bigger?’ said Mr R. It made me nervous, the way he kept asking the students to do things instead of ordering them. As if they could say no and that would be that: I wouldn’t be allowed in. But the circle thankfully expanded. The opening that presented itself was still a bit too small, so I sat behind the circle.

  ‘We were just seeing how many Australian foods we can name. Can you think of any?’ said Mr R.

  I thought back to what we’d eaten at home the night before. ‘Pizza,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not Australian, that’s Italian,’ said a whiny-sounding girl on the other side of the circle. Some kids laughed.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Mr R. ‘Can you give it another go?’

  ‘Square bread,’ I said.

  Mr R looked at me for a moment. I knew he thought I was dumb. ‘That’s all right,’ he said again. That’s all right clearly meant you’re wrong. ‘Does anyone else want to have a go?’

  ‘Vegemite,’ said the whiny girl.

  ‘Good!’ said Mr R.

  ‘Pavlova,’ said a boy.

  ‘Excellent!’

  ‘Sausage sizzle,’ said another boy.

  ‘Good one!’

  Mr R pulled me aside once he’d settled the rest of the class at their desks with their books. He came close, like he was trying to prove he wasn’t afraid of me. His skin was red and acne-ridden. It looked like it needed a wash and maybe some cream.

  ‘Did you bring colouring pencils with you today?’

  I shook my head. I did bring pencils, but they weren’t the same brand as everyone else’s. They lacked the right shiny gold logo.

  ‘You can borrow these.’ He handed me a cup of pencils. Half of them were broken, and there was no sharpener. ‘If you’re having trouble in class today, just let me know, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And before I forget,’ he pulled a blue piece of paper of out his desk drawer, ‘take this home to your mum. It’s a permission slip for the swimming carnival next week. Do you think you’ll be all right to swim? Is that something you can do?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, that’s all good, then.’

  ✾

  I arrived on the day of the swimming carnival with my brand-new blue Speedo one-piece with fluoro green trimming beneath my uniform. I was no stranger to the water – Nana had me in swimming lessons by the time I was two. Mohamed was a pretty good swimmer too: his nose made for an effective keel. Our school in Egypt didn’t have a pool, so this felt like a privilege.

  The whole school entered the pool complex through the one gate, bottle-necking at the narrow passage. Near the entrance was a concrete canteen displaying an illustration of a flying fish, the words Morningside Flyers curving with the fish’s trajectory. Kids filed into the grandstand. Mohamed sat among the older boys in the higher seats, and I sat next to Lilly and her friends, closer to the edge of the pool. They were all wearing identical bikinis, in different shades of pink. I imagined their mothers, who each looked like older versions of their daughters, on group shopping dates, buying the same costume in order for their girls to look perfectly cute, a set of dolls.

  The marshals blew their whistles and called for different groups of students to line up for their races. Every kid wore a yellow swimming cap plastered with the image of the flying fish, which accentuated how alien in shape their head was. I didn’t have a cap. Mohamed’s fuzzy head in the sea of yellow baldies calmed my nerves a little. He didn’t have one either.

  Grade One breaststroke was on first. For a country that was meant to be all about beaches, the kids were rubbish swimmers. They thrashed around in the water; it was a miracle no one drowned.

  ‘I need to go to the toilet,’ Lilly announced. ‘Come with us.’

  ‘I think our race will be soon,’ I said.

  ‘If I don’t go, I will pee in the pool,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  I knew it was crass to talk about going to the bathroom, but I rather liked the way she said things straight. She didn’t care about being rude.

  The girls got up and followed Lilly, and I didn’t want to sit alone. The toilets, wall-to-floor concrete, were at the back of the changing rooms. I waited outside the stalls for Lilly and her friends.

  ‘Aren’t you going to go?’ said Lilly, washing her hands in the sink.

  ‘No.’ A marshal shot a blank to start the last Grade One race. ‘It’s our grade’s turn soon.’

  She pressed the empty soap dispenser over and over. Nothing came out, but she didn’t seem to notice. ‘If you’re not going to go to the toilet, then why did you come with us?’

  It was hard to think of an answer other than, ‘You asked me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Why would I ask you to come to the toilet with me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you come to perv on us?’ She flicked her hands dry.

  I didn’t know what perv meant, but by the way she said it, I assumed it was bad. I went into the stall, took off my uniform and pulled down my one-piece. I held it under my knees so it didn’t touch the piss-encrusted floor and tried to go, but nothing came.

  A voice on the megaphone called for the Grade Twos.

  ‘Hey!’ said Lilly.

  ‘I’m coming. Sorry. You can go without me,’ I said. My costume had twisted on itself. I tugged at it, pulling it awkwardly over my knees. It hugged my thighs tight and wouldn’t go up any further.

  ‘I have a question,’ said Lilly. I heard the girls start sniggering. I could see the charm of Lilly’s shoelace underneath the door, dangling against her pink-and-white sneaker. It looked like a question mark again. I looked up and met her eye through the gap in the door.

  ‘Why are your nipples so big?’ she said.

  The girls burst out laughing.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, and my one-piece fell around my ankles, onto the wet floor. I didn’t know the answer. ‘I have an infection,’ I said. It was the first thing that came to mind. I’d heard Mama talk about infections before. I’d seen pictures of embarrassing marks on skin in her textbooks.

  ‘What? Ew,’ said Lilly.

  Finally, I peed. Just a drop. It dribbled down my leg and fell into the still-knotted crotch of my Speedo.

  It was the first time anyone had seen me naked, apart from Nana and Mama when I was a baby. It was the first time I understood what it meant to be violated. And it was the first time I developed a deep, seething hatred for a white girl. In that moment, I hated Lilly. Not because she had humiliated me, but because whatever she had under her suit was already understood as better than what I was stuck with. Pink and dainty, just like her bikini. It took her pointing it out for me to realise that my body was different. A joke.

  The girls left the bathroom, and I missed my race. I spent the rest of the day in the grandstand and went home with togs dry, all but one spot.

  ‘I need a bikini,’ I said to Mama in the car.

  ‘You don’t need a bikini. You don’t need anything,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I do. It’s the rule at school. I have to have a bikini.’

  ‘Well, this is our rule: no bikinis.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to take off all of my clothes if I wore a bikini.’

  ‘Take off all your clothes? Why are you taking off your clothes?’

  ‘In the changing rooms.’

  ‘Keep your clothes on. Keep your maillot on. Do not take anything off.’

  ‘But I needed to pee.’

  ‘Keep it on. Just move the
bit to the side.’

  ‘What if I need to poo?’

  ‘Iskooti ba-aa. Be quiet.’

  ‘Just poo your pants,’ said Mohamed from the back seat.

  ‘Why can’t I have a bikini?’ I said.

  Mama didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s not fair. You’re forcing me to show my nipples to everyone like a perv.’

  Mama pulled over to the side of the road. I choked a little as my seatbelt pulled taut. ‘You are a rude girl,’ she said, without looking at me. We sat in silence for a while. I could tell Mama knew what perv meant. When she was angry, the protruding veins in her legs spread to her forehead.

  ‘You are a very rude girl. I didn’t bring you here to learn to speak like this.’ She looked at me, and I looked away. ‘You need to get your head out of the rubbish. We are not here forever.’ She said here like she meant more than Australia. ‘You need to follow the rules. When I tell you to do something, you do it. When I tell you you can’t do something, you can’t do it. People can be dirty. I don’t care what these people do. But you are not to be dirty. Do you understand?’

  ‘Can we go now?’ said Mohamed.

  That afternoon, I got out of the shower and stood in front of the mirror with a towel on my head, my dry Speedo curled up in the corner. This is what I’d look like if I wore hijab. If I were a modest girl. If I weren’t a perv. This girl would not show her nipples to strangers. This girl would not say nipple in front of her mother. This girl would listen and do as she’s told.

  I looked at my chest and saw it for how ugly it was. I pulled the towel off my head and wrapped it around my body, covering my torso.

  This girl would not be dirty.

  MAMA

  This is how a conversation between my mother and her mother starts. My mother will be in the kitchen, and will call do you want tea? Nana, who is in the living room, will not answer. My mother will call again, do you want tea? Nana will not answer. My mother will call one more time, do you want tea? And Nana will say, are you talking to me? My mother has done this for as long as I can remember.