Does My Head Look Big in This? (15 page)

We step off the tram at Royal Parade so that we can cut through Melbourne University on our way to Lygon Street. We walk through the grounds, impressing each other with our big statements about the “moral ineptitude” of an exam-based education system, growing big heads over our vocabulary and acting like idiots.

Yasmeen challenges Leila and me to a race through the lawns, and I manage to slow her down by yelling out that there’s a cute guy staring at her from behind a tree. Then Leila and I spend five minutes convincing her that her hair hasn’t frizzed from her twenty-metre sprint. Then we have to find a toilet so she can apply a serum to her hair. We end up spending fifteen minutes in the toilets, reading all the graffiti on the back of the cubicle doors, fascinated by the university standard of scribbling as compared to our high-school poetry (
Tia gives it to the footy team
and
Claire woz
not
here
). Yasmeen wants to write our names on the back of the door with her eyeliner pencil but I go all ethical on her and tell her it’s wrong to graffiti. So she tries to persuade us to write
I’m a Muslim and I’m not oppressed
, and I pretend to vomit over the toilet seat, which gives us a reality check that we’ve voluntarily hung out in a block of toilets for quarter of an hour.

By the time we arrive at Lygon Street, we’re swapping cubicle insults and arguing about whether
Big Brother
is better than
Survivor
.

And then we smell pizza and it’s all over from there. We take one look at each other, nod in perfect harmony, take a seat at Café Roma and order a pizza with the lot, minus ham, pepperoni, salami and bacon. It turns out gelato was a negotiable craving, after all.

“That’s not the lot,” the waiter says flirtatiously.

“We’re rather fussy about our pizzas,” Leila says.

“I’ll say.” He grins, winking at us as he walks back to the kitchen.

“What a hottie!” Yasmeen exclaims.

“He plucks his eyebrows,” I say solemnly.

“No he doesn’t!” Leila cries.

“Yes he does.”

“No way!”

“Yes way.”

“I’m telling you they’re natural.”

“I’m telling you they’re not. When he comes up again pay attention: he’s got in-growns and he has a part in the middle the width of the Tullamarine Freeway.”

Fifteen minutes later, our food arrives.

“Ladies, one pizza . . . apparently with the lot.” As the waiter catwalks away, I raise my eyebrows questioningly.

“Definitely a plucker,” Leila sighs and Yasmeen nods.

We dig in to our pizza with the lot minus the lot, then we order dessert.

“This is nice,” Leila sighs as we lick our gelatos.

“What is?” Yasmeen asks.

“This.
Hanging out.
Chilling like normal teenagers, you know? What’s so bad about this? I don’t get what my mum’s dumb problem is.”

“Pretty obvious,” I say.

“Oh yeah? What?”

“She thinks you’re going to try to pick up. And judging from the way you keep perving on that waiter, I’d say your mum has a point!”

She kicks me lightly under the table. “He’s all yours.”

“Oh
really
, and why the sudden change of heart?” Yasmeen says.

“Oh, you know how it is.” She shrugs her shoulders. “It wouldn’t work out between us. We’d constantly be fighting over the eyebrow plucker.”

15

I
t’s now two months since the start of term, and it feels like the teachers are on a mission to make VCE the worst two years of our life. The Victoria Certificate of Education is a complete nightmare and I’ve been up studying every night. I’ve got Stalin, the formula for glue, and Pythagoras in my head. It’s an ugly combo.

It seems like our two-hour class of Biology with Mr Jefferson will never end. When the bell finally rings we all jump up and shove our things away, desperate for fresh air and normal conversation. After I put my stuff in my locker I grab my prayer mat and walk towards Mr Pearse’s office. I cross paths with Adam on my way and stop to talk to him.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“To pray.”

“Cool. Where?”

I eye him suspiciously. “Mr Pearse organized a room for me.”

“Wow! So you actually pray every day, here at school? It’s not sarcastic, Amal. You can drop the eyebrows a notch.”

I give him a half-smile. “Yeah, I pray every day here.”

“Is it hard? To keep up, I mean?”

“Sometimes it is. I get lazy too, you know. But it’s kind . . . kind of like a time-out. You know when – actually don’t worry.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I hate that what/nothing game. Just say it. I won’t laugh. Jesus Christ, you take things seriously!”

“You shouldn’t take Christ’s name in vain like that,” I say solemnly.

“
What?
Now you’re defending
Jesus
?”

“I wouldn’t be considered a Muslim if I didn’t believe in Jesus Christ.”

He backs away a little, looking flustered but excited. “Are you serious? So you believe in the Trinity and stuff, like me? Come on, sit down for a sec. I want to talk about this. This is
weird.
Can you pray in ten?”

“Yeah . . . I guess.”

We walk over to a nearby bench. My prayer carpet is folded in my lap and I’m playing with the tassels on the end of it.

“So you and I, we believe in the same thing after all?”

“Well . . . not exactly. See, we don’t believe Jesus was God, or the son of God. We believe he was one of the mightiest
prophets
of God, and performed miracles with God’s permission, like healing the blind, curing the lepers.”

“Really? So Muslims actually believe in that too?”

“Yeah. I went to a Catholic school you know. In primary.”

“You
didn’t
? No way!” His eyes widen and his mouth is confused between grinning and laughing out loud.

“Yep.”

“This is freaking me out, Amal. So what were you saying about prayer?”

I lean back against the bench and stare at him. “OK. Imagine you’re playing one of your basketball matches.”

“Done.”

“You’re running up and down the court, doing your lay-ups, shooting hoops, smashing your body into exhaustion. You’ve got nothing on your mind except the game. Nothing is distracting you from it. But when it’s time-out, you get this three or four minutes of calm. You get to drink your slurpie, catch your breath, rethink your strategy, who’s getting in your way, who’s working with you, who you could work with more. How much you owe your coach. What was that tip he gave you? What did he say was the best way to get a goal? Right?”

“Yep.”

“That’s how prayer is for me. It sounds corny, I know. But it’s kind of . . . like that. Except there are five slurpie breaks a day, and one of them is so early it makes your teeth sting.”

He laughs and leans back, folding his arms across his chest.

“You spin me out . . . I’ve never met anybody like you.”

I don’t say anything and continue playing with the prayer carpet.

“You know, you shouldn’t pay any attention to Tia,” he says. “She’s just a bitch. Rich, spoilt brat, obsessed with her looks. Fits the profile kind of story.”

“Racist?”

“Yeah, that too. But, well, you can’t really blame her. It’s what she hears at home. I know ’cause my dad knows her dad. They’re not friends but they used to bump into each other at the golf club. That was ages ago but even then her dad would see somebody Asian or dark-skinned and he’d hail them over assuming they were a waiter or something. They don’t really mix with anybody outside their circle. You’re probably the first Muslim—”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware of that,” I groan. “
The first Muslim she’s ever met
.
It makes me sound like an alien. Oh, it was my first encounter with a Muslim! Wow! I even had my camera! Can’t wait to ring the National Museum. I’m sure they’ll be interested in putting on an exhibition!”

“OK, OK, I get the sarcasm. You need to
relax
.”

“I’d be less hyper if people would stop making up crappy excuses.”

“It’s not an excuse! I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, it’s obvious. You judge people on experience.”

“Get out of here, Adam! You don’t judge
people
. We’re not a plural, or some big bloc, all acting and feeling and saying the same things. You judge individuals. Anyway, it goes both ways. I’ve got family friends who think all Anglos are drunk wife-bashers slumped in front of Springer with a stubby in their hands.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Dead serious. Should I make an excuse for them?
Oh, they’re allowed to think that. After all they’ve never really had a conversation with a sober Anglo
.
If it sounds so ridiculous for your background, then why doesn’t it for ours?”

He runs his fingers through his hair and shakes his head. “You are absolutely the most exhausting
individual
I’ve ever encountered.”

“Shall I do a Tia for you?” I flip my head to the side so the tails of my hijab lift to my other shoulder, and he cracks up laughing. After a few seconds of silence he looks at me with a serious face.

“Hey. . .?”

“Yeah?”

“You know when you first walked in with the veil?”

I’m telling you my lungs start to do step aerobics. I try to breathe evenly and nod my head, too nervous to answer.

“It was weird. I thought . . . well a lot of people, we all thought you’d been forced by your parents. But a couple of us soon threw that idea out ’cause we thought, well, if you’d been forced you wouldn’t seem so, I dunno, into it.”

“Huh?”

“You just seemed to walk around like it meant something to you or you liked it. I dunno how to explain it.”

I keep nodding.

“So then we thought you’d become, like, some fanatic. Like what you see on TV, you know?”

“Mmm.”

“But you’re not.”

“Duh.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” I stand up to walk off.

“Hey, Amal!” he calls out.

“Yeah?”

“There was something else that crossed my mind when I first saw you with the veil.”

“And what was that?”

“You made for a pretty good-looking fanatic!” He grins at me and then gets up and walks away so quickly that he doesn’t catch my mouth stretch out in a smile so wide I’m in danger of damaging my facial muscles.

16

I
have a sleepover at my house on Saturday night with Eileen and Simone. Leila’s here too; she’s not allowed to sleep over but my mum managed to convince her mum to at least let her stay for dinner. Yasmeen has some family thing on so she can’t make it and is spewing big time. We’re in my bedroom pigging out on pizza. Luckily, criss-crossing my two sets of friends has never proven to be a disaster as everybody gets along.

“So I get this massive lecture from my mum this morning,” Leila says.

“About?” I ask.

“How I’m never going to settle down unless I’m more open-minded about her match-making. Boy, she drives me up the wall. She’s telling me this huge sob story about how much effort she takes to find guys she knows I’ll be attracted to and have things in common with.”

“She tries to set you up?” Simone asks.

“Yeah, all the time. About once every two months some new dude comes over for dinner. I’m coincidentally all dolled up. Like anybody really walks around the house with make-up and heels. Sometimes I deliberately wear no make-up and the daggiest clothes. Mum goes off at me.”

“Would she force you to get married?” Eileen asks. “I don’t mean to be rude, but that just sucks.”

“No! There’s no way she would force me. She just constantly pressurizes me about being so into my studies and not thinking about settling down. It’s weird because my female cousins in Turkey are all at university and their parents, as in my aunts and uncles, would have a fit if the girls wanted to get married before they finished their degrees. It’s like Mum came here all those years ago with the traditions of her village and got stuck in a time warp, while all her brothers and sisters progressed.”

“I understand exactly what you mean,” Eileen says. “My parents emigrated from Japan about twenty years ago and they’re still going on about the traditions and cultural norms they were following when they left, all those years back.”