Does My Head Look Big in This? (29 page)

I’m clapping to the music and my hands are red and sore but I’m having too much fun to care. I catch Amina’s eyes and smile widely at her, mouthing out “
Mabruk
”, congratulations. Hosnu is grinning like a man who has been given a new chance at life. My mum and Aunt Cassandra go all teary, even though they’ve probably spoken five words to Amina in their entire lives and have never met Hosnu. My dad sees my mum’s eyes and playfully offers her the tissue in his ear.

When the bride and groom finally make it through the crowd and take their seats on the stage, the music continues for another forty minutes. Mum’s going all aggro on Yasmeen and me, wanting us to get up and dance. We stand up and rush to the middle of the dance floor, wedged in among the crowd of bodies so nobody sees us. It’s too embarrassing with all the parents watching.

I love Arabic music and as soon as I’m on the dance floor a wave of energy takes over my body. Yasmeen and I start belly dancing, laughing and singing aloud to the familiar pop Arabic song as we shake our hips and torso in different patterns. After half an hour of belly dancing we link hands in the
dabke
line. On my right is an old man who is surprisingly more energetic than me and whose hand is seriously grossing me out with its sweatiness. He grins at me and I wonder where his dentures are. His eyes are aqua-blue and he keeps leaning over to me and shouting out “
Mashallah
” –
God be praised – in an admiring voice, confirming to me that he is senile. He praises me on my green eyes, as though they are a product of my handiwork, and shouts over the music to ask me if I’m single. I pretend that I can’t hear him. Except, for someone so old, he doesn’t look fooled for a second and yells out whether I know his grandson, Ramy Salah, who is “well known” and “very popular” because he owns a mobile phone shop on Bourke Street and drives a Lexus. I squeeze Yasmeen’s hand tighter. But she is too busy being interrogated by a tall, broad woman with cherry-red hair, gold bracelets on both arms up to her elbows, and a massive gold cross plunging down her cleavage. Mr Energizer on my right is now asking whether I have a mobile telephone and I tug Yasmeen out of the line. We rush off to the bathroom and explode into a fit of laughter. We gloss our lips, curl our eyelashes, style Yasmeen’s hair, fix my hijab and make sure there’s no toilet paper stuck to our heels.

“So that old man doing the
dabke
,” Yasmeen says when we’re back at our table and digging into our entrée. “First set-up attempt?”

“One down,” I groan.

“This is my second. The first was in the foyer, when we first arrived. She wanted to know if I was a Muslim, what my TER score was, and did I attend university or technical college. This one now asked me if I was Christian and knew how to cook and speak Arabic. I told her I was a Muslim who could use a microwave and speak a little Urdu, and would that do?”

“No way!”

“She totally freaked out. Luckily you dragged me away in time. She looked like she was getting ready to slam her heels into my toes!”

We spend the rest of the evening perched on a back table, away from the crowd, checking out the selection of guys. We end the night convinced that our short-listed selection are all probably either attached or mummy’s boys. Anybody with white socks and black shoes is immediately disqualified.

Nobody is free from prejudice I guess.

35

T
he story to my parents is this: Leila’s mum is OK with Chapel Street but her dad is having a hernia, so under no circumstances should they answer the phone in case he rings for an interrogation seminar. If he needs Leila, there’s always the mobile. My dad considers this equivalent to an “accomplice after the fact” (he watched
Law and Order
last night), as he would be betraying the trust of Leila’s father. I argue that it is Leila’s mum’s business what she hides and doesn’t hide from her husband, and who are we to interfere in their marital relationship?

Yasmeen and I are pulling a shifty very badly but we’ve got no choice. It’s either that or Turkish matchmaking chat room.

I’ve been in front of the mirror for three hours. No kidding. My entire wardrobe is on my bed and floor. I’ve decided that I hate all my clothes. Everything. I am a girl with nothing to wear. To make matters worse, I put on liquid eyeliner and it smudges. That’s when I go berserk. I mean, I’m wearing a hijab, so if my face doesn’t look good, what hope have I got? A good manicure? I attack my eyelids with cotton buds but that only makes it worse. My eyes are black and puffy now. Great. I feel well and truly hideous and all I want is to sit on the couch with a packet of Tim Tams and watch back-to-back episodes of
Survivor
.

I feel a teeny weeny bit better after I throw my clothes at the wall, have a bit of a cry and scream at my mum to leave me alone and not to dare enter my room. I eventually scrub my face and start all over again.

It takes me ages to finally look semi-decent. I’ve highlighted my eyes with eyeliner and mascara, applying some lipgloss and a touch of blush. Yasmeen will be proud. I decide on a baby-pink chiffon hijab with a white cotton headband underneath. I’ve draped the hijab loosely around my head so that the headband shows, flicking the tail ends over my shoulders and clasping them together with a brooch I bought from a funky jewellery shop on Bridge Road. I go for a long, straight black skirt, a soft-pink fitted cashmere top and pink heels. It’s clearly all very centrefold. I still feel ugh, but if “I feel like a supermodel” is ten and “Even my mum would think I’m ugly” is one, then I’m hovering on five. There is no way I’d enter Chapel Street on a Saturday night on a score of one to four.

My mum takes photos of me before the girls arrive. She’s gushing that I look like a Barbie doll, with obvious reference to Toy World in Saudi Arabia, not Australia.

Leila’s brother, “Sam”, drops her off at our house and my mum answers the door. Thank God he’s got the manners of a goat because he doesn’t bother to say hello, just speeds off in his red 180SX. From the front door I can see the dice hanging down from the rear-view mirror and the “No Fear” sticker covering his back window. His arm is dangling out of the car window, his techno music doof doof doofing, on the assumption that the next few streets are dying to share in his bad taste.

Leila looks stunning. She has massive, doe-shaped brown eyes with a jungle of thick brown eyelashes. She’s outlined her eyes with eyeliner and they’re so bright and dazzling we should be able to use them as headlights. She’s wearing a black silk veil, with a red headband underneath. She’s got on a wrap-around red dress, which she’s put on over black fitted trousers and red heels. My mum takes one look at her and finishes half a roll of film.

When Yasmeen arrives she starts yelping and squealing, hugging and kissing us, overjoyed that we’ve opened our make-up bags. Her hair is straightened and kicked out at the back and she’s wearing a three-quarter-length black dress.

“You two look gorgeous!” She puts her night bag in the hallway. She’s staying over tonight but her bag could probably supply her for a week.

My mum drives us to Chapel Street. We want her to drop us off at a side street because we don’t want to look like utter morons – but she goes all “you’re ashamed of your own mum” on me and so I let her take six solid minutes to parallel-park in front of a packed-out fruit juice shop directly outside the Jam Factory complex.

We make quite an entrance in the restaurant. It is beyond embarrassing.

We sit down at a booth and it’s one of the best nights the three of us have spent together. Leila is relaxed and uninhibited, cracking jokes and talking about anything and everything but never once mentioning her family. They are irrelevant tonight. As we’re eating our chicken and mushroom pastas Yasmeen announces that it’s present time and Leila starts to blush.

“You guys didn’t have to—”

“
Leila!
”
Yasmeen moans. “Don’t go all shy and modest and
I don’t need presents
on us. It’s your birthday! Use and abuse!”

Leila grins. “OK, fine. What did you get me?” she asks.

When Leila has opened the wrapped jewellery box, her eyeballs start to pop in and out like a reversible slinky.

“It’s stunning,” she whispers, holding up a white-gold chain and oval locket.

“Read the inscription,” I tell her. “Sorry about the font size, we had to fit it in.”

Leila opens the locket up and reads it aloud:
For your strength & faith, you inspire. Y & A.

We have a bit of a Kodak moment and hug each other. After an hour the cheesecake arrives and while we’re stuffing our mouths, arguing about how many minutes you need on the treadmill for every bite, Leila lets out a startled cry and drops her spoon on the table.

Hakan is standing at the front door, next to a girl wearing a mini denim skirt, black knee-high boots and a top as thin as tissue. It’s funny how your brain thinks of the dumbest things at the wrong time. My first reaction isn’t where they’ll be burying Leila. Instead, I’m actually wondering whether that girl realizes she makes Jessica Simpson look like a brain surgeon, walking around like that when it’s fourteen degrees outside. Then the reality of the situation hits me so hard I have to spit my mouthful of cake into a napkin.

“Oh Allah,” Yasmeen whispers. Both of us grab one of Leila’s hands and don’t let go. Hakan storms through the restaurant and up to our table, his girlfriend struggling in her heels to keep up with him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” he asks coldly, his furious gaze fixed on Leila.

“I’m having a birthday dinner, Hakan,” she says slowly and calmly. “It’s no big deal.”

“
Hakan?
”
the tissue-top girl pipes up. “Who’s
Hakan
?
Isn’t your name Sam?” He flashes a silencing look at her and she gives him a timid half-smile, stepping backwards and playing with her nails.

“Do Mum and Dad know about this?”

“No, they don’t,” I say, before Leila gets a chance to respond. “They think she’s at my house, because that’s what we told Leila. That we were having dinner there. But we lied. It was a surprise and when she arrived at my house, we brought her here. It’s not her fault.”

“Yeah,” Yasmeen adds. “She had no idea.”

“
Shut up
,” Leila hisses but I squeeze her hand tighter.

“So you two can go around like sluts and drag my sister along with you?”

“Don’t you dare call us sluts!” Yasmeen cries.

He ignores Yasmeen, his eyes focused on Leila. “Get your things, you’re going home.”

“I . . . I. . .” Her face has collapsed into a confused, defeated heap of terror and weariness. She gathers her present and places it in her bag.

“No!” I shout. “We’ll take her home. OK? I’ll get my mum to pick us up and we’ll drop her off.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you tarts.” I want to hit him. I want to yell and shout at him, but for Leila’s sake I don’t. I ignore him and the veins in my head are popping against my skull from the pressure of keeping my rage at bay.

Suddenly the manager of the restaurant is before us, asking us to pay the bill and leave. Yasmeen and I put money on the table and we all gather our things and walk out, Hakan beside us like a security guard escorting a disgraced patron out of a store. Nearby tables are looking at us and smirking, as though we’ve proved they were right to think we were troublemaking wogs after all. Our faces burn red as we stand outside, the smell of smoke and aftershave and pizza and alcohol overwhelming us in our dizziness, the icy wind cutting into our faces.

“Please,” I plead with him. “Let us take her home. Go out with your girlfriend and we’ll explain everything to your parents.”

Yasmeen and Leila are standing side by side, their arms linked, teeth chattering, a look of desperate panic on their faces.

Hakan’s girlfriend is clutching his arm, shivering in the cold. So she does realize it’s freezing, I think, in one of those tangent thoughts.

“Come on, Sam,” she coos into his ear, pressing her cleavage up against his chest and caressing his arm with her nails. “Let’s leave them. We’re meeting the gang at Heat, remember? Kylie and Dave are probably wondering where we are.”

His face relaxes for almost a split second and I plunge in.

“I promise my mum will drop Leila off. Look, I’ll call her now, in front of you. You go out and have your fun. I’m sorry if we did this behind your family’s back, but honestly Leila had no idea. We forced her along. She had no choice.”

Retch. Vomit. Oh God, let him say yes,
please
.

“Some Muslim you are,” he leers, looking at me up and down.

He wins. I betray Leila and let loose. I can’t hold it any more. I feel almost faint from keeping my fury inside and I swear and shout at him for being a hypocritical sexist filthy scumbag. For going ballistic at Leila over an innocent dinner when he’s the one going around with a tart, drinking himself blind and smoking dope. For daring to disrespect us and judge us. I can’t stop. I see Leila’s face crumple into shock and Yasmeen is motioning for me to shut up, but I betray my best friend and lose control.