Читать книгу She Wore Red Trainers - Na'ima B. Robert - Страница 15

10

Sunday was our shopping day. The girls and I agreed to meet up to go shopping for clothes to wear to the Urban Muslim Princess event. But we couldn’t agree on where to go: would it be further south to Croydon, east to the sparkling new shopping centre in Stratford or west to Westfield? In the end, logistics and finances won the argument and we headed to Tooting, home to our beloved TK Maxx. I’d been saving up for months and was more than happy to spend my cash in cheap ‘n’ cheerful Tooting, rather than upscale Westfield.

Now, when it comes to shopping, different people have different styles. Take Rania, for example. She is Miss Hijabi Fashionista so, for her, shopping is a real investment. She is always on the lookout for clothes that are stylish yet modest – long skirts, tunic tops, scarves and jackets, always jackets. I swear, last time I took a look in her wardrobe, I thought I had stumbled into the designer womenswear section of Selfridges: she clearly has a jacket fetish in addition to an addiction to shoes and bags. So, in short, shopping with Rania was always serious business: everything needed to be tried on, matching outfits put together, accessories sourced. A total look, no less.

Samia was a different story: for a start, she was never into fashion, even before she became Muslim and started wearing hijab. Samia, formely Sam, became Muslim in high school when she was that random white girl who used to hang around with the Asian girls, learning Urdu and wearing a dupatta with her school uniform. She attended one class at the masjid and that was it, she was hooked. She took her shahadah just before her GCSEs. But Muslim or not, she was always more of a tomboy, more interested in tracksuits, trainers and footie than heels and accessories. Now she nearly always wore a scarf and an abaya.

‘I love my abaya!’ she always said. ‘Better than PJs, I tell you! No more fussing, no more stress.’

So you can imagine that shopping wasn’t her favourite thing to do. But she came along that Sunday because the last thing she wanted was a telling off from Rania’s mum. If there’s one thing Auntie Azra can’t stand, it is when people ‘don’t make an effort!’ So she would have to get her glad rags on, just like the rest of us.

‘Ooohh, these are soooo cute!’ Rania had found herself a pair of sequinned pants and looked like she was about to have a heart attack – joy and elation all over her face. She clutched at the sparkling trousers on the rack and held them to her chest.

She grabbed at least four pairs of trousers and ran off to join the queue for the changing room.

I shook my head and smiled, then looked over at Samia. As usual, she was squinting at the screen of her iPhone, a green jumpsuit dangling from the hanger in her hand. Only Allah knows how she managed to actually live life between Tumblr blog posts, Facebook statuses and Twitter feeds, but Samia’s relationship with her iPhone was a bit of a mystery to all of us. The girl had an app for absolutely everything, even calculating her carbon footprint or the true cost of a banana from Guatemala! Because those things were really important to Samia, Miss Eco-Warrior herself.

‘Hey, Samia,’ I called over to her. ‘You found something?’

‘Yeah,’ she smiled up at me, sliding her finger across the screen to close down the phone. ‘I love this colour…’

‘Yeah, it will look great with your red hair,’ I agreed. ‘And your eyes.’

Samia blushed and looked away, chewing her bottom lip. ‘Mashallah…’ she mumbled before heading off for the changing rooms. I watched her as she walked away, head down, shoulders hunched beneath her puffa jacket. That was so typical of Samia: the girl just could not take a compliment.

I looked around for Yasmin and saw her standing in front of a rack of dresses, her arms empty. I grabbed a couple of the dresses I’d been looking at and went over to her.

She turned to look at me, a worried look on her face. ‘I can’t find anything, Ams,’ she said. ‘None of this stuff would look good on me. I can’t even see anything I like.’

I fingered a brown maxi dress with turquoise flowers. ‘This one’s nice…’

Yasmin wrinkled up her nose. ‘Nah, that would make my arms look like slabs of salami.’

‘What about this one with sleeves?’

‘Oh, no, look how low it is. I’d be falling out of that one.’

I sighed. Shopping with Yasmin really was tough. She just did not know what she wanted – and she was hypercritical of her looks and her weight. Over the years, she had accepted the part of the quiet one, the silent observer, like the grey background that allowed the butterflies to shine even brighter.

But eventually, we made it out of TK Maxx in one piece; arms full of bags, ready to dress to kill, flushed with excitement, hungry as anything.

Only one place would do: Katie’s Cafe.

***

‘I swear, I thought this year would never end!’ Rania said as we all squeezed into the booth at Katie’s Cafe. This was our guilty little secret: a greasy spoon with enough calories in the burgers to give you and your mum a heart attack. But it was cheap and it was halal so, sometimes, just sometimes, nothing else would do: it just had to be cheeseburgers and fries with double thick milkshakes at Katie’s.

‘I know,’ I said, jostling Samia with my elbow. ‘It’s so cool of your mum to combine her fundraiser with our end-of-school celebration.’

‘Well, I, for one, can’t wait,’ Rania said, waving at the waitress. ‘The last time we had a good party was Eid and, after those crazy exams, I think we deserve a good time, don’t you?’

Everyone agreed and, when the waitress came, we felt no guilt as we ordered enough carbs, calories and fizz to feed the entire ummah.

What can I say? Girls just wanna have fun.