Free Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

hair? You have to have a model’s face to get away with covering up. Don’t you think so?”
    They nod like obedient puppies and I let out an exaggerated sigh.
    “I just don’t know what I’d do without a brain, Simone!” I say. “I mean, what’s a person without one?”
     
    “Coffee at the Lounge Room, tonight?” Simone whispers to Eileen and me during History on Friday.
    Eileen’s on. I don’t know whether to go. The Lounge Room is a trendy café on Burke Road: long coffee tables centred between big suede lounge chairs and sofas, dim lamps and television screens with MTV and Friends reruns. It was our hang-out joint in the mid-year break. Where we’d go to goss and eat strawberry tart and talk school and parents and top five chick flicks and the rest. Because I’d rather eat decomposed meat than be thought of as a chicken, I fake a big smile and tell them I’m all for it.
    *
    I chicken out.
    I’m ashamed to admit it but after dinner I ring Simone and Eileen and tell them I can’t make it because we have visitors. They believe me. And why wouldn’t they? I’m supposed to be pious and God-fearing. Not a lying, hypocritical, pathetic coward. I’m lying on my bed listening to Craig David’s “I’m walking away”. On repeat.
    What’s happened to me? Haven’t I decided to wear the hijab because I feel proud of who I am? Suddenly I’m too chicken to go to a café? I don’t recognize myself. I’m the one who put her head out the school bus window last year and yelled at a group of boys who threw a can of Coke at our “wog” school bus. It was me who stood up during a Year Nine interschool debate and told the audience that my team didn’t appreciate the other team’s whispers about competing against “terrorists”. When we were at the medical clinic and the secretary asked Leila if she could cope with filling out a form in English, it was me who pointed out that Leila’s never set foot out of Australia and can manage an A+ average in Eng Lit, and then some.
    So if that’s all me, then who’s this girl who’s making up excuses to avoid going out to a café?

8
    “ I ’m starving!” Simone moans on our way home on the school bus.
    “I think I have an apple in my bag,” I say. “Do you want it?”
    “Thanks, I’ll pass. I’m so sick of fruit and vegetables. Aren’t you hungry, Amal?”
    “Nah, I had a big sandwich at lunch.”
    “I don’t get the skinny world!”
    I nudge her in the side. “Don’t be silly.”
    “But you skinny people eat two slices of bread filled with rabbit food at midday, and you’re all ‘I’m about to explode’ until dinner. I’m always hungry. Honestly, Amal.” Her voice goes down to a whisper. “Don’t laugh. But sometimes I can be eating my lunch and thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner!”
    “That’s normal,” I say.
    “Won’t Allah punish you for lying?”
    I jab her again.
    We sit in silence for a while, staring out the window. After some time Simone turns to me: “My mum and I had a massive fight last night.”
    “What happened?”
    “She’s been hassling me to join the gym with her. She’s going through a Pilates craze. She’s constantly on my back about losing weight and how she was a size six when she was my age and how she can’t believe I’ve turned out like this. Am I really that bad, Amal?”
    “What is she on about? You’re only about one size bigger than me and Eileen and you’ve got certain assets most girls would kill for!”
    “My mum says that they’re the only thing going for me and that I need to work on making the rest of my body more attractive.”
    “She wouldn’t say that!”
    “She’s said worse, believe me. She says it’s because she loves and cares for me – spew – that it’s only for my own good – spew.”
    “Simone, you’re gorgeous. You’re a natural blonde, just about the most sought-after hair colour in the world, you’ve got amazing eyes, you never have a pimple and you