Free Cinnamon by Emily Danby Page A

feeling as though something had been made from her own body. Aliyah also showed her siblings how to form the little threads and keep them concealed within their palms. When the children’s mother cottoned on to what they were doing, as the strings of dirt and dead skin mingled with the sweat in their clammy fists, Aliyah felt dismay. She would have to wait a whole other week before she could collect any new threads.
    Aliyah was like a beast of prey and she delighted when others called her animal names. But sometimes, in her daydreams, she would notice peculiar things sprouting from her fingers, and a layer of hair covering her skin. Little black horns seemed to spring from her forehead and her teeth grew longer. Aliyah would scamper across the roofs of those packed-together rooms like a little wild animal.
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    That same sense of nimbleness returned to her as she heaved her bag and a faint happiness welled beneath her ribs at the return of her animal senses. She would leap about right there, she decided, just as she had done when she was small. She would frolic in the dirt, in the dawn twilight. The feeling that she was once again an animal made Aliyah feel protected from a fear of the unknown. Although she was alone, she was happy, and even though she didn’t know where to turn to – heading back to her first world, expelled from the second – the return of this feeling put a spring in her step.
    She was a new creature on the bare cement ground. Aliyah looked about her; people were still asleep and there was not a sound to be heard but the howl of dogs – the only sensation that still made her feel connected to the world around her.
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    For Hanan, the girl’s animality was a source of attraction. She would savour the touch of her fingers as they played on her back drawing pictures, and feel a strange sensation at the sight of the servant’s dark skin against her own soft white flesh. Meanwhile, Aliyah would feel happiness flow through her as she noticed the mistress’s contentment, and she would continue to create new shades. She would be captivated by the colours and the contrast between the differing shades of their skin, as she drew clouds, a donkey, and sometimes roses on her mistress’s back. She would build white mountains of foam, which collapsed almost instantly. She laughed, then brought a hand to her mouth, her laughter ceasing. With soapy foam spread over her lips, she turned to her reflection in the mirror, pretending to be an old man. Aliyah laughed raspily, as she drew a great big tree, saying to herself:
    â€˜I’m... I’m... Father Christmas.’
    It was Mistress Hanan who had introduced her to Father Christmas. Aliyah had seen him on television as she lay by her mistress’s side. She had dreamt of him ever since, day and night. Sometimes, when she felt especially happy, she would gather a mound of foam on her chest and turn towards her mistress who, in a state of delirium, grabbed tightly onto the girl’s fingers, laughing hysterically. Aliyah would get out of the bath, damp with steam and soapy white foam which hung from her body like marshmallow. Then, she would go to her room to retrieve blank paper and a collection of pens with which she would draw for Hanan the pictures she had sketched on her back. As she drew, Aliyah recalled the soft touch of her mistress’s skin and the invigorating scents of the oils and felt as though she were living in a paradise. Her sketches would start at her mistress’s neck and end at the base of her back.
    Aliyah’s senses were reawakened in that colourful, clean place. When she looked out into the distance, her view was no longer obstructed by the walls of the little room as it was back in the alleyway. She would close her eyes and try to believe she really was in a place shaded by trees, where the soft curtains played over the windows and, more importantly, where her father’s beatings could not