He’s skinny enough, it’s true – as skinny as the kids who do backflips in the square – and there’s not a single hair on his flat brown chest. But his age is in his eyes, eyes as green as a cat’s, and when I look right at him, though we’re meant to be ignoring him, I see eyes that might be a thousand years old. He’s been following us for half an hour, weaving among the crowds, his flip-flops slap-slapping in the dust of the souk. ‘Hey, mister! Hey, lady!’ he keeps calling. ‘You wanna buy carpet? Teapot? Saffron? You wanna buy incense? Come, come! Come to meet my uncle.’ His urge to ‘come, come’ sounds grubby and erotic and the refrain pulses in my head like some dark drumbeat, weird enough for me to wonder if it’s going to bring on one of my migraines. ‘Lady, you wanna buy handbag? Real leather! The best! Hey, mister, nice wallet for you! Look this way! You are my guest. Come!’ The Boy averts his eyes, head down and spinning, and the whole song and dance routine seems a pastiche of the real hustlers, an empty act he can turn off at will.
