Does My Head Look Big in This? (36 page)

I’m looking forward to the holidays. I’m looking forward to summer days and nights with Simone and Eileen. I’m looking forward to conversations with Adam. I’m looking forward to visiting Mrs Vaselli and watching her eyes rumba and salsa as she tells me the latest news about her son. I’m looking forward to watching Josh go completely ga-ga over Simone whenever she walks into the room. I’m looking forward to feasts with Aunt Cassandra and Uncle Tariq, daggy DVD nights with my parents, dreaming and laughing and going out and gossiping with Leila and Yasmeen.

Some people might find this ironic, but when I think about it, it’s mainly been the migrants in my life who have inspired me to understand what it means to be an Aussie. To be a hyphenated Australian.

It’s been the “wogs”, the “nappy heads”, the “foreigners” the “persons of Middle Eastern appearance”, the Asians, the “oppressed” women, the Greek Orthodox pensioner chain-smoker, the “salami eaters”, the “ethnics”, the narrow-minded and the educated, the fair-dinkum wannabes, the principal with hairy ears who showed me that I am a colourful adjective. It’s their stories and confrontations and pains and joys which have empowered me to know myself, challenged me to embrace my identity as a young Australian-Palestinian-Muslim girl.

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m through with identity. The next chapter in my life isn’t going to so much as mention the word. Instead, I’ve decided I’ll write a new list. I’ve done To Wear or Not To Wear. I’ve had To Go To Court or Work In A Lab. I’m going traditional now. Straight to the source, right from the horse’s mouth.

To Be or Not To Be.

But you know what? This time I don’t need a list. I don’t even need to think about it. Because something tells me that I already know which side is going to win this one.

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH is the author of the YA novels
Does My Head Look Big in This?, Ten Things I Hate About Me,
and
Where the Streets Had a Name.

Her books are published around the world and she regularly gives talks and workshops at schools and writers’ festivals. Randa lives in Sydney, Australia, where she lives with her husband and their two children.

randaabdelfattah.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to Sheila Drummond for all her effort, enthusiasm and smiles! And I am grateful to Marion Lloyd for all her support, and for so faithfully understanding why I wrote this book.

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First published in Australia by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd, 2005
First published in the UK by Marion Lloyd Books, 2006
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

The right of Randa Abdel-Fattah to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her.

eISBN 978 1407 14812 0

A CIP catalogue record for this work is available from the British Library.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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