The eyes ...

On a one shop mission before lunch, with the 2 year old, I was foraging in Next for some jogging pants to increase our ‘spares’ collection for potty training next week. Not surprisingly the ones I wanted were in every size except 2-3 years. I was aware that he was backing into me but annoyed with the audacity of Next to sell out of the only item I required and frantically flicking through rails of jogging pants I took no notice until he started shouting ‘scary’ over and over again and trying to scuttle up my legs like a startled squirrel up a tree. This was more the behaviour I had wanted when he started pre-school, not whilst buying emergency joggers.

I turned to see three Muslim women wearing Hijabs stood next to us eyeing up some rather nice boys coats. He pointed fully at them and continued to shout ‘scary’. They looked at him, they looked at me. They probably thought we were some upper class twits who had never encountered a person of another race. I went red, smiled as if to say ‘2 year olds huh?’ and rushed the 2 year old round the corner to find 2 more Hijabs walking our way.

Now we live in multi-cultural Bradford and this is not the first time he has seen women wearing Hijabs. It is the first time he has pointed and shouted at them. On the way home he kept muttering ‘the eyes, the eyes’.