‘Tomorrow I Will Buy a New Hat’

‘Tomorrow I will buy a new hat’ said the man in the hat to himself. ‘Perhaps a Succoth tam or an Egyptian snake charmer’s cap’. He paused, corrected his breathing and said ‘or a paisley roustabout’s toque with a tassel and a doubly wide brim, for keeping the rain and toiling sweat out of my eyes’. He drew a stick-figure man in the dirt in front of him, carving out a divot where the head should be, assured that a new and wondrous hat would be part of the day’s accruements.

Egyptian hat felt is know round the world for its resilience and suppleness. Many and long are the stories about the Egyptian hat-maker, the nimbleness of his stitch, the temper of his hem and collar. The Egyptians are well suited to hat-making, second to tent-making and Sanskrit. In the city of Pune, Maharashtra there lives an expatriate Egyptian hat-maker by the name of Aroot Cul de Sac. His half-sister, Marjorie Aroot Malacca lives in an austere bed-sit in Legnago, Veneto Italy with four cats a hamster and an orange and green Cockatoo that speaks seven languages, one of which is Egyptian. His other half-sister lives with an invalid in Emilia-Romagna, Rimini Italy, not far from the other half-sister. The man in the hat heard about the Egyptian connection from a man with cats’ whiskers and a bum leg, who heard it from a pork-belly trader with a flashcard-forehead and a bearish nose.