Chapter 12: New Home

When she woke it was to someone gently bathing her forehead with a damp cloth. She was lying on some sort of divan in a large square room with a number of divans and with trees growing inside it. Nearby was a pool with a fountain playing and two women idly bathing themselves at the edge. The woman who was bathing her forehead was wearing a sort of smock, but she herself was naked. The woman said something to her that she did not understand and another woman, dressed in a sort of bolero top which was unbuttoned and left her breasts clearly visible and a pair of pastel green transparent trousers came and asked her a question, again in a language she did not speak.

"Where am I?" asked Laura cautiously.

This produced a further burst of incomprehensible twittering from the two women. Then the one with the smock dashed off and returned with the most preposterous looking person. He was a corpulent black man of obvious North African descent with an odd squeaky-sounding voice. At least he spoke English.

Addressing her regally he squeaked with a voice which reminded her of Mickey Mouse, "Welcome to the harem of His Magnificence, the Emir Ibrahim, may he live for ever. I took the liberty of having your weals treated before waking you. I am His Magnificence's Chief Eunuch and I control all activities here in the harem. While we do not necessarily whip as often or as heavily as the Auction House seems to do, you will obey me. I expect that you are hungry, so we will dress you and then some food will be brought."

As he said this, Laura realised that her back, arse, and thighs felt much less bruised and painful than they had, and that she was actually very hungry. The food in the cages was not what she called food at all, just spiced meat and very fine white stuff that looked a bit like tiny grains of rice. If the opulence she saw around her was anything to go by, there would be proper food here, decent hamburgers and French fries at the very least.

Sitting up she looked around and was extremely impressed by what she saw. The taps at the edge of the pool, which was in reality a big bath, bigger than any she had ever seen, seemed to be gold plated. Every inch of the walls was covered in decorative patterns and pictures, as was that part of the ceiling which was not glass. Half of the windows had a green translucent awning over them, presumably to cut out the worst of the sun's rays. Looking more carefully at one of the pictures, it appeared to be a couple shagging doggy-style, but she was too far away to be sure, and it couldn't be that, could it?

Another of the Africans, not quite so fat this time, waddled up and gave her a bolero top and a pair of pastel pink transparent trousers. The top fitted her quite well but did not seem to have any way of buttoning up. The trousers were obviously torn. The material of the left leg had come completely away from the right and they were held together only by the light elastic waistband. If she had to wear next to nothing at least she wanted the clothes to be properly repaired.

Holding them out to the Chief Eunuch she said, "These are no good."

He stared at her for a moment and then said something in Arabic to the other man who scurried off with them, returning moments later with a pastel blue pair.

Behind her she heard quiet applause from someone and as she turned a voice said, "Quite right my dear. Pink is so unbecoming to a blonde."

The woman was, she guessed, about forty. A blonde who had obviously been a quite pretty when she was younger but had clearly let herself go terribly and had run to fat. The standard uniform, as Laura now realised, emphasised that she had a rather too plump arse, and a distinctly bulging sagging belly; her breasts drooped below the bottom edge of the bolero top, heading towards her belly-button.

"Hullo," she said, "I'm Davina. Welcome to boredom city."

"Hi. I'm an American citizen. Can you tell me how I contact the Consul and have him get me out of here?"