Chapter 14: Established

With the end of the British Government project, Derek had to move out of the small flat he had been occupying in the Embassy, and he decided to get some local advice before picking an hotel to stay in.

~For the love of Allah, can you advise a poor lonely stranger, respected Hajji, he started.

~Derek, my friend, replied the Hajji Darwish Dosmukhamedov gravely, ~How can an ignorant old fool such as your humble servant presume to advise a well educated and clever young man such as you?~

~I need advice on an hotel to stay in until I find a house, Derek replied, tiring of the game of ultra-politeness.

~Why do you need an hotel? The house waits for you. I thought it was politeness to His Excellency that you stayed in the Embassy?~ was the surprising reply.

When Derek saw the house which had been found for him, his heart sank a little. It was huge, by English standards. Three stories and with rooms on all four sides of a central courtyard, it looked big enough for ten families. There was a resident staff headed by a self-important and rather corpulent Chief Eunuch. There were kitchen staff and house staff and a number of others whose duties were somewhat unclear to him. Derek gathered that he would not need to go above the ground floor, as the middle and upper floors were where the staff worked and slept.

There were the kitchens and associated pantries above the north wing, which housed a dining room only a little larger than the main mess hall in the Embassy. Over the west wing, where the formal reception rooms were, was a small infirmary and more store rooms; above those the junior eunuchs slept. The south wing was mostly taken up with a garage with room enough for three large cars, only one of which was in evidence, but that was a Rolls-Royce. Beside that was stabling for four horses, with two already there, and above those were store rooms and bedrooms for the motoring and stable staff.

The east wing held a three roomed master suite of bedroom, sitting room and bathroom. Above that was the harem accommodation and above that the personal eunuchs, bath girls, and so forth slept.

Sitting down after being given the grand tour by his Chief Eunuch, Derek wondered how he was supposed to pay for all this.

When he ventured to ask what it all cost, the Chief Eunuch replied, "Master, did the Emir not say that all accommodations was provisioned by himself, the Emir, His Magnificence, may he live for ever and have many sons?"

Mentally Derek shrugged and wondered what would happen if he suggested, professionally, that the Emir was being too generous to him. He decided that he would simply live in the master suite and leave the rest of the house to look after itself. The only significant change was a desk he would have imported from England, a lovely antique he had seen on his last London trip, and which he decided he could now afford.