Part Two: A Doll, a Harem, a Eunuch and a Slap

the story continues….

Kiki, my younger sister, and I had politely greeted the eunuch whose hand was soft and moist. Still looking slightly piqued he ushered my mother and us two girls to a corner of the room where we could sit on large handmade cushions. Smiling young girls served us mint tea and sticky ripe dates that were meticulously arranged on a large round copper platter. We communicated with the women standing around us watching by pointing and smiling at their skillfully embroidered dresses and stroking the heads of the many toddlers with smudgy kohl rimmed eyes hiding behind their mother’s skirts. The rotund eunuch finally seemed to relax and ended up being an extremely jovial chap who cackled like a hen, screaming with laughter whenever one of us attempted to say anything in Urdu.

At noon a little boy, most likely not older than six, came running into the haram. He had been sent by the Chief to collect the three of us for lunch. We said farewell to the women and children by shaking dozens of hands but the eunuch we thanked a trillion times for his hospitality.

Lunch was out on the dried mud ground of the village square where a large table and chairs had been set up under the shade of two towering date trees. The meal consisted of delicately spiced saffron rice with a buttery chicken curry. We used the steaming hot flat chapatti breads to scoop up small amounts of the rice and curry biting off chewable portions.

My mother, Kiki and I sat at one end of the large table whilst my father sat with his two colleagues, Willi and Badruddin, at the other end together with the Chief and his brother. The brother’s wife had just given birth to a baby a couple of days before. The baby boy was swaddled tightly in a white cloth, again magnificently embroidered and lay on his proud father’s lap asleep throughout the meal. Behind them stood their ever present bodyguards, faces stern and eyes directed downwards, rifles always slung over shoulders. My father asked the Chief about his horses, having seen the stables when we had arrived and the Chief agreed to have one of them brought in from the meadow where it was currently grazing and if my father would like to he’d let him ride it.

We on the girls side of the table wonderd whether my mother’s head was still sore from the eunuch’s slap but she assured us that she was all right and we had best not to tell our father till we got home. Then she noticed two very large decorative looking axes propped up against a wall close to where we were sitting. The thick long wooden handles were carved with intricate patterns that looked like Arabic letters and my mother stood up to admire them from up close. The Chief and his guards all turned to watch and when she saw them staring she gave them the thumbs up as a sign of approval and the Chief smiled back his red teeth gleaming; his brother just chuckled.

Willi, my father’s German colleague, had been very quiet throughout the visit and acted like a fish out of water. Unlike my father, who tended to bond with people instantly, Willi was clearly uncomfortable.

‘I do not like all ze guns,‘ he told my father, ‘we should not have come to dis place,’ he added pulling out a crumpled handkerchief and wiping his brow.

By now Badruddin was also starting to show signs of discomfort and as they all stood up from the table he quickly told Willi and my father that the two axes my mother had just admired were in fact execution axes, and the ‘patterns’ were the numbers of hands, or heads the axes had severed.

My father, never one to panic, wanted to take a closer look at the instruments of torture but Willi grabbed his arm.

‘Let’s go, now!’ he hissed.

Before my father had a chance to react a boy riding a superb Arabian stallion came galloping towards them and skidded to a halt just metres from where they were standing. Willi blanched and my father smiled and walked up to the horse to nuzzle its nose. The boy jumped off and handed the reins to my father with a huge grin. Since my father had grown up with horses in his native Hungary he did not heisitate. He climbed into the saddle, gave the horse a swift kick and trotted off with the village children cheerfully running after him.

On my father’s return my sister asked if she could have a go. She galloped into the distance to the utter disbelief of the Chief and his brother who was still holding his baby. They were flabbergasted that a mere girl could ride, and well.

In the mean time Willi had started trying to also convince my mother to leave and she told him, ‘No!’ Leaving immediately was impossible, we needed the support of the Chief to get back across hostile territory and without an escort we would be taking an enormous risk, besides she saw no immediate threat. Then something happened that made her abruptly change her mind.

to be continued….