“Nathan! My god man, don’t look so grim!”
“George, we are in a harem! A harem, how am I supposed to look??”
“Pretty cheery I would think, actually... Come on,
apparently we’re going to have some kind of little powwow in the courtyard”
It looked as you
would expect it too, sumptuous, I believe the word is. Wide, open passages,
ornately tiled with vines creeping in through arched, glassless windows.
Pillows absolutely everywhere. Stop behaving with such sanctimony George had
told me, but it’s not that really, I appreciate the female form as much as the
next man with functioning eyeballs in his head, no, it’s more that I’m
pragmatic at heart and I knew we had been invited here with an agenda, one
which I was waiting on to become clear, one which I suspected could make it
difficult to extract ourselves from this situation and not for pleasant
reasons.
“It looks like it’s going to be some sort of musical performance
eh?”
“What on earth gave you that impression George, not the
musical instruments, surely?”
“You can be as sarcastic as you like, but I think one could
be forgiven for not noticing the instruments at all...”
There were five women, lavishly, though scantily, dressed
arranged in a half circle in one corner of the courtyard, each one holding an
instrument. We were seated facing them with our backs against the edge of a
fountain, the centrepiece of the courtyard, which the sun touched just the top
of at this hour, on its way to the far wall. We were all seated on pillows,
naturally.
“I say, that’s rather good isn’t it? Listen to that thing
they’re doing, the sort of wibbley sound...”
“Yes, it’s called tremolo, where has our host, the guide
fellow, got to George? He was just sitting over there before...”
“Tremolo eh? Lovely. And I don’t know, probably just to the
gentleman’s or something, listen, they’re almost finished I think”
And so they were. When they’d finished they gave brief nods
of their heads in acknowledgement of George’s singular and abundant applause
and then began to disperse. One of the women approached us.
“You enjoyed the playing I believe gentlemen?”
“Oh yes, lovely, just really, really lovely, I must say I
particularly enjoyed the tremolo you know, which naturally, with a keen musical
ear I-“
“The playing was delightful, thank you Madam”
There was a pause.
“Thank you, just opposable thumbs and practice really”
“Ha! Opposable thumbs! Excellent, yes-“
“And now perhaps you would like to follow me gentlemen, so
we might have a word”
“ Ah, splendid! Yes we’d love-"
“Actually I’m afraid we had better wait here Madam, you see
our host has gone somewhere but I expect he shall return directly and we
wouldn’t want-“
She started to laugh, an unusual laugh, a lovely laugh.
“Ah, but gentlemen, I am your host”.
