Chapter 26

‘Good God, my dear, you cannot come in here.’

Fareeha turned and saw a towelled-up Muzaffer Hussein flapping towards her in rubber slippers. A heavy door closed behind him, stifling the echoes of deep voices and running water. Steam continued to blow through the cracks around its edges.

‘What in heaven’s name are you thinking of?’ he boomed, shaking the drooping jowls of his steaming, red face. ‘They will stone you.’

Fareeha stepped back as his watery eyes jumped out at her; she noticed the veins bulging over his glistening temples. ‘It’s quite alright, Muzaffer.’ she said. ‘I am not actually "in here", am I?’

Muzaffer glanced behind himself and caught the eye of the obese man sitting next to the door he had just pushed through. The man said nothing, just slapped himself over his right shoulder loudly with a wet hand-towel.

Self-consciously he fingered the knot of the towel around his own immense stomach. The other towel, draped over his shoulders did little to hide his stout, fuzzy-haired chest, down which trickled lines of sweat.

‘And he would not have called you out if it hadn’t been alright,’ Fareeha tried to further explain, nodding to the human wall of flesh who had just done her a favour.

‘All right, all right.’ Muzaffer relented, seeming to bring his vexation under control.

Another towel-slap echoed through the building, but this time it had come from inside; a peel of male laughter followed it out.

‘You boys having fun in there?’

‘It’s just a bathhouse, my dear. A simple way for an old man to relax. Before today I hadn’t been here for months.’

‘Me neither,’ Fareeha said and nodded to the boarded-up entrance of the women’s baths.

The ripped and fading poster stuck to a panel of wood reminded her of the "ungodly and lascivious practice communal bathing." Her mind went back to the pumped-up men in the temples and marketplaces screaming at knots of cowed women that it was against the fundamental tenets of their faith to wash together. Although that ugly period in Sa’ An’s history was over, nobody had bothered to tear down the boards and open up the baths again for women—even that insulting poster remained.

She looked back at Muzaffer’s oiled body. Strangely, nobody had ever said that men bathing together was ungodly and lascivious, and the proud men of Sa’ An had enjoyed uninterrupted communal baths for centuries. ‘Not that I have the money for such a luxury,’ she added. She then twisted her nose at the reek of sulphur that was trapped between the tiled walls. ‘Did it always smell this bad?’ she said.

Muzaffer took a deep breath. ‘You get used to it,’ he said. He then returned his hand to the knotted towel stretched around his considerable girth. ‘My dear,’ he said firmly, ‘you have me out here chatting like an old washerwoman; would you please tell me what it is that you want so that I can get on with my bath.’

‘I though that you were looking for me,’ she said, raising her hands in submission.

‘Oh, indeed I was, but how in heaven’s name did you know that?’ Another slap rang out with his question, only this time it wasn’t from a towel; it sounded more like the palm of an ungodly (if not lascivious) human hand. There was no peel of laughter.

Muzaffer cocked his head and looked even more annoyed. ‘The masseur had me all oiled up and ready to go before the interruption. Sounds like I’ve missed my turn.’

‘It was Mr. Phipps again,’ Fareeha said quickly, ‘I just ran into him at the spice market.’

‘In the market? My god! What a surprise. I was under the impression that Doctor Phipps kept himself hidden inside that crumbling old building and never ventured through the city except on his way out to the dessert.’ Muzaffer narrowed his wet eyes. ’Spoke to you did he?’

‘Well, yes; yes he did.’

‘Good God! Never get more than a word or two out of him myself.’ Muzaffer shook his head. ‘Odd fellow, very, very odd.’ His right hand left the knotted towel and came up to his jaw. ‘Never did get a chance to ask him about my teeth.’ The hand dropped back to his navel. ‘Just as well, I suppose . . . Anyway he’s right; I was looking for you.’ He raised his broad shoulders, lifting the tails of the towel that hung around them through the undergrowth of his torso. ‘You probably already heard, the charity boat is on its way. When it docks we’ll get you aboard. Everything’s arranged, but you had better come down to my office tomorrow morning to go through the details. Is that all right with you?’

For a moment Fareeha didn’t answer: a rapid patter of loud slaps had begun to echo through the bathhouse as her mind swam with the image of the unsavoury Indian captain and his ugly tub The Maharaja. ‘Rashid?’ she asked.