In the Palace of the Khans Read Online Free

horns, Nick says.”

CHAPTER 2
    Day 2 .
    Hi there. Well, I’ve now been in an ordinary Dirzhani house — not that ordinary, actually, really posh, right on the river, belongs to this guy — I’ll call him Mr G — who’s something big in Dara Dahn. He got together with my dad at some sort of a meeting and when Dad said I was coming on a visit he asked if I could hang out with his daughter a bit, help polish up her English. I’ll call her Luana …
    Nigel’s father and the two Secretaries were British. Otherwise all the tiny embassy staff were “local”. Tim’s and Roger’s wives were really British too but counted as local; they were embassy secretary on alternate days while the other one had their kids. Nigel’s mother’s secretary, Ivahni, was a Dirzhak who spoke good English. Most of the guards and servants spoke a bit of English. And then there was Rick, who really was local, and really was British.
    He was the embassy driver. Before that he’d been general odd-job man at the FO’s Kyrgyzstan outpost in Dara Dahn. His parents had come to England from Antigua, and he’d been born in Leeds. He’d gone into the army when he’d left school, but had got sick of the racial harassment and dropped out. Then he’d met and married a Dirzhani girl who was working as a cleaner at the hospital. He’d come back to Dirzhan with her as soon as it split off from the USSR and got himself made driver and odd-job man and pretty well everything else in the new FO outpost in Dara Dahn. He’d lived there for fifteen years now, and had two daughters. He wore a smart navy blue uniform and cap and held himself like a soldier. He liked to talk, and still did it in what Nigel guessed was a Leeds accent.
    Now he spoke in Dirzhani to the bodyguard, who opened the rear door of the plush old embassy Rover and climbed in.
    â€œYou come up in front with me, sir,” said Rick, holding the passenger door for Nigel. “Khan dun’t like to be kept waiting, but we’ve a bit of time over so I’ll take you down through the old town, and tell you what’s what.”
    â€œYou can call me Nigel if you like,” said Nigel as Rick settled into the driver’s seat. The car wasn’t air-conditioned, so they kept the windows open.
    â€œSuits me,” said Rick. “Not in front of your dad, mind. Dun’t give a flip for himself, but in Dirzhan he’s H.E. the British Ambassador, and we got to keep standards up, even when there’s nobody looking.”
    â€œYou must like living here.”
    â€œNot half. I’m quids in here. I mean that, literal. Pound here will buy you two, three times what it would in England, less you’ve a taste for fancy foreign shoes and such. They cost all right. Besides, I’m somebody here. I get a bit of respect. Nothing like that for me back home.”
    He broke off to shout a greeting to a man leading a donkey-cart loaded with sawn timber up the steep, crowded, cobbled street. Most of the older men had thick, bushy beards and were wearing a kind of floppy turban, a long loose jacket and baggy trousers. All the women had shawls over their head or some kind of veil or even one of those long all-over cloaks that that covered them from head to toe except for the bit around their eyes.
    â€œThose are burkas or something, aren’t they?” said Nigel.
    â€œDahli, we call ’em,” said Rick. “Dahl’s a bit different anyway, seein’ we’re Dirzhaki. We’re like that.”
    There were teenagers of both sexes in T-shirts and jeans, but all the girls, even kids not much older than toddlers, had shawls over their heads and the boys wore caps. And they kept apart, boys together, girls together.
    â€œWhat would happen if I said hello to a girl I didn’t know?” he asked. “Would they lynch me?”
    â€œKnow her or not, no difference,” said