Hot Water Man by Deborah Moggach Read Free Book Online

driver adjusted his mirror to look at her, and shrugged.
    â€˜Intercontinental Hotel then,’ she shouted. Everyone at Karachi knew this. He nodded and started the engine.
    They drove through the streets. She wiped her face with her veil. She was sticking to the plastic seat.
    â€˜You English?’ he asked.
    She nodded.
    â€˜You in bazaar only?’
    Only? He must mean ‘alone’. She nodded.
    He shook his head. ‘No good,’ he said, like Mohammed. ‘You want marble maybe? You want carpets?’
    She shook her head, politely. He seemed a nice man. He had saved her.
    â€˜My cousin, he is important man. He get marble, and air-conditioner if you are liking.’ The man turned and passed her a card. It said
Sultan Rahim: Rahim Estates
and an address.
    â€˜You want beach hut? He fixes beach hut for Americans and Frenchies.’
    â€˜Beach hut?’ She looked at the card. Her hand had stopped trembling now. She put the card in her handbag.
    She relaxed only when they stopped outside the Intercon. A cockaded doorman waited, his jacket bright with braid. The fountains dazzled her. Just last week she had told Donald how she despised the Intercon – plastic and American, she had said. Sealed off from the nasty smells and the real city.
    She smiled at the doorman; for the first time she could meet somebody’s eye. The grass was green and damp; through swing doors stepped blonde air-hostesses making for the pool. They all understood English. Fancy tongas waited for the tourists; between the shafts the horses were as polished as conkers, unlike the wretched creatures she had seen this afternoon, a mile away. Just a mile.
    Inside the hotel it was cool. Businessmen strolled. A girl in the briefest sun-dress looked at postcards. Christine, heading for the Coffee Shop, unwound her dupatta and stuffed it into her handbag.

7
    This country of yours needs our Translux Hotel. I’m speaking to you straight. It’s a great country, this Pakistan. Leastways it can be great. You have the possibilities, you have great growth potential. Your businessmen have their heads screwed on. I’ve worked with Muslims – me, Duke Hanson, I’m what they call a field product development executive. I set up the deal, I find the site, I find the engineers and the architects and the designers, I’m here to see they come up to Translux standards, we have a 500-page manual specifying Translux standards right down to the hemstitch on the bedlinen. We see that these, standards apply to each one of our hotels across the globe, in Africa, in Japan, you name it. Our motto is
You’ve Never Left Home.
We have it on our napkins, our menus, we have it stitched on to the uniforms of our staff; each bellhop is a reminder that our service is the finest American service and that means it’s the finest you can find. It don’t matter if outside the windows it’s the Gobi Desert. Inside it’s Translux.
    Look at it this way. To get the business you need the businessmen, and to get the businessmen you need to get the hotels. And that means hotels of international class. That means telex and telephones that work. Laundry, room service – put it like this: only when you don’t notice the service is it a hotel with calibre. Here in Karachi you have one five-star hotel, the Intercontinental – high-class shopping arcade, banquet and conference facilities, block-bookings for the airline crews. You have three more coming up, the Hilton, Sheraton and Holiday Inn, that airport highway is one big building site. Fine sites, fine hotels, but they have one thing in common. They’re downtown. Sure, downtown’s where the business gets done but even Karachi’s biggest fan – and that’s me, there’s something about this place, I love it – even he can’t call this place the most beautiful city in the world. Like it doesn’t have too many tourist sights. They