Redemption - Leon Uris [206]
British officials and generals had mostly been too tightfisted to avail themselves. Now and again, an off-horse Englishman liked and could afford her entertainers, but British pickings were lean.
But what did it matter? At the age of forty-one Sonya Kulkarian had packed in her fortune and was independently independent.
Did it matter that the royal palace had only called once since hostilities began? No! Truth be known, service to royalty was only good as a credential. Otherwise, they were impossible to serve. Their credit was hardly a thing of beauty. You cannot demand payment in advance from royalty.
So it did not matter. Moreover, the madams who had once been competitors jumped aboard the war wagon and cheapened their parties and their services.
Sonya, of course, kept in contact with the best of her girls, for contact was everything.
She was very happy, in fact, to receive Farouk el Farouk. He asked her to set up the Villa Valhalla for a small group of only five from the military who would be in Egypt for two, three, four months. It sounded perfect until he told her it was being leased by a corporal, two serjeants, a low-ranking officer, and a Palestinian Jew without rank.
“You ask this of Sonya? I have served the King’s nephews and cousins and uncles!”
“And complained every minute of the time,” he reminded her. “Do I come to Sonya Kulkarian to embarrass her? No. I assure you, my treasure, what they lack in rank, they make up in…” He twittered the thumb against his third finger and his forefinger. “The lieutenant is of aristocratic nobility. He is heir to half of Ireland and has a most generous hand with the cheque.”
“I don’t deal with trash.”
That may have been a harsh conclusion for a woman of her calling but Sonya Kulkarian was a Circassian. The Circassians were known to be particularly brutal to their women. The men obsessed that they had royal blood. In fact, some still kept slaves in the countryside.
The Circassian colony had been in Cairo for seventy years, though aloof from fellow Moslems, and had grown successful.
They had originated from the mountain regions of the Caucasus in southern Russia. After making the Haj to Mecca, many of them remained in the region. In the middle of the last century there had been a mass migration rather than accept a new political boundary and a ruler from outside their borders. If nothing else, they were the ultimate fierce fighters.
Oh, we know Sikhs are fierce, Turks are fierce, Serbs are fierce, Berbers are fierce, Cossacks are fierce, but one had better believe that the Circassians were the fiercest of the fierce. Their uniforms spoke of glorious soldiers, from their short boots to their high fur hats and great swatches of gold braid and flowing moustaches.
Because of their reputations, their riding skills, and their colorful attire, many Arab kings and princes used them as personal palace guards, which further enhanced their legend.
Sonya’s business was for the elite and her associates were impeccable in manners and performance. It was the clients who were the pigs.
Having gained a sufficient fortune by her early thirties, Sonya managed properties leased for a month or more for those who could pay the high passage.
At forty-one, Sonya Kulkarian had lost some of her incredible native beauty but had the wisdom of the years in the movement of her hips and, what was more, she spoke English.
“So, try it for a month,” Farouk el Farouk pleaded. “Their money is outrageous.”
“I do not want five soldier desert rats who will smash furniture!”
“They can’t be any worse than royalty,” he said.
It was not wise to reject Farouk el Farouk’s entreaties. Not that she needed him any longer, but one did have to