Secrets and Sins. Jaishree Misra

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       Chapter Eleven

      Aman was met at Dubai airport by a small posse of dangerous-looking men who whisked him into a fleet of cars. Although he enjoyed relative anonymity in this city, like London, it was too full of Indians for him to hope to pass completely unnoticed.

      He looked out of his darkened windows at the other opulent cars passing by, imagining how excited he would have been as a boy to see a Bugatti, a McLaren and a Maybach all in the space of ten minutes. Now everything seemed so lacklustre.

      It was not long before Aman saw the tall mast-shape of the Burj Al Arab rise from the waters of the Arabian Gulf as the chauffeur steered his Rolls-Royce expertly through Dubai’s lunchtime traffic. The car swept along a freeway that was flanked by palm-fringed emerald lawns on one side, the ocean glittering blue-gold on the other. Soon his car was rolling up the hotel’s vast drive, the ocean on either side giving Aman the illusion that they were wafting all the way up the gangplank to a massive ship.

      The Indian doorman gave Aman a delighted smile as he disembarked. After a polite exchange of words with the man, who seemed quite overcome by a film star paying him so much attention, Aman sprinted up a set of sweeping marble stairs to the entrance. No matter how many times he walked through the doors of the Burj, Aman couldn’t help being dazzled all over again by the quantities of gold leaf that seemed to cover everything; the walls, the floor, the ceiling were brighter than ever as the afternoon sun poured in. This was his fourth or fifth visit but Aman reckoned he would never entirely cope with the garish opulence of the Burj. It was Salma who insisted on staying at this hotel when she was in Dubai, mostly for the privacy they guaranteed all their guests, but also, Aman knew, because she simply would not settle for anything less. If there was a seven-star hotel in a city, it would be unthinkable that Salma Khan should stay anywhere else!

      ‘Has my wife arrived yet?’ Aman asked the butler, who was walking a few respectful paces behind him down a gilded maroon corridor towards the lift.

      ‘Mrs Khan arrives in an hour’s time,’ the man replied in soothing tones. As if he understood already that soothing was what Aman really needed with the imminent arrival of Mrs Khan. Aman smiled wryly. Salma would appear, as she always did, in a whirl of secretaries and beauticians and hair stylists, barking orders into a phone that was permanently glued to her left ear. The habit had grown worse with her recent acquisition of a cricket team that was playing in the Indian Premier League, the long-distance negotiating and strategising seeming to give her a special buzz. It was as if she thrived on the power of being in charge of things, no matter how far away she was. She certainly had a strange way of robbing not just Aman, but the very air around her, of peace and tranquillity.

      Aman sighed as he was escorted up to the Royal Suite on the twenty-fifth floor. He’d suggested going for one of the smaller suites this time, given that this was not a personal visit but one organised and paid for by the Khalili brothers. But Salma would never agree to anything but the very best, of course, and the ever-courteous Khalili family had been quick to respond.

      ‘Least they can do, Aman,’ Salma had urged. ‘After all, you are charging only half what you normally get to attend their function.’ She was right but, typically, she was overlooking the fact that the discounted rate was because the Khalilis were known for their philanthropic work and the function was a fundraiser for Autism Awareness, a cause the oil tycoons were committed to because of the autistic twin sons born to the elder of the two brothers.

      Aman entered the mustard and gold expanse of the Royal Suite, wondering how the hell he would cope with leopard-print carpets for three whole days. The two bedrooms upstairs were a necessary requirement, as he’d asked Salma to bring Ashfaq along on this trip and she would no doubt turn up with his regular entourage of nanny, governess and playmate. But a living room this size, a dining room and a private cinema was definitely overkill for such a short stay, much of which would be spent in the Khalilis’ ocean-view mansion anyway.

      Aman flung his shades down on a console table and kicked off his shoes, enjoying the cool of the Carrara marble underfoot. Running up the stairs, he entered one of the two bathrooms and washed his face vigorously under water as cold as he could stand. After towelling his face dry, he picked up a bottle and splashed something that smelt faintly like citrus fruit on his face – Eau de Hermès, the lettering on the bottle discreetly pronounced. Salma would be pleased.

      Aman wandered out into a bedroom whose centrepiece was a huge circular and canopied four-poster bed. He remembered this bed from an earlier visit four or five years ago – a time when he and Salma had been getting on better, for he could recall how they’d laughed while experimenting with its various spinning and vibrating functions. It was hard to imagine such a time now, given the frostiness that had crept into their marriage in the past few years. Looking back, the surprising bit hadn’t been that he’d married Salma in the first place. She had been a beauty, after all, daughter of the legendary Noor, India’s top actress in the sixties. Aman had spotted Salma at one of his first film parties – a lavish affair celebrating twenty-five years of Rajshri Studios – and had found himself unable to take his eyes off the fair-skinned, svelte beauty СКАЧАТЬ