About this time and
our social life blossoming we decided to get a house boy for two sessions of
two hours a week. To this end I went to see Gabbi who looked after the cleaning
staff and put the idea to him. “Yes Mr. Mike I will get you the best cleaner
possible” he said he was always a bit of a bull shitter. True to his word in a
couple of days he arrived at our villa with a quiet and sad looking Pakistani.
“This is Hamid the best cleaner on base” he assured us. Hamid spoke only very
few words English but soon he and Syb had devised a basic sign language.
Sometimes it went wrong as one time when he arrived she looked out of the
window and said “It’s a lovely day” crazy thing to say everyday was sunny in
the desert! However Hamid understood and cleaned all the windows.
An understanding developed
between us that if he finished early we would still pay him the full amount and
if he worked over he would still get only the agreed amount. I believe he got
the best deal out of the arrangement but only just. One day he brought us some
seeds, we put them to our mouths to enquire if we should eat them, he laughed
and indicated that we shouldn’t. Next day in his own time he arrived and
planted the seeds against the purdah wall from then on he took to tending his
little plot in our garden and we approved each time a little green shoot
appeared. As I said his English vocabulary extended to about ten words and some
of our less understanding visitors were shocked when Hamid would arrive in the
room holding the vacuum cleaner point to the door and say “Out”.
The usual system
was Syb would show him what to do then leave him to it. One time she asked him
to clean the Gas cooker when she went back to see how he was getting on she
found he had stripped it to its component parts which were all over the kitchen
floor. That day he worked overtime but he left with the cooker gleaming in one
piece and operable, we never found out his background was but I think he must
have been a gas engineer back home.
A couple of friends
of ours who lived off base asked if they could use our villa when we were on
holiday. Naturally we let them and Hamid was to clean for them on his usual
terms. When we returned we found that they had left the washing up for Hamid
something we had never done. Hamid had indicated to them that he didn’t think
much of their cooking as he had mistaken the non stick coating for badly burnt
residue and taken over an hour to clean it off. We had a replacement non stick
pan from stores but kept the brightly polished pan Hamid had cleaned.
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