Prologue

The Emirate of Kobekistan is one of those wonderful places where a visitor feels that they have stepped back into a more leisurely, more dignified era of history, but without sacrificing any of the more useful gadgets of modern civilisation. Air-conditioning protects the inhabitants from the rigours of a sub-tropical climate. Motor cars whisk them from one building to another. Desalination provides ample water. The most modern medical advances are practised in the hospitals. Television shows umpteen channels. Education utilises the most modern computer-aided systems. Childbirth is no longer as dangerous as it used to be, even though eunuch doctors are the only ones available to the women of the harems. Becoming a eunuch is very rarely a fatal operation since it is carried out by experts in surgical conditions second to none. A girl being cut and sewn to make her incapable of sexual pleasure and virtually unusable by a man (except for sodomy) now has a less than one in a thousand chance of the patient contracting a dangerous infection. Moderation in all things is the watchword. Toleration extends to allowing alcohol to be sold to foreign workers in the country, though only within their company compounds. Women are taught to read and write, at least in some harems.

Of course, these facilities are not all available to all the population, but for all those who matter, the better families, they are taken for granted. A field slave might not benefit from all of them, but the medical services ensure that a slave no longer has to be put down if an over-enthusiastic owner damages it somewhat while administering discipline.

The disadvantages of civilisation as it is understood in the West are nevertheless kept at bay. Advertising is negligible. Tourists are not permitted to enter the country. Women are not allowed to show their faces on the streets. Marriages are arranged by parents who are wiser in their choices than the impulses of youth would be. There is none of the political brouhaha since the country is ruled by the Emir whom Allah has appointed. His word is law, literally. Were he to say, "Off with his head," the miscreant would be executed in public within the hour.

All of this is made possible by the oil on which the Emirate rests. When all the oil reserves have been extracted, in some centuries' time, the level of the land will have been lowered by an average of ten feet. The oil is a 'heavy crude' which is dug out of the ground in lumps looking for all the world like treacle toffee. There is none of the messy liquid to process and no unsightly wells.