Chapter 14: Death Of An Emir

News of the Emir's death in an aeroplane crash spread through the harem like wildfire. Few mourned his passing, for few had had much contact with him, but all wondered what change the advent of a new Emir, may he live for ever, would bring. In a harem of three wives and sixty concubines, a woman did not sleep with the Emir very often, and there was no social contact between the sexes, with the exception of the Head Wife. None of the present concubines had met the Emir before her first encounter with him in a bedroom. None had entered his bedroom more than twice a year, some only once in their lives. The Head Wife, Djamilla, and the second, Davina, had spent a number of nights in his room, but even they were rarely able to see him at their own request.

Djamilla, the late Emir Ibrahim's Head Wife was the most apprehensive of all the women, since she alone of the wives and concubines remembered his accession and the way he had had dealt with his father's harem. Every female had been strangled on the first day of his reign, even the bath slaves and the kitchen hands. The boy children were smothered, lest they became figureheads for a revolt, and the girls were cut and sewn to render them unusable as concubines, with the prettier ones disfigured also. Then these 'lucky' survivors were sold as 'field hands' to a life of labouring in the houses, factories or on the farms of their new owners for up to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week.

She also knew that the Crown Prince Gamel, her son, had died with his father and that some high officials had flown to England to bring back the new Emir, who had been taken to England by his mother after Djamilla's youngest son had died. The laws of succession were peculiar in Kobekistan and this twenty-three year old post-graduate mathematician would be the new Emir by virtue of being older than his cousins. Djamilla had no idea what he might do when he arrived in a couple of days time.

Meanwhile Djamilla pondered on her own position. The new Emir's mother, Princess Zubeydeh, was actually an English girl with whom Prince Abdullah had fallen in love temporarily in London and had married when she was pregnant and then kept on here after his son was born. When the Prince died playing polo, Princess Zubeydeh and Madeleine, another wife, had been brought to the Emir Ibrahim's harem and Djamilla was well aware that her husband had used both of them and that she, herself, had been as nasty and spiteful to them as possible. Her other fear now was that if the new Emir did not have her strangled, the Princess Zubeydeh would exact her revenge.

Djamilla's fears were increased when the Chief Eunuch told her that she was no longer the Head Wife and that the new Emir had no wives but that his mother, the Princess Zubeydeh, would be using the Head Wife's separate living quarters and assuming the rôle of number one of the harem.

Less disturbing was the news that he had ordered a display of all the women in the harem. Presumably some, at least, of them would be spared although many would probably be strangled. She ordered all the children to be concealed and threatened the Chief Eunuch with dire consequences to be visited on him if he told the Emir about them.

"But if my Master, may he live for ever, asks?" he protested.

"If he asks, you must answer. You will tell him there are a few little ones. That is true, even if it is not the whole truth. Don't tell me you never concealed anything from my husband?" she retorted, "What you must not do is mention the children if you are not asked."

"I do not see how I can conceal the fact that there are, I don't know how many girl children here as well as the seven sons of the concubines. He will want the boys smothered or they will be used to focus resentment and rebellion against him," the Chief Eunuch replied, "Some of the girls can be passed off as concubines or as kitchen maids or something, I suppose."

"I don't care what you do; just don't let him know they are there, then he won't do anything."

"But he must know there will be children in a harem?" he demurred.

"Rubbish. He has lived in England since he was four years old and that cow seduced my husband into letting her go. He knows nothing of harems. He is a young man and will go mad for weeks using all the younger concubines in sight and caring nothing for anything he cannot stick his prick in," declared the Dowager Head Wife.