Chapter 8: The Wedding

The wedding at the Palace, as such affairs are, was a gathering of men. The bride was present for some ten minutes, in full purdah, after which she was to be offered to the Emir for the night, before being transported to her new husband's harem. In a thoroughly modernising, almost scandalous gesture, the Emir had decreed that a gallery, screened off but with peepholes, would be set up so that a few women could watch the wedding. Common people sometimes had weddings where such things happened, but it had previously been unheard of in the higher ranks of Kobekistani society; naturally, it instantly became de rigeur for all the best weddings, and equally naturally, the lower orders stopped doing it almost at once. Among the watchers were Marseeneh, the mother of the bride and Princess Zubeydeh, the mother of the Emir; the groom was mortified to have to admit that his own mother was dead, but did allow his Head Wife to attend.

A long and very formal ceremony was tiring for the young Emir and as soon as Kamal Qumsiyeh, his head of Protocol, would allow, the Emir slipped away from the feasting and the smoking. Secretly he would have given his eye teeth for a few pints of English beer, but knew that alcohol was forbidden to the true believers. It was a pity that he did not truly understand the power of an Emir, for several barrels of his favourite beer had already been brought to the Golden Palace and installed under the supervision of the head of the small brewery concerned, in case he should ask for it. Because he did not know about this, and because he never mentioned his desire, the beer slowly decayed in the barrels, and was replaced regularly for a year at immense expense but not a drop was drunk, except by the English cellar-man who had been hired to look after it.

After the Emir had retired from the wedding feast, Ghada Baroud and Ramzy El-Najjar put their heads together and agreed that the Emir should be offered the wedding night with Selima. After all if she had been a virgin he would have expected to have the right to deflower her, so it seemed right and proper to offer her. The Chief Eunuch was called into the discussion and confirmed that the Emir had not called for a woman that night, and agreed to conduct Selima to the royal bed.

A few minutes later the Chief Eunuch reported back that she had been rejected by the Emir. Panic ensued until Ghada Baroud realised that it was he, as father of the bride and the man the Emir had actually discussed this with, who should be offering a woman. The Chief Eunuch was despatched with Marseeneh, Ghada Baroud's first wife and Selima's mother for the Emir to use.

She, too, was rejected and the Chief Eunuch reported that one of the Emir's own favourites had now been ordered. Kamal Qumsiyeh was consulted next as to the meaning of these rejections, but reassured the two worried men that the Emir had strange ideas about women, very strange ideas, and it seemed that he was behaving as though he were still in England where women were even allowed to walk along the street in broad daylight without any purdah or any protection. He advised them not to worry about a thing; he believed that the Emir had just decided to honour someone early in his reign and they had been the lucky two whose names came up on the Emir's second day. It never occurred to any of them that it all happened because the Englishman in the Emir felt sorry for the young Selima, who had previously been given to a man old enough to be her grandfather, deflowered ritually in front of her father, and then left to languish, potentially, for the rest of her life in the harem of the old man who preferred older women.