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.