Chapter 1: Shopping

His Magnificence, the Emir Mahmoud Abdullah, may he live for ever, the young Emir of Kobekistan had been on the throne in the Golden Palace for four years; not physically, you understand, but figuratively. In that time he had recovered from the shock of inheriting the country unexpectedly, due to a series of odd accidents. When his Uncle and Grandfather were killed in an accident he was dragged, somewhat unwillingly, from his peaceful life as David Ransome, a Ph.D. student mathematician at Oxford, into a rôle for which he was totally untrained, in a country he had not seen since he was brought to England by his English mother at four years old. He took to it like a duck takes to water. He revelled in the harem system, and he soon learned how enjoyable absolute power can be.

The country, too, had taken to him. It indulged his little fancies, like having his mother in his harem, then selling her, then buying her back after her new Master had impregnated her. He had, after all, given the country what it wanted. He had now four possible successors, the Crown Prince, who was three, his half-brother, four months younger, and two other infant sons. He had even kept up the tradition started by his grandfather of hunting in a specially built artificial chase, where female slaves were hunted using Irish Wolfhounds, and then used by all the hunters at what was called the 'kill'. He could seem cruel and kind by turns to the western eye, but to the Kobekistanis he was their beloved Master who could do no wrong.