Chapter 2: Contest Entrants

Originally eighty-five women were entered for the competition, and this was reduced to fifty-three by weeding out those held to be too young, and those from families which had incurred the Emir's displeasure in some way or were socially unacceptable. Two women were also eliminated as being the daughters of the Emir, conceived during royal visits to their nominal fathers. One entrant had been ruled out by the advice of the Head of Protocol, Kamal Qumsiyeh, because she came from an absurdly poor family and it would be an insult to the other families to include her. Nevertheless, for some reason the Emir found her picture very attractive and he decided he might just look her over.

The remaining fifty-one entries were numbered in strict alphabetical order of their given names, and a General Audience was held during which the lucky ten numbers were selected. Since these numbers were lucky, the entrants would be referred to by those numbers during the competition. Three months were then allowed for the final tutoring and preparation of the women.

The winners were, in order of being drawn, which would also determine the order of testing, numbers twenty-four, fifty-one, nine, thirty-nine, twenty, twelve, thirty-two, ten, two, and forty.

The Emir then announced which ten had been selected. Twenty-four was Kashiefa entered by Usman Abu al-Abbas; fifty-one was Vega entered by Ali ibn Sa'id; nine was Dalayla entered by Ramzy El-Najjar, the Master of Quarry; thirty-nine was Neveen entered by Hajji Kofi Natsheh; twenty was Jaida entered by Bahjat ibn Sultan; twelve was Fatima entered by Amjad ibn Sa'id; thirty-two was Lama entered by Mahmoud Ibn Sultan; ten was Fadila entered by Kamal Qumsiyeh; two was Azia entered by Rashid al-Ghazali; finally forty was Thania entered by Ghada Baroud.

As each name was announced the successful father or grandfather would cheer and be congratulated by his fellow sponsors.

Later that evening the Emir considered the entry forms of each contestant in turn. A photograph had been provided, head and shoulders only, to assist in the initial selection procedure, but for the ten lucky entrants a package had been demanded including full-length front and profile pictures, to be viewed only by the Emir. These were mostly supplied on diskettes, as almost all the sponsors had, and used, digital cameras or webcams. Only for one contestant were poor quality Polaroids offered. He examined them in the order in which they were to compete.

The first set of pictures he examined were for contestant twenty-four, Kashiefa, entered by Usman Abu al-Abbas. From her pictures she seemed a pleasant enough woman, with prominent breasts and an unusually large mons, even when shaven, though, the Emir thought, it would be reasonable to say that her face was not her fortune. He doubted that she would get beyond the first few rounds.

The next set were for Vega, entered by Ali ibn Sa'id. She had a traditional Middle Eastern generous figure and a pleasant face with a nervous smile. He attributed the nervous look to the fact that she had probably never been photographed before. Her ample hips were supported by legs which would never have attracted a second glance, except perhaps from the butcher to a cannibal tribe. She would certainly never grace his bed, but might go down well with some of the guests from neighbouring countries.