On the second occasion Abdulrahman comes to lunch, I explain that Princess Fatima wishes to hear more about the history of her country, and to understand its relations with other countries. She hopes you will give many examples, and remember that while the subject is of great interest to her it is also new, so you must be patient and explain completely.
He talks: “We small countries along the Gulf only exist because it has suited others that we do.”
She interrupts with questions. Good questions. He realises for the first time that she is not a foolish girl.
“The princess may be new to the subject,” he says in the melancholy tone that indicates he is trying to establish contact, “but she has a talent for it.”
Fatima keeps a poker face, but her eyes shine. Praise agrees with her.
Word of my status as royal tutor spreads quickly through the expatriate community. I get more frequent invitations to dinners.
What is the palace like? It is large and rather empty. His Majesty chose to have only one wife, and she produced only the two children before she died. There are servants everywhere. The quality and variety of the fruit juice is astonishing. I have only been in a few rooms, but they are in excellent taste. One begins to like the luxurious calligraphy they use as decoration. His Majesty translated some of it for me. A few words can be made to fill a large space.
In the end, everyone asks about a harem. As I said, I have only been in a few rooms, but I do not think there is a harem. I’m sometimes tempted to invent one, if only to satisfy the expatriate wives who quiz me. Perhaps a blonde woman in Arab dress, glimpsed through a door before it was quickly shut. But that would be unfair to the king.
The royal family is treated with great respect by the people of Alidar – Fatima and her brother almost as much as the king. I had not realised that. Sometimes when I arrive, Arab women are leaving who have called on Fatima. Women of fifty, bringing their daughters: wealthy, sophisticated, wrapping the black robes in which they appear in public around their Paris dresses. Their manner is deferential. They look pleased to have been to the palace.
Fatima cannot have friends the way other girls do. The wide-eyed, chattering children whose mothers bring them to visit her will never treat her as one of them. I suppose in a way I am simply an older sister.
Mubarek tried something similar with Ibrahim. He let Fawzi take the boy to Europe once. It does not seem to have been a complete success. Or at least Ibrahim does not talk about the trip very much.
The subject of atom bombs is at last introduced. I would have to say that Fatima gave it a little nudge, but it was an unobtrusive one. The Minister has views. He generally has views.
“The Gulf must remain a nuclear-free zone.” Why, and more importantly, how? Fatima has read in Time magazine that an atom bomb can be made to fit in a suitcase. Abdulrahman says that this is true. How is a madman to be prevented from bringing such an atom bomb into Alidar? The short answer is that he cannot. Abdulrahman is giving the long answer.
Could Alidar be invaded? (Enough about atom bombs.) ‘Of course,’ says the Minister of Planning. Wouldn’t the Americans prevent it? “With what? With their planes? With the Marine guards at their embassy?” This is an argument he has had before. Fatima does not deserve his sarcasm.
“To repel an invasion, you need tanks and infantry...”
“What is infantry?” says Fatima.
“Infantry is men with rifles...and radios…trained to take and hold terrain. Nothing complicated. Just discipline and experience – which we lack. Perhaps some jeeps for reconnaissance.”
“Like Philip Cooper?” says Fatima.
“Like who?” says Abdulrahman, startled.
“The American who works for Sheik Fawzi. He has a jeep. He goes exploring the desert on Fridays. They say he was a famous soldier.”
“Who says?”
“Some of my girlfriends heard it from their brothers, who heard it at Ian’s Restaurant. Philip Cooper goes there. He was pointed out to them. Is it true?”
“It is true that he was in the American Army once, but that was some time ago. I do not think he attained a high rank. He is not old enough, or he wouldn’t have been old enough then.”
“Well, they say he was very brave.”
The Minister of Planning lifts his eyebrows. Today it is Fatima who has instructed him.
“Why does Your Highness concern herself with these things?” he asks gently.
Her tone is as measured as his. “My family is small. I believe I should know.”
We will have to tackle the Iranian revolution soon.
Sometimes the king comes to lunch. We are three. He tells me things he wishes Fatima to know. There is to be a census. It is the crown prince’s idea, and probably a good one. It is not an important matter, and hopefully no one will read anything into it. If I hear any gossip in the expatriate community, I should tell him. Rumours can be dangerous. When his young subjects hear things from Westerners, they are inclined to believe them.
I can see that Fatima has something she wishes to tell her father, but he continues.
“Not that we would wish to know where a particular rumour began.”
Fatima sits back in her chair.
“Or even do anything about it. But it is good to know about rumours. They tell us what is on the people’s minds. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Sullivan?”
I nod.
“Our job consists primarily of knowing,” says the king. “Outcomes are God’s business.”
10
The extremely short skirts that were in style when Allison was in college showed off good legs, which Allison had, and were a misery to everyone else. Maloof wouldn’t let her wear them.
“I do not wish to share so much of you,” he said. He said this as she walked around his room, nude as usual. “And besides, I’m going to have you tattooed, and it might show.”
She assumed he was kidding, but the idea gave her a shiver of delight. “Where?” she said.
“Come here and I will show you.” He ran a finger along the inside of her thigh, high up where she wished he would touch her more often.
“Won’t people see it when we go to Brussels?”
She didn’t really believe in “Brussels” either. Maloof had told her such extraordinary things that it was impossible to credit any of them. And he had postponed the trip until spring. He’d given her the tickets, though. April fifth: Spring Break. So perhaps it wasn’t imaginary.
“Yes,” he said, “and they will find it very interesting.”
“Well, you’d better hurry, then, so the scabs will have healed.”
“You’re pretty frisky today,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “I believe I have made a conquest.”
“The boy who tries to sit beside you in my class?”
“No – I don’t think you’ll guess.”
“I thought I told you to report everything to me.”
“She’s a surprise.”
Maloof hit her hard on the cheek. Allison opened her mouth but did not speak.
“I appreciate the thought,” he said softly, “but you must never surprise me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, looking down. It was his sudden disapproval that hurt her.
“I think you understand,” he said, “but I am worried you will forget. If we are to go forward with our lessons, I must be sure of your obedience. Will you permit me to do something that will fix this day in your memory?”
“Yes.”
“You agree too easily.”
“Isn’t that what you want? Obedience without question?” Allison was feeling exceedingly unfrisky, but this seemed like a Rubicon that had to be crossed.
“I am going to cane you, Allison. It hurts quite a lot, but it does not leave any scars.”
“I’m ready.”
The sensation was intense. When he was finished, he wrapped a silk dressing gown around her, let her lie on her stomach on the immense couch, sat on
the rug beside her, and fed her ice cream out of a dish he had told her was priceless.
“I am very proud of you,” he said. “You didn’t cry out at all.”
“She did,” said Allison.
“Tell me all about it,” he said.
“I only wanted to please you,” she said.
“I know,” he said softly, “and you always will.”
Allison’s “girlfriend,” she explained to Maloof, was the one with rich dark hair who was also taking his course. She’d come to Allison’s room to borrow her notes – she’d missed a lot of the lectures – and when she’d finished reading them she’d propositioned Allison, and Allison had, well, made her obedient.
She had fabulous legs but despised dresses of any kind. Allison insisted. When she wore jeans, Allison ignored her. She couldn’t bear being ignored. She came to Allison’s room in the shortest skirt she could find, and wept on Allison’s shoulder. Allison forgave her, but made her wear high heels for a week.
“Have you let her please you?”
“You told me to keep my clothes on.”
“Good girl.” He spooned more ice cream into her mouth. “Have you given her what she wants?”
“Not completely.”
“Do you know how?”
“I’ve read about it. I’m not actually crazy about the idea.”
“It is a skill you should acquire.”
Being given permission to do something bad was the drug Maloof was feeding her, she half realised. Last week he had had her steal something from a department store.
“Would you like to watch?” she said.
“I will let you become proficient first. We will talk about how it goes. Start slowly. Sense her rhythm. And in the end do not hold back. Give her all the pleasure you can. It works better than the cane.”
“I know,” said Allison, closing her eyes.
11
It was easy, in those years, to make friends in Alidar.
The Baxters gave a dinner party for Philip, where he met the Valentines – he of the oil company, she of the international nursery school. The nursery school had a picnic, at which he met an attractive, westernised couple from the Bank of Tokyo.
“My wife grew up in Washington, D.C. After five years in Tokyo, she thinks Alidar is heaven. Ha ha.”
“So do you, Toru.”
Serious face. “It is nice to have one’s own branch, even if it means many midnight phone calls.”
The Fujiwaras entertained constantly, and Miyoko liked to sprinkle unattached young women among the compulsory bankers and their wives. This led to other invitations.
Sally Valentine made a charmingly straightforward attempt to match Philip with a woman of her acquaintance. The woman liked being single, had in fact elected to stay in Alidar four years earlier when Cable and Wireless transferred her husband – whether there had yet been a divorce was unclear – but she also liked Philip, and through her he met some veteran reprobates. One such, universally referred to as “the Honourable George,” who gave his profession as “darts,” organised much of the expatriate community’s cultural life – fashion shows, jazz concerts, the annual visitation of a repertory company that did nineteen-sixties West End comedies – an undertaking that required “many permits,” and gave him a comprehensive knowledge of Alidar’s civil service bureaucracy. His friends were legion.
The bankers, and particularly their wives, were desperate to meet someone besides other bankers. That was difficult, because most of them had been there for less than a year, attracted by His Majesty’s announced willingness to grant a new type of limited banking licence, and, owing to said limitations, had little pretext for contact with the local economy. Since he was not a banker, spoke English, and had something to do with the local government, Philip was a prize. The banks gave receptions, and he went to them all. The wives gave parties, and he went to a lot. Soon he knew everyone who had been there longer than a week.
The woman who liked being single called it “microwave society.” Relationships matured instantly. By the time you’d seen the same jetlagged couple three nights running at three receptions – newly arrived, still living in the Hilton, he number two at Chase, she hoping to do a little substitute teaching – warned them not to buy a dark-coloured car, and agreed that housing was expensive but “as long as the bank pays...” you were fast friends. If you heard part of a joke at lunch, you’d hear the other half at dinner. If you got on well with someone at dinner, you’d find an invitation slipped through the mail slot in your door when you returned from work the following afternoon. All the banks had messengers.
At one level, the frenetic mingling was simply a product of boredom and large expense budgets. There really was not, as Allison said, very much to do nor that much business. Not enough to support forty new banks. But now that OPEC had learned to flex its muscles, building a business in the Gulf was regarded as imperative, even if it looked like a long process. In the interim, the receptions and dinner parties were information bazaars. Who is getting the mandate for the ice cream factory financing? Is it true that First Chicago offered to cut the commitment fee to a quarter of a per cent? Why did the Saudi consulate grant no visas this week? If one could not make loans, one could at least accumulate material for a telex to head office. In the case of banks from countries without embassies – it pleased His Majesty to keep the diplomatic community small – the material might be of interest in official circles back home.
The country was small. Or at least the city was small – “city” defined to include the financial district, the souk, the Hilton and the Regency, Ian’s, and the expatriate compounds strung out along the coast road. And their twelve hundred adult inhabitants, all of whom endured the same daily traffic jam because it pleased His Majesty to put stoplights on the coast road. The banks and other international employers who sent people to Alidar wanted them stuck there. To have to make the best of it. To make contacts. So they provided them with “representational housing,” with club dues, some even with yachts. And one another.
“Rats,” said Andrew Wentworth, who worked for Bechtel and had lived all over the world, “act funny if you crowd them – even rats of impeccable breeding.”
“Which is more than you can say for some here,” his wife added.
To the newcomers, as to the young Arabs who came to Ian’s, Alidar was a boomtown. New buildings rose everywhere. New bankers arrived each week. In every substantial Arab enterprise twenty-seven year old chartered accountants could be found, raising families on their tax-free salaries, enjoying responsibility and luxury unattainable in Britain, unconcerned about their “careers.”
In January, the price of silver had gone above fifty dollars an ounce for the first time in history, thanks to the joint efforts of the Hunt brothers and members of the Saudi royal family. It was back below forty dollars within a few days, and trading at twenty dollars in March, but Arabs like precious metals, and people all over the Gulf had ridden the rollercoaster. If you hadn’t made your own small fortune – on silver or on the only slightly less spectacular spike in the price of gold – you knew people who had. There was adrenaline in everyone’s bloodstream.
To many expatriates, Alidar was a last outpost of Empire. Because it had once been a diplomatic ward of Great Britain, there was a British cast to the community, which the influx of Americans, Japanese, and continental Europeans was only beginning to dilute. There was an amateur rugby league, for example, but as yet no softball. Colonial features lingered, though they were fading fast. British engineers still ran the power company and the telephones, though young Alidi were being promoted as fast as possible. Men like Norman Hastings, who ran the Chartered Bank branch, which had been there since the nineteen-twenties, still lived in mansions that came with their own silver and Indian servants – but kept an eye on the roaring real estate market and quietly wondered whether it might not be time to sell. So there was an ambiguous quality to the gaiety in which Philip found himself immersed: half adole
scent frolic, half autumnal masque.
Also, and finally, there was fear. Alidar was six hours’ flight from anywhere you’d want to go. And close to places you wouldn’t. Iran, where U.S. diplomats were still being held hostage, was not that distant, and the revolution’s success was making Shias everywhere excited, even if they wouldn’t actually want to live under Khomeini. Violence was bubbling from Beirut to Bengal. On two successive days in November of the previous year, for example, a group of fundamentalists in Mecca started killing other pilgrims, evidently as a way of indicating that Saudi Arabia was corrupt, and radical students overran and destroyed the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, no doubt in emulation of the events in Tehran three weeks earlier. Then on Christmas Eve, the Russians invaded Afghanistan and the Mujahedin sprang into existence. No one had seen any of this coming – except Arthur probably.
Philip had, in bits and pieces, filled out the picture Ian had drawn for him of religious differences, and it really was like Northern Ireland. Most countries that had Moslems had both Sunni and Shia populations. Sometimes they coexisted pretty well. That a person of Sheik Fawzi’s prominence should have an Iranian grandmother was not inconceivable. But Sunni prejudice against the Shia runs deep. And centuries of oppression have, not surprisingly, given Shias an apocalyptic view of the universe. Mubarek’s achievement in keeping Alidar a tolerant and peaceful society was impressive. But the majority of the population were Shia.
So virtually all the foreigners in Alidar believed that their fabulous salaries reflected more than inconvenience, that some unfathomable theological dispute could suddenly upset the balance of greed and prejudice within their charming temporary home, and make the expatriate community a bloody footnote – that whatever was happening in and beyond the mountains would not stay there forever.
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