The Seven Sheiks of Araby

Several years back, before the upheavals in the Middle East, the Sheik of Sharja and I sat together at his palace and had some coffee in the afternoon. His palace is white; it smoldered in the Arabian sun, and the red-and-white flag of Sharja hung like a damp handkerchief on the flagpole over it -- Sharja being a tiny country on the Persian Gulf that we don't often hear of. Outside, in the palace's shadow, a thousand men and women celebrated the end of Ramadan, the month of the Mohammedan calendar when nothing can be eaten from dawn to sunset; now, it was the first of Shawwal, and things aplenty were being eaten by the people in the palace's shadow, and their voices drifted into the arabesque room where the sheik and I were sitting. Dark men from Persia and Pakistan sang in a high, unearthly wail, and swayed giddily from side to side, as a priestess at Delphi might have, and others of them beat a tom-tom with loose, boneless hands. They, and the Arabs who were watching, wore the robes of the desert, white headgear, and a black agal -- a coil of braid that formerly was a camel fetter -- to hold the headgear down. The children, in the same robes, were frolicking in the tree (in Sharja, there is only a single tree of any dimensions) or on half a dozen swings, beneath it, and their mothers sat like hawks on the sands nearby. The mothers of Sharja (continued on page 86) Sheiks of Araby (continued from page 69) wear iridescent, hawklike masks that cover the eyes and nose, instead of veils; their lips are dyed with henna, and their eyes are made radiant by belladonna drops; and their robes are altogether black. The sheik was dressed as the other men, but his robe was trimmed in gold, and his agal was golden, too; he carried a sword, and an awful dagger in his sword belt, and the scabbard of each was filigreed in gold.

The Sheik of Sharja is the Honorable Saqr bin Sultan, or, more fully, Saqr bin Saqr bin Khaled bin Sultan bin Saqr bin Rashid al Qawasim (bin, in Arabic, is the same as ben in Hebrew and "son of" in English, and Qawasim is the family name). He is a small, dark, prideful man, with bushy brows and a goatee as rough as a rasp, and he sat beside me, on an overstuffed sofa, as our coffee was served in the customary Arabian way. A coffee-maker -- a human being, not a utensil -- carried it ceremoniously into the room, in a golden urn, and poured it into our golden coffee cups with many ceremonious clicks of gold upon gold, and the Sheik of Sharja and I partook of three coffee-cupfuls apiece, it being woefully bad manners in Sharja, as elsewhere in Arabia, to have any less. The coffee was muddy and powerful, and, after our three obligatory drams, we waggled our cups at the coffee-maker as a signal we had had our fill -- this, too, being the proper manners in Arabia. Both of these fine points of etiquette, and similar ones, had been told to me earlier by several of the Englishmen in town, who also had taken the trouble to brief me on the proper way of speaking to the Sheik of Sharja, which, in words of one syllable, is not to. The Arabian custom, they had said, is to exchange with the Sheik of Sharja, at his afternoon coffee hour, what in America would be nothing more than the bare civilities, the first of these being "Peace be with you" ("And with you," the sheik prescriptively replies), the second being "How are you?" ("Good" or "Bad"), and the third and last being "Allah be thanked" if the sheik is good, or "Allah has willed it" if the sheik is bad. This is followed invariably by a great deal of silence, which is broken after 10 or 15 minutes when the Sheik of Sharja says, "And how are you?" ("Good" or "Bad") and "Allah be thanked" or "Allah has willed it." Then, coffee is served in triplicate, and such fruits as pineapple are eaten from the right hand, for in Arabia the left is thought to be unclean, and its employment at the table is again bad manners; "How are you?" and "Allah, etc." are said again, rose water is sprinkled upon the hands, and incense of sandalwood is wafted onto the face, and, without any further ado, the visitor takes his leave. The English, instructing me in all this, remembered the case of Mr. Basil Lermitte, a businessman who had lived in Sharja, and who had achieved an unparalleled measure of success for his firm by sitting with the sheik for upwards of three hours, never saying a word. Mr. Lermitte, I was informed, had "an understanding silence."

Well, my friends will testify that an understanding silence is a quality I don't possess at all and, after trying to sustain one with the Sheik of Sharja for seven or eight minutes, I decided to throw precedent to the winds, and I made so bold as to ask how Sharja was. It was so-so, said the sheik: the Japanese had been cutting into the pearl business, of late, and Sharja's economy was on the skids. "Allah has willed it," I replied, and steeled myself for another 10 minutes of silence, but the sheik, apparently, was delighted at the new turn his afternoon coffee hour had taken, for he pressed me with questions of his own -- what did I think of Sharja? what did America think of Sharja? and what did America think of sheiks? I, surmising it's bad manners to say that 99 Americans out of 100 seldom think of Sharja at all, said that we think of sheiks as dark, seductive men, sleeping on the desert in tents and hurrying across it on white Arabian horses. "La, la," said the sheik, laughing and shaking his head as he waved his arm at his palace and his scarlet 1956 Buick outside; and I concluded that sheiks have fallen upon better days since those of Rudolf Valentino.

• • •

The thousand men and women who joyously celebrated the end of Ramadan were citizens of Sharja, mostly, but many had come the half-dozen miles from Dubai, yet another tiny, autonomous country on the Persian Gulf. The month of Ramadan is ended, in these countries, when the new moon is sighted by the reigning sheik; the night before, it had been sighted by the Sheik of Sharja but pitiably not by the Sheik of Dubai, who is 80 years old and pretty myopic; so the people of the Sheik of Dubai had hurried to Sharja, to the month of Shawwal and to food, in anything that could carry them across the desert -- jeeps, camels, trucks and taxis. (A dozen or so taxis go between Dubai and Sharja, the oldest of them being a New York City Sky-View which, somehow, has gotten well astray.) A few of the celebrants came from the other nearby sheikdoms, there being seven of these in all: Sharja and Dubai are the only ones with any population to speak of, but all seven are tiny, autonomous countries and ruled by seven hereditary sheiks who, like Prince Rainier of Monaco, have the unqualified power of life and death. Unlike Rainier, though, the Sheik of Sharja cut a person's hand off as lately as 1952, and the Sheik of Dubai has blinded half a dozen with a red-hot needle; neither of them, to my knowledge, has killed a man, but the Sheik of Ajman has killed two, while the Sheik of Ras al Khaima, like Oedipus, has blinded men with his own thumbs. Such idiosyncrasies of the seven sheiks are a favorite conversational item for the Englishmen in town, and, after listening to them for several evenings and doing a bit of verification, I learned, in addition, that the Sheik of Ajman is poor, traveling in a Chevrolet pickup truck; that the Sheik of Abu Dhabi is rich, burying his money in the floor and sitting determinedly above it; that the Sheik of Umm al Qaiwan is diabetic; and that nothing is amiss inside the Sheik of Fujaira, but that he's a hypochondriac. The Sheik of Abu Dhabi, too, has been troubled by mental ills, notably by a delusion that his coffee-maker would murder him. Indeed, in 1953 his paranoia became so serious that he went to London, to be treated by Her Majesty's physician; but, having decided after two or three appointments that the fellow was in his enemies' pay, he fled to Paris, and what happened there to the Sheik of Abu Dhabi, and to his coffee-maker, is still recollected fondly on winter evenings by the Englishmen in Abu Dhabi itself, and, for that matter, by the sheik. (The coffee-maker went with the Sheik of Abu Dhabi all along, the sheik feeling, apparently, that his good qualities as a maker of coffee outweighed his bad.) In substance, the story is that the two travelers, after chopping up the floor for kindling -- to make coffee -- were expelled from a hotel, and after building a fire under the bathtub, from yet another hotel; that, in high dudgeon, they went to Cairo and found it more to their liking; and that, eventually, the sheik went back to Abu Dhabi without any trace of his mental disease, but with a social one. Something else about this innocence abroad that I didn't learn in Sharja but in a magazine is that the Sheik of Abu Dhabi was particularly impressed, in Paris, by the oil derrick on the left bank, the highest he'd ever seen. It was obvious, the sheik had said, why France was economically so much better off than Abu Dhabi.

In all fairness to the Honorable Sheik of Abu Dhabi, let me say that his worries as to his coffee-maker weren't altogether irrational, for the same fellow, and his confederates, had murdered every Sheik of Abu Dhabi since 1912, three in all. A study of the history of Abu Dhabi since the late 18th Century shows a similar pattern: eight of the sheiks were murdered, two of them made their getaway in time, two were cashiered but not at all murdered, and two died in office of natural causes, while the destiny of the Honorable Sheik of Abu Dhabi, the incumbent, remains to be seen. The histories of Sharja and the other countries are more or less the same; the conventional way to become a sheik, in these places, was always to murder the last one, something that was done not only by members of his family but also by casual acquaintances, and even by tourists. In Sharja itself the most recent murder, as of going to press, was in 1921, the sheik having been blinded with a red-hot poker and his throat having been slit, all of this going on at the very palace where Sheik Saqr bin Sultan and I had coffee together.

None of this, to my way of seeing it, reflects any credit on the sheik I'm writing of. The Sheik of Sharja, to be sure, did not murder anyone at all to get his incumbency, but (lest it be thought he's above this sort of thing) he is trying pretty hard to murder the Sheik of Fujaira. In 1939, he even declared a war on the Sheik of Dubai; it was not taken seriously, though, by anyone but the sheik, and it was waged so apathetically by his men that after a year of hostilities just one or two of the enemy had been hurt, and both by accident. The war, indeed, used to be called off several times a day whenever a pearl, fish, or rug merchant went by taxi from one country to the other, or whenever a plane full of non-belligerents was due at the airport. That of Sharja vs. Dubai was never fought by Bedouins on horseback, as we might have hoped -- on the average, there are 1.14 horses in each of the seven sheikdoms -- but just by artillerymen, who let fly rusty, age-old cannonballs from the Sheik of Sharja's palace to that of Dubai's, and vice versa. For gunpowder. I have learned, the artillerymen would use a blend of saltpeter and cactus that imparted to the cannonball a very low muzzle velocity, if any. The balls never did manage to get to their targets, but settled into the sand a mile short: at night, they were picked up and fired in the other direction, until, by normal attrition, no more cannonballs were to be found, and the War of Sharja vs. Dubai was declared to be over. Its last shot was fired by Mr. Juma bin Thani, an artilleryman of Dubai, who, after a futile search on the desert for second-hand balls, remembered that a high explosive shell had been fired at Dubai in 1908, but hadn't gone off; digging it up. he thrust it into his cannon with the usual wad of saltpeter and cactus, and it was in the ensuing explosion. I learned, that the war's only casualties occurred.

Since then, a number of other inter-sheik wars have been held -- Dubai vs. Abu Dhabi in 1947. Abu Dhabi vs. Ajman in 1948 -- but they, too, are nothing to get alarmed about, and their main effect is to keep Rand McNally and other cartographers at wit's end. The Rand McNally people are saying the hell with it all, and are pretending, on their latest maps of the Middle East, that the seven countries aren't even there -- an attitude that is cavalier at best, and maybe even scandalous. The best that other cartographers are doing is to draw two or three sporadic borders that disappear into the desert as into quicksand, and to label the whole 40 thousand square miles the Trucial Oman, the Trucial States, or the Trucial Coast.

"Trucial" is a word that doesn't exist anywhere but on maps, and means, I gather, "of or pertaining to a truce"--the truce being that of 1853, between England and the seven countries, and ending a war of 75 years. In those years, the area had been called the Pirate Coast, but once the truce had been signed, it was clear to everybody in England that piracy could no longer happen, and the word "Trucial," to replace "Pirate," was happily coined by Captain Prideaux of the Royal Navy, and since then England has called the area the "Trucial Coast," and acts of piracy, "maritime irregularities."

What has replaced piracy, as the main industry of Sharja, Dubai, etc., is smuggling--mostly that of Indian tea, Hong Kong silk and suchlike from the seaport of Dubai, where the tariff is four-and-a-half percent or more. (Nobody knows how the Sheik of Dubai hit on four-and-a-half percent. Most likely, he saw it in a bank or somewhere and adopted it as a pat, businesslike number.) A lot of pearling is done these days, but it's being hurt by the Japanese, as the Sheik of Sharja said; some of the Arabs fish, and some of them grow dates, or even wheat and tobacco. As can be well imagined, the white hope of the sheiks in this industrial age is to make an honest living at last by finding oil, and accordingly, a contract that lasts well into the 21st Century has been signed by them and Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd. For a number of years, the Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd. people have been digging holes into the desert to see what's under it, if anything, and some raw, sun-tanned seismologists from America, which owns a quarter of P.D.(T.C.) Ltd., have been setting off TNT offshore, to the irritation of some unenlightened Arabs who still believe their white hope is to catch more fish. Almost all of these holes are being dug into Abu Dhabi soil, for Abu Dhabi is next to Qatar, which is pronounced "cutter," and which is so full of oil underground that its ruler has scarlet 1956 Buicks to give away -- for example, to the Sheik of Sharja. The ruler of Qatar enjoys, too, what is thought to be the only television set on the Arabian peninsula -- mercifully, he can't see anything on it, the nearest TV station being in Italy--and he is sorely envied by the seven sheiks I'm writing of, who wait impatiently for a big, black gusher of their own to soar from the desert sands.

One evening in Sharja, I was talking oil with some of the Englishmen there, and I asked, naturally, if the sheiks had any chance of striking it. The evening was hot, as always, and my English friends were drinking scotch on the rocks, mostly rocks, and were dressed, as always in the evenings, in white ducks, white open-collar shirts, and black cummerbunds--this, a slight nod to the proprieties of civilized life. One of the Englishmen so attired had just come from the Abu Dhabi oil fields, so I directed my question to him. He hemmed and hawed a few moments, and shifted his scotch to the other hand, and presently he said, "Well, what I'm permitted to report is that we went to six thousand feet, and we have encountered some unexpected difficulties."

"Quite," said one other Englishman. "No oil."

• • •

Almost all of my English friends, in Sharja and in the other countries, are young, eager and red-faced, without a hint of a sun tan after several years in Arabia -- and, in their black-and-white evening habits, they are rather difficult to tell apart. I think there are a hundred of them, working for the Red Cross, the airport at Sharja, the Foreign Office, and the British bank, as well as for Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd., and while they'd all allow that much of the world is gayer, and certainly cooler, than the Trucial States, they seem to be rather fond of it. This, however, is tempered by an uneasy feeling that the world doesn't care about the Trucial States, and nothing so pleases them as being reminded it does, as happened, for example, four or five years ago, when none other than Winston Churchill sent a telegram there. Whatever it was that Winston had to say to the Trucial States is secret, and nobody in the foreign colony would apprise me of it.

The most important of the many young, eager and untanned Englishmen in these parts is Mr. Peter Tripp, who, after seven happy years in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, was named by the Foreign Office to head its agency in the Trucial States. The English have been more or less hegemonic since they beat the pirates in 1820 (Persia, in 1888, and France, in 1891, tried to muscle in by giving out flags, but they didn't get very far), and, by treaty with the seven sheiks, the English handle their foreign affairs, so Mr. Tripp isn't the minister or the ambassador but the political agent, or "P.A." The foreign affairs of Sharja, of course, are often those with Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Umm al Qaiwan, Ras al Khaima, and Fujaira, and what with 36 other permutations, the P.A. is really kept busy: he referees the inter-sheik wars, and he helps the cartographers with the inter-sheikdom borders, the claims, and the counterclaims, and whenever he's called upon by a sheik to get a train ticket, a carburetor, or a British passport (the Honorable Shakbut bin Sultan had no end of trouble, in Europe, with his Government of Abu Dhabi one), he must promise to do so, drink three cups of coffee, and assume an understanding silence, and whenever a sheik goes traveling, he must get the red carpets out, and he must keep the pearl merchants, fishmongers, and other pillars of the community happy, too, bestowing titles like "Khan Sahib" on them. He got glasses for the Sheik of Dubai, he got sunglasses for the Sheik of Fujaira, he got a coronation ticket for the Sheik of Abu Dhabi. All of this, and suchlike, is done by the P.A. one-and-a-half years without a vacation, and Mr. Tripp says he nearly resigned when pulled out of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, by the Foreign Office, and told to do it.

One of the compensations of his job is that Mr. Tripp is, quite probably, the only Englishman in the world who can emancipate slaves. By permission of the sheiks, he is sort of an allie-allie in-free for the several thousand Arab, Negro and Pakistani slaves in the sheikdoms, and whosoever of them can reach him morning, afternoon or night can get what amounts to a personal Emancipation Proclamation, a piece of red-white-and-blue paper that says, in Arabic and English, "Be it known to all who may see this that the bearer ... has been manumitted and no one has a right to interfere with his/her liberty." Although, each week, one or two slaves go to Mr. Tripp, get this, and hurry off to the Qatar or Abu Dhabi oil fields, the great majority are happy with their lot: they get bed and board, and sometimes pay, and, not having any worry of being fired, they don't work especially hard; they are born as slaves and marry slaves, begetting boys and girls who are slaves de jure, and once in a blue moon the prettier ones are sold to a Saudi Arabian prince, marry him, and bring their families to Saudi Arabia in a DC-3 -- it really happened, I'm told. At present, the selling price for slave girls is $270, and those of my readers who wish to obtain one are best advised to visit Hamasa, Sultanate of Oman, any day of the week but Friday, most of the business there being done in Pakistani rupees, and privately. In the past, many of the slaves at Hamasa were kidnapped from Pakistan. Persia or the seven sheikdoms, but this practice is frowned upon now by the sheiks, and people who indulge are apt to be jailed, or maybe deprived of their right hand, slowly, the usual Moslem punishment for thieves. Such a thing happened a few months before I went to Sharja, when the P.A. and some Arab troops, in a British version of the jeep, overtook a slaver and four girls he had kidnapped. The slaver was jailed, and the slave girls (who said he had raped them) were manumitted, and, in thankfulness, they kissed the P.A. and every other Englishman at the agency. According to Mr. Tripp, the girls were quite beautiful -- but he has been in Arabia a long time.