The View from Mount Dog Read Free Page A

all different colours. Tents for me and my brothers, tents for the Scottish nannies, tents for servants and guards and everyone. That was at Manduri. And now you want to build a huge water factory all over it? Well, you shall not. Today I give the order to make Manduri a National Conchology Reserve. And next time, Herr Schönau,’ the Sultan added in what might have been a whimsical attempt to soften the blow, ‘I suggest you fly Lufthansa. They have no Concordes.’
    This sudden impatience with businessmen coincided with an equally complete exasperation with politicians, be they local ones, visiting Arab heads of state or – in particular – American Congressmen. Sometimes it seemed as though he had spent much of his adult life kissing hairy cheeks and being lectured on the Sudan question, the Egyptian impasse, the Libyan dilemma, or the Syrian problem. Increasingly the hard-edged world of his youth was dissolving into an international slurry of détente, vetoes, UN votes, peace initiatives, OPEC summits and Gulf crises. What was it all for? he wondered. Why couldn’t people be a bit calmer and quieter as they had been before God was so good to his little Sultanate? It was wonderful indeed that the sands of the desert concealed a commodity which other people wanted, but why should that be any different from having aracing camel that somebody wanted, or a daughter, come to that? If they offered a good price and you were willing to sell, then that was that; you sold. If not, you hung on to your camel or daughter until someone happened by prepared to offer more. That surely was the essence of all business, always had been, and he couldn’t for the life of him work out why something so simple should be inflated into matters of such hopeless complexity…. He began leaving meetings early complaining of indigestion; then he took to avoiding them entirely, nominating Prince Bisfah and Prince Ashur as his proxies. Not that he had much confidence in his two eldest sons. Bisfah was seemingly unable to drive his red Italian cars along even the most deserted road without careering off among the dunes in search of the only boulder for miles to crash into, and Ashur…. Well, Ashur. The Sultan had once discovered that Ashur’s nickname at Harrow had been ‘The Queen of Sheba’ and that was not something a father forgot. He wondered if the Queen of England had known when they had last met. Hadn’t one of her own sons gone to Harrow? If so, he might well have told her. The Sultan’s cheeks burned. Maybe she had known all along and even as she had so graciously presided over the sponge cake she had been thinking That’s the father of the Queen of Sheba.
    The one thing which cheered the Sultan up was his new railway. Having to contend with none of the traditional obstacles to progress such as shortage of funds and recalcitrant labour, it had progressed rapidly and there was now a regular high-speed train service between Jibnah and Hafoos, a small provincial town at the foot of the Jebel Ahmar, that great escarpment of red sandstone which leads to the stony and waterless high plateau, one glimpse of which through a helicopter’s tinted and juddering windows makes oilmen wonder how on earth their mortgages can be taking so long to pay off. As often as he could, which was nothing like often enough, the Sultan would sit high up in the driver’s compartment of the giant French-built locomotive and thunder across the desert at a hundred and eighty miles an hour. Beside him sat his Minister of Railways, still keeping in practice as the Sultanate’s premier engine-driver. Since Reg Burnshaw’s bewildering translation from British Rail locoman to Minister and private engine-driver to His Most Serene Highness Sultan Yussuf Masood Ammar the two men had become very close andthe Englishman was proud of his pupil. He now allowed the Sultan to take the handle for the tricky banked section – a miracle of engineering, incidentally – at Wadi