A hunting we will go

Written by: Charm Brights

In the Emirate of Kobekistan they hunt, on horseback, with dogs, but not foxes. The quarry is used, and not killed at the end, because female slaves are expensive.

A Hunting We Will Go 

By Charm Brights 

(c) 2002 Charmbrights Ltd.  All rights reserved. 

The author has asserted moral rights under sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. 

Prologue 

The Emirate of Kobekistan is one of those wonderful places where a
visitor feels that they have stepped back into a more leisurely, more 
dignified era of history, but without sacrificing any of the more 
useful gadgets of modern civilisation.  Air-conditioning protects the 
inhabitants from the rigours of a sub-tropical climate.  Motor cars 
whisk them from one building to another.  Desalination provides ample 
water.  The most modern medical advances are practised in the 
hospitals.  Television shows umpteen channels.  Education utilises the 
most modern computer-aided systems.  Childbirth is no longer as 
dangerous as it used to be, even though eunuch doctors are the only 
ones available to the women of the harems.  Becoming a eunuch is very 
rarely a fatal operation since it is carried out by experts in surgical 
conditions second to none.  A girl being cut and sewn to make her 
incapable of sexual pleasure and virtually unusable by a man (except 
for sodomy) now has a less than one in a thousand chance of the patient 
contracting a dangerous infection.  Moderation in all things is the 
watchword.  Toleration extends to allowing alcohol to be sold to 
foreign workers in the country, though only within their company 
compounds.  Women are taught to read and write, at least in some 
harems. 

Of course, these facilities are not all available to all the population,
but for all those who matter, the better families, they are taken for 
granted.  A field slave might not benefit from all of them, but the 
medical services ensure that a slave no longer has to be put down if an 
over-enthusiastic owner damages it somewhat while administering 
discipline. 

The disadvantages of civilisation as it is understood in the West are
nevertheless kept at bay.  Advertising is negligible.  Tourists are not 
permitted to enter the country.  Women are not allowed to show their 
faces on the streets.  Marriages are arranged by parents who are wiser 
in their choices than the impulses of youth would be.  There is none of 
the political brouhaha since the country is ruled by the Emir whom 
Allah has appointed.  His word is law, literally.  Were he to say "Off 
with his head," the miscreant would be executed in public within the 
hour. 

All of this is made possible by the oil on which the Emirate rests. 
When all the oil reserves have been extracted, in some centuries time, 
the level of the land will have been lowered by an average of ten feet. 
 The oil is a 'heavy crude' which is dug out of the ground in lumps 
looking for all the world like treacle toffee.  There is none of the 
messy liquid to process and no unsightly wells. 

In years gone by, when the Emir had considerable respect for the Allies
who had just defeated Germany, his eldest son, Prince (later His 
Magnificence the Emir) Ibrahim, was sent to Sandhurst to learn the 
finer points of being an officer and a gentleman.  He returned three 
years later having acquired a second wife, who was English and minor 
aristocracy, and a love of hunting, which he had first discovered while 
holidaying in Leicestershire.  Indeed he had ridden with the Quorn on 
several occasions. 

It was when he returned from his stay in England that his father made
him Crown Prince and it was during that ceremony that an unfortunate 
incident occurred.  A disaffected faction had seized on the younger 
half-brother of the new Crown Prince as a figurehead to topple the Emir 
and replace the old Establishment with a new idea they called 
democracy.  Their idea was that Kobekistani citizens would have the 
vote and elect a government and a President.  Naturally only sensible 
citizens would be allowed to vote and equally naturally only sensible 
candidates for President would be allowed.  The protagonists of the 
change would, of course, decide who was considered sensible. 


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