The Dahran Rebuttals

By Gerry Taylor

Jonathan Martin, a very successful, but an outwardly self-effacing banker working in the Sheikdom of Dahra is the holder of a dark secret in a land situated in time and space half way between modernity and centuries old traditions.

There are many misconceptions about his life in Dahra. One by one, Jonathan confronts false assumptions and sets the record straight about his life, his wealth and his Palaces.

The discerning reader will know how to find the hidden metaphors for the contradictions of modern life in this continuing narrative of Jonathan Martin’s philosophy on life and on the ethics of the ownership of certain ‘properties’.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716545788

Book preview

The Dahran Rebuttals

Gerry Taylor

Copyright © 2020 Gerry Taylor.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored,

or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical,

or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the

case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized

reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-71694-352-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-71654-578-8 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

All characters and events in this novel are fictitious and not based on any

real person, happening or situation. Some geographical places, cities

and countries mentioned do exist. Dahra as a country does not.

Gerry Taylor

May 2020

[e-mail]

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 05/15/2020

Also by Gerry Taylor

First trilogy

The Dahran Secret

The Dahran Retrainer

The Dahran Offer

Second trilogy

The Dahran Memories

The Dahran Way

The Dahran Rebuttals

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PROLOGUE

My first trilogy of this Dahran series comprised three novels – The Dahran Secret, The Dahran Retrainer and The Dahran Offer. These narratives were the background explaining how I had become the accidental owner of some slaves, a retrainer of existing slaves and the accepter of prisoner-slaves.

My second trilogy in this series comprises three narrative novels – The Dahran Memories, The Dahran Way and this novel, The Dahran Rebuttals, which expanded of the ensuring adventure of owning slaves.

In this second trilogy, I have recalled the events which made a considerable impression on me, particularly over my first two years in Dahra in The Dahran Memories and then I outlined an alternative viewpoint on life in The Dahran Way. In this last novel, The Dahran Rebuttals, of the present trilogy, I have set down the refutation of some common misconceptions which people have about slavery and gay life and their mutual interaction.

Knowledge is the most natural and yet the strangest of things. We reflect on what by instinct we know, provided as it is by own self-awareness, intuitions and consciousness. These acts of introspection form the foundation for all our other thoughts and subsequent actions, as we find out that we can love them.

At the same time, we discover that we cannot love what we do not know. It is on our learned knowledge, through our senses on which we base the substantive actions of our lives, on the noble issues of struggle, joy, hope, and progress.

We base our lives on desire—always seeking something which turns out to be in all cases just beyond our grasp. We are under the constant pressure of desire, both present and future, which excludes and blinds us to the true enjoyment of the pleasure at our fingertips. Desire and pleasure are no respecters of status and apply to us in equal measure whether we are freemen or slaves, determining the way we live.

Many of the issues raised herein are metaphors for modern life. Spot them if you can.

My apologies, I have pratting on and did not introduce myself. My name is Sir Jonathan Martin, at your service. The matters which I discuss here are based on my experiences in the Middle East in the beautiful Sheikdom of Dahra.

Dahra,

September 20xx

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1

CHAPTER

The assumptions

of arrogance

The blindest of all vices is arrogance.

Gerry Taylor

I was in London for the regular monthly meeting of the Board of our Bank—we call ourselves partners at Deckhams, the merchant Bank, where I work. It was September. Yet for me, London was freezing with a wind coming up the Thames all the way from the North Sea and the Baltic beyond, making me long for Dahra’s heat and sunshine after just a mere two hours into my stay.

Perhaps I was becoming too accustomed to the regular heat of Dahra and being an Englishman, I could love everything my country possesses and, at the same time, forgive her everything, except her climate.

As usual, I was ensconced at my regular hotel off The Strand. They keep me a booking each month and are the essence of efficiency in looking after me and the soul of discretion when such is required. Well, they should be with the prices they charge!

The Board meeting at the Bank had gone off well. I went around afterwards to see two friends, Davey Jones and Mattie Dixon. Davey, I had set up in a retail shirt business. Mattie was his lover and I, the silent business partner. A solid business arrangement if ever there was one. Their shop just off Bond Street was booming and I did not stay longer than to buy two shirts and get on my way again, despite an invitation to dinner… and the offer of more thereafter…

Back at the hotel, I took the lift up to my floor and as I walked down the short corridor to my room, a door opened and a handsome young man of some twenty five or so years came out of a room and closed the door behind him. He at once snapped his fingers and made a grimace. He had forgotten an obvious something, went back a couple of paces and knocked on the door.

I was just abreast of the door, when it opened and the young man said, ‘Alan, I forgot my car keys.’

I looked into the face of Alan Young, now Sir Alan Young, if you please, Chancellor of one of the universities up north. I had not seen him since my time at Oxford. While I had just done a general business degree and had gone into banking, Alan had done the lot. Very clever, very academic and being very adept at academic politics, he had climbed the slippery university pole with adroitness, to end up in his present prestigious position, married with two teenage boys, if memory serves well.

Had we been at a distance, it would have been possible for me to pretend not to have seen him at all and to have continued my merry way. That option was not possible. There he was less than four feet away in the doorway of the room. Here was I, less than four feet from him in the corridor and nowhere to feign invisibility.

‘Alan, what a surprise to see you, old boy!’

‘Jonathan, what a pleasure to see you!’

The young man looked at me, looked at Alan, grabbed a set of keys off the side table inside the hotel room door and said, ‘Got to dash. I am late.’

Alan Young, dressed in a robe, raised his hand in half-wave, half-benediction and saw off the young man, who was not a teenager for definite… and not one of his sons, also for definite!

‘Delighted to see you, Alan. I am just here for a couple of days… and you?’

‘Just down until tomorrow. Some urgent business in the city.’

Yes, business indeed, of twenty five years or so, with slim hips and a mop of blond hair and other appointments to keep!

Small talk can dry up very fast, or in other circumstances can be reduced to the weather or family banalities. Neither seemed à propos, so I said the next best thing and asked, ‘What are you doing for dinner?’

‘Nothing this evening.’

‘Let us have dinner here. Shall we say seven thirty?’

‘Splendid.’

‘Seven thirty downstairs, it is then’ and I left the University Chancellor in his robe, standing in the doorway. As I walked towards my room, I realised that his feet were bare and his hair wet.

Just before seven thirty, quite refreshed and showered, I made my way down towards reception and the hotel restaurant.

As the linking New Concorde flight from Bahrain to London had brought me in very early in the morning and with the taxi from the airport depositing me outside the lobby of the Bank for the Board meeting, I had not seen any of the day’s newspapers and on passing the porter’s desk on the way into the restaurant, I helped myself to one.

The usual murder, mayhem, political scandal, all jumped off the front page with graphic headlines and the odd photo. As I had arrived downstairs some minutes early at the hotel’s restaurant, I was still leafing through the paper when Alan Young arrived.

We were seated at a table more suitable perhaps for a larger party of four persons, so I just folded the paper and put it to one side of the table and engaged with Alan in the usual catching-up conversation which takes place when school or university friends have not been in touch, in our case, for all of fifteen or so years.

The years had been kind to Alan and he had weathered them well. His words tended to be as sharp as I had remembered them to be. Academic people tend to be that way, defensive of territory and their own postage stamp arguments and arcane corners of science and humanities.

We were well into the entrée which was a nice piece of Charolais beef identified as being from the West Counties, when Alan said, ‘This is the second case in the past two months.’

I had missed the reference. He nodded to the paper on the table near my right hand. I did not spot what he was talking about.

‘This is the second case of slavery here in England in the past two months. This time, it is a Russian billionaire, who has kept some poor unfortunate woman as a sex-slave in his London penthouse for over a year. These foreigners never know how to behave themselves. Imagine in a penthouse. It is unthinkable.’

I was negotiating the Charolais, so I said, ‘What? Wrong nationality or wrong floor or what?’

‘No, Jonathan. The arrogance of these people who think that they can own another human being! They do not understand that slavery was abolished in 1833 here in England and nowadays, anything resembling it is just unacceptable. That Russian, or whoever he is, may be an oligarch billionaire, but what he has done will earn him everyone’s contempt. He and other persons like him can never be regarded as respectable members of society. They are criminals and social outcasts. Just imagine it. The very idea that one can pretend to own other human beings!’

I had to chew on the tender Charolais beef a little more, or maybe it was just a defence mechanism to allow me to marshal my thoughts.

‘Oh, Alan, Alan, I disagree. Our society does it all the time. We buy a house and we are in a very literal sense owned by a bank or building society for twenty five to thirty years. That is economic slavery. We have a job which we hate and cannot give it up because of family circumstances. That is work slavery. We want better holidays and clothes and our credit card company says, ‘no way, no further credit.’ That is financial slavery. Slavery comes in many disguises, both harsh and benevolent.’

‘Jonathan, that woman was a sex-slave for want of a better description, for over a year. Last month, it was a girl from Bali or somewhere else in Indonesia. She was bought for twenty thousand sterling. I do not know what the price was paid for the woman in that article or how it was paid. You can see for yourself in black and white that people can now buy slaves.’

‘Alan, you are an academic and as such you should be able to understand the possibilities of what is and what can be. I am suggesting to you that there are many types of slaves in the world today, some bought, some in life-situations of their own unfortunate choices as I have described, but slaves none the less. I would even go as far as saying that you are a slave to circumstance.’

Alan Young looked at me with a crease on his brow.

I continued, ‘Alan, you are limited in the choices which you have even running a university. You are limited in your budget or the funds coming from the university’s endowments. You are limited in the amount of time you can spend on holiday. You are limited left right and centre, even for time you can allocate to the likes of Mr Blondie Slimhips upstairs.’

I had gone too far.

‘Jonathan, you presume too much’—Alan Young was dabbing his lips with the serviette—‘you confuse the freedom to work and play, the freedom to think for yourself, the freedom to earn, to travel, all of which are of course limited by time and space, which do not make us slaves.’

‘Alan, I shall refute your argument with ease. Your set of life circumstances has you enslaved. If you were, in fact, free, you would have all the time in the world for that young man, or someone like him and not just that you would be free to own him for yourself alone.’

‘You are not condemning me for an afternoon dalliance, Jonathan?’

‘Good heavens, no! Not at all, Alan. This is your business and no one else’s if you do not hurt yourself, or others, in the process. If nothing else, it will keep you quite fit were you to do it twice a day. Can I top up your glass? Another drop of the red? It is quite a good bottle of Bordeaux, if I say so myself.’

Alan Young was looking at me over the top of his glass.

‘You are not condemning the lack of morality in owning a person as a slave?’

‘Alan, morality has its absolute values, but the ownership of persons is a relative value and has gone back to times immemorial. Just because you live in Western Europe, please do not believe that you are, have, or even know the universal norm of what constitutes custom or habit on which morality is based, nor that you understand morality as it is accepted in its different forms by the two hundred odd countries which are members of the United Nations.’

‘I think, Jonathan, the wine has gone to your head. In vino veritas, as our Roman cousins used to say. The truth on your tongue is loosened by the wine.’

The dinner was bordering on the superb as dinners go and as dinners went, it flew. For certain, the Bordeaux had loosened my tongue, perhaps to a point of impoliteness in referring to Mr Slimhips, if not to the point of indiscretion. What I had perceived was that Alan’s assumptions were based on arrogance—an arrogance arising from a lack of knowledge which had blinded him to other realities of life. His assumptions were also based on a lack of knowledge and it is always imprudent to venture forth on the highways and byways of life without a proper level of knowledge of the rules of the road.

We both opted for a steamed pudding speckled with fruit and serving of custard. Why a five-star hotel would want to serve a suet pudding, named ‘Spotted dick’ is quite beyond me. The waiter serving us the two dishes said, ‘Enjoy your pudding, gentlemen. It is our most often requested dessert,’ I thought to myself that amid all the splendour of a great multi-star hotel and even following a superb meal, we still hanker after the simpler things in life, a throwback to less complicated times and schoolboy days.

‘Wednesdays,’ Alan said in recollection. ’Wednesdays, we used to get rice pudding at Commons. They never varied the menu in all of three years.’

I could not agree or disagree. Food consumed at university all those years ago came across as a complete blank in my memory, such was its inconsequential blandness.

‘Do you know, Jonathan, I must go out in your direction next month. There is a conference on in Kuwait. It was a choice of either Kuwait or Helsinki as a venue.’

‘How long will you be there?’

A devious and mischievous idea was forming at the back of my brain.

‘It is on for four days. I am just needed at it for a day and a half.’

Rummaging in my wallet, I produced a business card.

‘Alan, here is my card and e-mail address. May I suggest that you try and make it a week even better ten days and come down to Dahra—I am just less than an hour away on the NearJet shuttle. Come as my guest and stay with me for a few days. Dahra can be a surprising country, I can tell you. Even better still, let me cover the air fares. Send me your current address and details of the days.’

‘I might just take you up on that. I might just. That is if it is not putting you out at all, if you have gotten a spare room.’

‘I can provide a spare room for you, Alan. It will be my pleasure.’

The dinner ended with small talk and again the promise to be in touch.

I heard nothing from Sir Alan Young for all of three weeks and then got an e-mail from him to confirm the dates on which he would be in Kuwait and, if the invitation was still open for Dahra, that he would be delighted to accept.

I e-mailed him back at once that I was already looking forward to his company and I smiled to myself as I thought how I could trump his arrogance of opinion with the cold reality and the hot sands of Dahra. The Bank’s travel agency fixed the flights, charged to my personal account, almost before I had even given the three-digit security code on the back of my credit card.

In the intervening days, I had Josh Green, my lawyer and chief investigator in the Cayman Islands, get a full report on Sir Alan Young. Josh knows by now my eccentricities and has several private investigators on the payroll, to say nothing of the work done by agencies for him and in the final scheme of things, for me.

The report on Alan Young came back four days later showing a successful academic who had gone into university administration. He had a wife with a tendency to drink too much and two teenage children, the eldest of whom, at all of seventeen years, had come to the attention of the Police twice for speeding and for a ‘public fracas’—a student demonstration at his prep school which ended in a riot.

All in all, having scrambled and climbed to the top of his profession and having sat on a Government quango, he was now chairing a Department of Education committee on layered education—whatever that was.

Sir Alan Young was, like me, a Knight of the Order of St Michael and St George. He for services to education, while mine was for services to banking and international finance.

Alan was worth a tad more than a net half a million sterling, with a mortgage on his home of a hundred thousand and owing bank and credit card balances of nigh on thirty thousand sterling.

While Alan Young might be a Knight of the Realm and a champion of education, he was more of an owned slave to the systems which he served than he could ever realise.

I had thought of having Faisal II, the Bank’s messenger and my driver, collect my guest from the airport in the Rolls on the Wednesday of his arrival. It is strange how I have never gotten around to getting myself a car here in Dahra, so I end up using the Bank’s Rolls for my odd private use as well. Well after all, that is what it and Faisal II are there for.

I thought then of sending Aziz al-Aziz, my Head of Household or one of the Overseers to accompany my guest on the one hour journey down, much as the deputy to the deputy Finance Minister, Tariq al-Akhri had done for me with his own Head of Household when I was brought to visit his Palace on that first occasion some years ago.

At last, I thought that I might just surprise Alan Young in his complacency and rebut some of his assumptions and arguments in a very precise manner. So, in the end, I had Faisal II drive me to the airport.

The shuttle was in on time and Customs in Dahra are a formality of waving a passport and walking through, now that passenger lists and IDs are scanned and cleared at one’s point of departure for the sake of advanced security.

After greeting each other, I suggested that we take the scenic tour around the capital city and then head for my home. Alan agreed at once and, for the best part of thirty minutes, I was cicerone and tour-guide to my guest as we sat in the back of the limousine and enjoyed the architecture and the sights of the capital city.

‘I live outside the capital city, Alan, so sit back and enjoy the drive. We are now on the Western Road, as it is called and it runs almost parallel to the coast. Allow me to offer you some Chablis from my own cellar.’

‘How far do you commute each morning to work, Jonathan?’

‘It is an hour’s drive which I use as my time to do my homework from the Bank. I take it up again in the evenings on the way back. I used to work five days a week, but now with two junior partners here, Gustav Ahlson and Colin Bowman, whom you will meet the evening after tomorrow at dinner, I limit myself to Monday to Wednesday at the Bank.’

‘You are then, what, forty miles from the capital city?’

‘Just over fifty eight, in fact. A little over an hour’s drive.’

‘Not just a bit far out, Jonathan?’

‘For privacy, it is the perfect distance. It is far enough out in another aspect which you will see.’

I could not help putting a play on the words ‘far enough out’ and I was hoping that my little surprise for Alan Young would be just that.

As we drove along, I told of the history of Dahra and its economic growth in the previous forty years due to oil and now to gas. Alan seemed very interested as just academics can be when absorbing facts and figures.

I smiled to myself as we crested a slight rise in the straight road some three miles out from the Palaces and I saw Faisal’s hand move to put on the headlights of the Rolls and then switch them off after fifteen seconds. Food and Drink, my two young assistant Overseers, always up on the Lime Palace roof at five o’clock or thereabouts, would now be speeding down to Aziz, my Head of Household, with the news of my impending arrival.

‘Here to the left, Alan, you have the third of my Palaces, the Lemon Palace which is still under construction. I have a young Scottish engineer out overseeing the project. It has around three thousand acres of desert land around it. These are the lands yet to be re-claimed and planted.’

‘Now we are coming up to the second of my Palaces, the Lime Palace and its surrounding farmlands which is my present home.’

‘The Palace on our left which you can see coming up, the light green one, is the Aloe Palace, my original home when I moved out here. My nephew, Jack and his wife Fiona live there for the moment while they decide where to build themselves their own home.’

Alan currently was looking out the window of the Rolls and half-glancing over at me, as if I were having him on.

‘Three Palaces, Jonathan, they all look rather large for one person… And you say farmlands?’

‘Well, I do have staff for the Palaces and those who work the grounds. We have the most marvellous vegetable crops all-year round. With water, soil and lots of fertiliser you can grow well-nigh anything here such is the all-year around heat.’

‘… and what size are the farms? All these green fields?’

‘Yes, Alan, from about three miles back the road which we have been driving down and a further three miles down the Western Road and about two miles inland. About four thousand acres to date all farmed by manpower alone with these further three thousand acres to be re-claimed and planted.’

The last of the Chablis in his glass went down the wrong way and he spluttered. I was not quite sure whether it was caused by the acreage, or the manual nature of the labour.

We had drawn up into the courtyard of the Lime Palace. Aziz al-Aziz, my Head of Household was at the top of the veranda steps and came down accompanied by Dumi Bod, my Head of Stables, Stan Mercer, the property Overseer with Rolf Hanzer, the Head of gym training. Aziz was dressed in white Arab garb while the others were in their Overseers’ shirts and shorts. Just Aziz and Stan were wearing sandals.

I smiled to myself. So far so good! There were no slaves around in all their glory as per my prior instructions.

‘Faisal, thank you. Spot on the hour, traffic and all. Well done!’

Faisal II beamed his pleasure as he held the door of the Rolls open for us.

‘Sir Alan, may I introduce you to the Head of my Household and a dear friend, Aziz al-Aziz. Aziz, Sir Alan Young.’

Although Aziz’s English is always slow, it is perfect and polished.

‘Welcome to the Lime Palace, the home of my Master, Sir Alan.’

I do not think that Alan cottoned on to the reference. At least, I hoped he had not. Not yet!

I then introduced Alan to Dumi, Stan and to Rolf. Pleasantries and handshakes were exchanged.

‘Aziz, please inform the doctors that we have a guest and I trust that they can join us for dinner at seven.’

‘Yes, Master.’

I saw Alan looking at me, so I explained.

‘Alan, I have a full-time doctor and surgeon here. He is French, Dr Yves Fournier. There is also a dentist full-time, an American, Dr Cal Thorson and an eye specialist, Dr Nacho Cuesta, who is Costa Rican. You will meet them, I hope at dinner, if they are free. I believe in looking after the health of those who work here at the Palaces and on the farms.’

‘How many do you have working here, Jonathan?’

For a split second, I remembered the same question I had asked of Tariq al-Akhri, at his home, all of three years before which now seemed an eternity away. I think that I must have had the same quizzical look on my face as Tariq had at the time, as if I had asked him how many pairs of socks he had in his wardrobe.

Aziz coughed twice in the back of his throat, and saved me by saying, ‘Master, may I?’

With my hand, I indicated to him to continue.

‘There is a total of two hundred and twenty four at the Lime Palace, two hundred and thirty two working at the Aloe Palace and, I believe, a hundred and fifty six now at the Lemon Palace.’

‘Jonathan, that is over six hundred workers. I thought you were in banking, not in farming.’

‘Ah, yes. We do most of our work using manpower here, Stan, would you not say? I suppose that you could call our produce organic, if you were looking for a word.’

‘You can say that again, Boss,’ Stan Mercer gave an enigmatic reply.

‘Stan here, Alan, is a geology graduate of the University of Nunedin in New Zealand and is in overall charge of the fabric of the Palaces. Head of Property, we call him. He is also responsible for the tons of vegetables which we deliver to markets each morning and a very valued Overseer of the properties.’

Stan beamed.

‘Alan, where are my manners? You are standing out here in the Dahran sun which is not kind to pale skins even in the late afternoons. Come inside and let me offer you some refreshment.’

‘Dumi, have you organised someone to look after Sir Alan tonight?’

‘Yes, Boss, I have a couple of suggestions?’

Alan looked at Dumi and then at me, not understanding the reference.

‘Dumi, looking forward to seeing your suggestions later,’ I responded

We went up the steps of the veranda and into the main salon off the dining room.

‘Alan take a seat, please. Make yourself comfortable after the journey.’

How wicked we can be at times! I had indicated a seat on one of the settees which would have Sir Alan’s back to the kitchens and serving areas.

‘Aziz, could you ask Bob and Zoran Stepkov to come and we shall first have something to drink after the journey and then, I shall let Sir Alan freshen up a little before dinner.’

I settled myself down facing Sir Alan. I was thus facing the doors leading into the kitchens to which my guest had his back. No sooner had I resumed conversation with Alan than Bob came in followed by Zoran.

‘Ah, Bob, there you are.’

‘Good afternoon, Boss.’

When I spoke to Bob, trying hard not to smile, Sir Alan half-turned in his seat and almost jumped out of his skin, seeing the naked Bob walking in all his tanned glory, closely followed by Zoran.

If I did not know Bob better, I would have said that he had tickled Zoran at the back of his balls where Zoran is quite sensitive, because he was at over half-mast, to say nothing of Bob’s own rising erection.

‘Good afternoon, Master,’ Zoran said.

Sir Alan was looking at me looking at him, looking at the two nude men some paces from us.

‘Bob, can you bring us a pitcher of your famous lime juice, please?’

‘Yes, Boss, at once.’

‘… and Zoran, ask Flavio, please, if he would prepare us some finger food. The afternoon is too hot for anything else.’

‘Yes, Master, at once.’

The two departed for the kitchens. Sir Alan had one elbow on the arm of the settee looking at the buttocks of the two departing slaves, not quite knowing what was going on.

He looked across at me, as if he had missed something of a joke. I thought it time to put him out of his misery.

‘Alan, do you remember our conversation about slaves in London.’

Alan’s voice had deserted him.

‘Bob and Zoran are two of my slaves.’

I let that sink in. Before I could say more, Bob was coming out with the lime juice, again being followed by Zoran bearing a silver platter of canapés—some small open savoury caviar dainties by the looks of them, on a base of various types of white and brown breads—perfect for the afternoon and its heat.

Bob poured two glasses of lime juice, decorated them and placed one for each of us on small serving tables beside Sir Alan and myself. The silence in the salon was deafening by its presence.

‘Alan, would you like Zoran to feed you?’

One is never supposed to embarrass guests. The lower regions of Dante’s seventh circle of Hell being reserved for those who do. I could see Sir Alan Young start to get red as he shook his head, still lost for a voice. I have come to believe that Flavio, my cook, may well be half psychic, as none of my culinary requests ever seems to catch him off guard.

‘Zoran, leave the tray beside Sir Alan. Alan help yourself. I am not hungry. It has been a trifle too hot. Bob, Zoran, I shall call you, if we need you.’

‘Yes, Boss. Sir Alan,’ Bob replied and, with a nod to Zoran, the two slaves withdrew.

‘Your good health, Alan,’ I said raising my glass and sipping the delicious, tangy and cool lime juice as only Bob can create.

Alan Young took a good slug of the lime juice.

‘Jonathan, is this some form of elaborate joke?’ he managed to say at last.

‘No, Alan, not at all. You are an academic, without doubt accustomed to acerbic criticism and correct and sound academic debate. So, when I heard you in London elaborating, with a vengeance may I say, if not somewhat dogmatical opinion, one set of postulates on top of another, in quite an assumption of arrogance, I said to myself that I must, if at all possible, bring you into the real world. Welcome to Dahra, the old Dahra living side by side with the modern Dahra.’

‘Slaves? Jonathan. How many do you have?’

‘Over six hundred, as Aziz said on the way in.’

‘I took that number to mean farm workers, employees, that sort of thing.’

‘Yes, I know that you did. Here at the Palaces, you and I, Aziz, whom you met, my driver Faisal, who is an employee of the Bank but lives here out of convenience and the three medical doctors are freemen. All others are slaves, owned by me.’

‘Jonathan, I have a thousand questions.’

‘I would be disappointed, Alan, if you had less.’

‘No, in all seriousness, old boy. Slavery in the modern world?’

‘Over the next few days, you will have time to ask a lot of questions. All here will answer them in all truthfulness. I have just one condition to place on you, Alan and that is that you never, ever discuss this matter outside of Dahra. Will you give me your word on that and I shall be able to explain why to you?’

Alan Young looked at me a tad odd and at last said, ‘Yes, Jonathan, you have my word.’

‘Alan, do you remember the fairy tale of Ala ed-Din—Aladdin as they say in the West? The chap who found the magic lamp. Do you remember the genie which appears when the lamp is rubbed and asks him to state his wishes?’

He nodded to me.

‘In giving me your word, Alan, I am going to reciprocate and make you three presents, limited wishes as in the fairy tale, just gifts. The first is the paying off the mortgage of one hundred thousand on your home and the clearing of your Bank thirty thousand overdrafts and credit cards. Before you leave Dahra, you will have given me consultancy services to that value. As this is Dahra, there is no income tax.’

Alan Young sat quite upright on the settee, ‘What? How?’

I could see that more questions were to follow, so I just held up my hand.

‘The second will be an album which I shall give you when you are leaving here. The third present will be an on-going one—a first-class return ticket twice a year on the New Concorde—to come and visit Dahra. I am guessing that you will want to return here and often. A little more lime juice, Alan? Your glass is empty.’

It was just as well that Aziz came in at that moment to advise that the medical staff would be coming to dinner as invited.

‘Aziz, who is looking after Sir Alan until dinner time?’

‘Food and Drink are free, Jonathan.’

I smiled at my Head of Household, who was at last coming around to