In 1973, an intrepid Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, had the audacity to ask the Shah whether it was true that he had taken another wife.
“That is a stupid, vile, disgusting libel,” railed the Shah.
“But, Your Majesty, you’re a Muslim. Your religion allows you to take another wife without repudiating Empress Farah,” Fallaci said.
“Yes, certainly. According to my religion, I could, so long as my wife grants her consent,” he pointed out, softening. “And, to be honest, one must admit there are cases where… when a wife falls ill, for instance, or when she refuses to perform her wifely duties, thereby causing her husband unhappiness… Let’s face it. One has to be a hypocrite or an innocent to believe that a husband will tolerate that kind of thing. In your society, when something like that occurs, doesn’t a man take a mistress, or even more than one? Well, in our society, instead, a man can take another wife.”
In January 1979, Farah accompanied the Shah into exile. They ended up in Panama after General Noriega assured the Shah that every man in the country had a mistress as well as a wife. Noriega even procured for him. One evening, he booked a suite in the Panama Hotel and arranged for a young woman to come for dinner. Noriega insisted that she was from a good family, not a whore. The Shah had dinner with the woman, then they retired for the night. This may have been the last time the Shah made love. He died in June 1979, with his loyal Queen Farah by his side.
16. THE BAWDY SAUDIS
King Fahd and the House of Saud rule Saudi Arabia with a rod of iron. And although drinking, gambling, pornography and promiscuous behaviour are out of the question for most of the subjects of the desert kingdom, the royal family can do more or less what they like.
Ibn Saud was the founder of the kingdom and father of the last three kings. He ruled from 1953 to 1964. His attitude to women was simple. They were baby-making machines. During his reign, there were no schools for girls in Saudi Arabia. What was the point? Learning did not become them. He never even ate a meal with a woman and he kept his harem in a windowless basement.
“Windows let lovers in,” he said.
Not that he was an overly jealous man. When he divorced one of his wives, Hassa Al Sudeiri, she married his brother. When Saud decided that he wanted her back, he persuaded his brother to divorce her and remarried her himself. She then produced seven sons, including the present King Fahd.
But sex was not just about making babies. It was also an instrument of policy. He tried to unify Arabia by marrying into over thirty tribes. At any one time he would have four wives, four concubines and four slaves on hand to satisfy him. Saud was related to most of Saudi Arabia by marriage.
Saud was also a show-off. When a tribe spread rumours that his virility was flagging, he paid them a surprise visit and “shamed” them by deflowering one of their virgins.
He would mention in passing that he had deflowered seven-hundred virgins. Once he had deflowered them, he would give them away. British double-agent Kim Philby was one of the lucky recipients.
Once when Saud went to Egypt, he was heard to remark: “This country is full of pretty women and I would like to buy some of them to take back home. How about £100,000 worth of them.”
Saud also boasted that he never saw the faces of the women he slept with. Towards the end of his reign, some ten per cent of the doctors in the country were dedicating their time to finding ways to keep the old king virile.
Saud’s sons followed in their father’s footsteps. They would marry dozens of women every time he went away. They were also big drinkers. Prince Nasir once killed four guests with the homebrew he had distilled. His father forgave him. Things were a little more problematic with Prince Mishari, who shot the British Viceconsul in Jeddah when he would not give him any more whisky. The Vice-consul’s widow was given £70,000 and Prince Mishari was given a few months in jail. At this time, flogging if not public execution was the standard punishment for the possession of alcohol.
The young princes also went abroad for fun. They believed that any young woman in a bikini was for sale their father had told them so. One was particularly fascinated by a restaurant where diners could watch a woman swimming underwater. They slept with expensive prostitutes, left behind stacks of unpaid bills and gave everyone they came into contact with a gold watch with their father’s picture on the face. In one year, they gave away 35,000 watches while their playboy bills were picked up by American oil companies, eager to curry favour with the future rulers of the world’s most oil-rich country.
When Ibn Saud died in 1953 his son, also named Ibn Saud, succeeded him. Saud eventually became ill, and spent much of his time abroad seeking medical assistance. In 1964, while he was away, his brother Faisal, with the support of his brothers, took over.
At the behest of his wife, Faisal opened a girls” school, but he did nothing more to improve the lot of the country’s women. Years later, he was asked when he was going to grant women rights. He replied: “When we grant them to men.”
In 1975, Faisal was assassinated by his nephew. His brother Khalid took over, and when he died in 1982, Fahd became king. But the situation on women’s rights did not improve. Women are still not even allowed to drive cars. In 1991, a number of female college professors conducted a group drive in protest. They were arrested, tried, imprisoned and lost their jobs.
Education has done the women in the royal family little good — they are supposed to sit at home and do nothing, not even social work. They have become adept at telephone sex; they carry scraps of paper with their telephone numbers on when they go shopping in case they see any attractive men. Many take lovers, while others pay for sex.
The price of such misadventures can be ruinously high, as the ATV film Death of a Princess demonstrated. Princess Mishaal made the fatal mistake of falling in love. She had been educated in Beirut and exposed to Western ways. When she returned to Saudi Arabia at the age of seventeen, she was given away to a royal cousin. He ignored her and, when she protested, he divorced her.
During a trip to Europe, she met a young Lebanese man named Muhammad A1 Shaer, who had good Saudi connections. His uncle was in the Saudi government.
Princess Mishaal went back to Saudi to ask her family’s permission to marry him. They refused. She tried to escape the country dressed as a boy, but was apprehended. Meanwhile, her lover managed to get into the country. They met in a hotel in Jeddah, where they were arrested.
Princess Mishaal had the misfortune to be the granddaughter of Muhammad “Twin-Evils”, another of Ibn Saud’s sons. The twin evils that gave him his name were alcohol and violence. His alcoholic outbursts were so ferocious that even the three of his brothers who have occupied the throne were afraid of him. In a rare moment of lucidity, in 1964, he renounced his right to the throne.
He had his granddaughter, Princess Mishaal, and her lover imprisoned. He demanded that his brother King Khalid sentence them to death. When he demurred, Twin-Evils went to the imam. He thought there should be a proper court of enquiry. This would take too long, so Twin-Evils issued the sentence of death himself. The public executioner was doubtful about the procedure, so Twin-Evils ordered his own guards to do the job.
In July 1977, Princess Mishaal and Muhammad Al Shaer were dragged out into a dusty square on the outskirts of Jeddah. Against all precedent, Mishaal was shot while Muhammad looked on. He was then beheaded and his body dismembered. Two days later, the story was released that Princess Mishaal had died in a drowning accident.
Unfortunately, Princess Mishaal’s German nurse, Rosemary Beacheau, knew the whole story. It was leaked to a TV producer in Britain who made Death of a Princess. There was huge pressure not to have it shown. Mobil Oil suspended its sponsorship of the Public Broadcasting System in America, fearing the film’s effect on the Saudi-American relationship; Saudi tourists to London dropped by 70 per cent; and the Saudi government spent $500 million on a damage-limitation exercise.