The Seven Sheiks Of Araby

The Seven Sheiks of ArabySeveral 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...