Love's Slave (manxman)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

(Main sitting room of Grandfather's house)

Kamal...

I was happy when the old man's Janazah (funeral) was finally over and I was more than overjoyed to get away from the scrutiny of all the tyrants judgemental friends and business associates. My brothers and I were practically challenged to return the repeated Islamic greeting of, "As-salamu alaykum," to those friends and associates that were in attendance for his final journey.

We witnessed several disapproving eyes glaring in our direction when we didn't actively participate in the Salah (prayer). My father as the son-in-law and closest male relative to the deceased had to place the soil markers for grandfather's body to rest on when he was placed to face Mecca at the Al-dafin (burial).

Our grandfather's circle of friends and business colleagues were very much aware that my siblings and I were not Muslim, and they disapprovingly censored every move we made throughout the entire ritual of laying the man to rest. I found it ironic that those same self righteous old bastards will be simpering at my feet at El-Sayed Enterprises headquarters at the Al Faisaliyah Centre when it becomes public knowledge that my family's company has taken control of Shariff & Company Ltd.

Almost all of those same men viewed my father and his children as our late grandfather viewed us, as outsiders. We were supposedly skirting the Muslim laws by a mere thread and the prestige of much respected El-Sayed family name. The contention between our maternal grandfather and my father started well before we, the children came along. Especially me, the accursed sodomite as the bastard had so venomously labeled me.

Grandfather's displeasure began when his only child, a daughter that he never paid much attention to because she was unfortunate enough to be born female, and the only offspring that came from his marriage who was matched by his equally neglected wife in an arranged marriage to my father, one of the El-Sayed eligible bachelors who was never a Muslim to begin with. A match he had resentfully consented to because of the old influential family name and financial standing which was too lucrative for his greedy blackened heart to pass up on.

Also grandfather's ruffled feathers were somewhat soothed for the fact that for my father it was love at first sight when he first laid eyes on our mother. He was so smitten with her that he chose to embrace Islam in order to make her his wife. Otherwise their union would have been forbidden. That was another reason I chose Christiany.

Our father was not born in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Malik El-Sayed was born on British soil, a proper English gentleman born to lovingly blissful married couple. A pretty Caucasian Englishwoman and a proud Arabic businessman. Our paternal grandfather had passed on before his son was even born of an unknown fever when he traveled to Kuwait to conduct business. Our widowed grandmother raised her son in her Anglican faith. It wasn't until the boy was three years old that the wealthy cousins of her deceased husband reached out to her after a lengthy search and the child that was my father was introduced to his Arab lineage.

As the honored wife of my paternal grandfather, my grandmother along with her son were brought to Riyadh and resided in her late husband's family's household where she lived in comfort for the remainder of her days. Our father was raised along with his multitude of cousins as the privileged princes they were supposed to be. They were educated in the very best schools both in England and America and they have built upon the already growing El-Sayed empire.

Our father loved the land and the culture so much that he had rarely strayed far from his desert homeland for long periods of time. He remained Christian though, stating that he is who he is and he believed in God, no matter what he was called, and that was how we were raised. That was until he met our mother who wanted to remain Muslim and practiced all the rituals and laws of the religion so our father happily converted to be with her and it can never be said that my father was guilty of Proselytism (converting our mother to another religion), which is considered illegal in the Kingdom.