Princess: Stepping Out of the Shadows, стр. 40

I struggled not to tease my husband, and for a moment considered insisting that Chanel be returned to visit longer with Kareem, but I resisted my inclination to be naughty and instead was a good wife. ‘Of course, Little Sultana, any baby will be tired after a long day of travel.’

Little Sultana puckered her lips, frowned, but then agreed. ‘All right. Chanel did seem tired. I will tell her Mama’s news tomorrow.’

Soon we were seated around a table in the sitting area. Abdullah did not waste a moment. He leaned in to his wife and touched her shoulder before caressing her hand.

‘Zain and I are so very happy. I will not keep you in suspense. We are going to increase the size of our family – not by one, but by two. We are expecting twins!’

I sat without moving or speaking. I felt a flush of complete joy. But then, unexpectedly, my heart began to beat very fast, too fast. It was beating so fast I realized something was very wrong. My hands began to shake, then I fainted.

* * *

The following morning I stirred under thin bedcovers after a fitful night’s sleep filled with what I believed to be nightmares of losing control of my mind and my body being touched by strangers. I soon realized that the nightmares were my reality.

I looked down at the sterile, beige-coloured coverlet over my body. I was sleeping in a bed that was not my own. I peered around at the room to discover I was not alone. There was a woman I did not know sitting at a table in the unfamiliar room organizing some documents. She was in a nursing uniform and it was becoming clear to me that I was a patient in a hospital. Although the room was very chic and decorated with expensive furniture, it was a hospital nevertheless. Disorientated, I blinked several times to try to make sense of what was happening to me and then glanced at my arms to see that I was receiving fluids.

The nurse glanced in my direction and smiled. Too late I tried to feign sleep.

‘Awake, are we?’ she said with an accent I did not readily identify. She didn’t speak in a typically British way, as we have a number of citizens from that country assisting us in managing our properties in England and in helping us at our various homes, and her pronunciation was different to theirs. She was a woman with European features, dark blonde hair and light skin.

My croaky, rough-sounding voice surprised me when I asked, ‘Where am I?’

‘You are at the royal hospital, Princess, the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre.’

I looked around again and realized this was true. I am quite familiar with the hospital. Seeing my confusion, the woman added with a wide smile, ‘My name is Pamela, but everyone calls me Pam. I am from Canada and I have worked in this hospital for the past five years.’

‘Where is my husband?’

‘The prince stepped out to meet with your doctor. He said that if you were to awaken I should tell you that everything is going to be all right and not to worry. And he will return shortly.’

‘Go and get my husband, now.’

‘He said he would return shortly.’

‘My husband, please.’

‘Yes, of course. I will tell him that you are awake, Princess.’

After the woman left I studied my surroundings. My room was spacious and would be considered luxurious by most. I had been in this hospital several times since becoming an adult, so the ambience felt familiar.

As I lay back on my pillows, waiting for Kareem to arrive, my mind drifted back to how this hospital came to be built and the stories that had been passed down through the family about it. Even kings have dreams, and the royal hospital where I was now a patient was one of my uncle Faisal’s dreams come true.

After he became king in 1964, Uncle Faisal made the financial health of the kingdom his first priority after his brother, King Saud, who was the first of Grandfather’s sons to assume the throne, virtually bankrupted the kingdom with his unrestrained spending. King Saud’s excessive splurging was so out of control that there was full agreement within the family that he should abdicate the throne in favour of his brother. After several years of King Faisal’s careful budgeting and austere spending, the kingdom, aided by the oil wealth, finally rested on a solid financial footing.

Saudi Arabia had a promising future due to the oil under its soil, but the lives of its citizens were poorly lived when Uncle Faisal came to power: there were few schools and hospitals – little of the modern world had penetrated our desert kingdom. While the royals were educated, few of the less fortunate Saudis benefited from education, and adequate healthcare was nearly non-existent. Therefore, King Faisal’s second priority was to improve the daily life of ordinary citizens, whether through high-quality education, improved medical care or the introduction of technology.

Television, for example, came very slowly to the kingdom – not until in 1965, as I have been told, for I was a very young child at the time. Tragically, a fanatical prince who believed television to be evil attacked the headquarters of Saudi television and was killed in a shoot-out with security guards. It was an incident that would affect the lives of all Saudis for some years because the brother of the dead prince was determined to take revenge.

Meanwhile King Faisal had moved ahead with his progressive plans to transform his outdated country into an advanced, modern kingdom. Everything Saudi Arabia can boast of today began with King Faisal, including the hospital where I was receiving care.

In 1970, my uncle Faisal donated the land where the hospital now stands. I recall how my father once told me that Faisal, his half-brother, impatiently studied all the plans and enthusiastically awaited the opening of the ultra-modern hospital, which was set for 1975.