Life has been a series of sharp zigzags for Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, the Emir of Sharjah.
In a remarkably candid speech here on Tuesday, the Sultan said as a young agriculture engineer in the 1970s he aspired to be a dairy farmer. “I wanted to carry a shovel to dig and plant and make life.” However, life took a sharp and traumatic turn. His brother, the Emir, was assassinated.
“On that day, I was a nobody. I carried a machine gun to kill and make death,” he said. His family named him the next Emir. “So instead of going to the farm, I went to the palace.”
No anglophile, the Sultan had worked as a teacher and storekeeper in a British school. His best times were romping around with farmers in rural Punjab to select Sahiwal cows. “I drank tea with them in dhabas,” he said. But “life had shifted, and I had to leave my beloved Sahiwals behind,” he said.
As a student in Kuwait, the Sultan had daringly escaped Baath extremists who kidnapped him. It was dark, and the future Emir of Sharjah dashed a narrow lane to seek refuge in a house around the corner. “That 100 m to safety felt like 10 km,” he said.
The Sultan had turned an ardent chronicler of the history of the Indo-Gulf ocean region after he overheard a bureaucrat refer to his country as a pirate kingdom and his ancient Qawasim family as a clan of buccaneers. “I wanted to dig out the truth and expose the lies of the colonialists,” he said.
The Sultan got a certificate of excellence for his historical thesis, which spotlighted the excesses committed by the British empire and the lies it propagated. “The university asked me if I was satisfied. I said no. I want your queen to approve it,” the Sultan said.
