The Sovereign's Promise

By midday, over fifty thousand citizens, tribal chieftains, and international journalists had packed into the grand marble plaza beneath the Sovereign’s Balcony at Qasr Al-Sultan. The plaza was an ocean of white thobes, golden sashes, and waving crimson and white national flags. In the front ranks, three hundred mounted Bedouin horsemen from the thirty desert tribes sat atop purebred Arabian stallions, their silver scimitars held upright in formal salute. The…