The palace gates opened like they were made for gods. Guarded by white-robed men holding swords with golden hilts and eyes trained like hawks, I stepped into a world so dazzling it didn't feel like Earth. The rain of the convent was now behind me. Here, light fell differently—scattered through marble arches, kissed by domes of gold and windows shaped like almond eyes.
And there, on the grand silk bed, surrounded by rare perfumes and silent servants, lay my father.
His name was Amir Kareem ibn Hasan Al-Fulan, and he was royalty—though no longer in strength. The room was filled with quiet grief. Everything he owned was grand: the jade ring on his finger, the Quran wrapped in velvet by his side, the falcon crest of our house above his bed.
But nothing was as grand as the way he looked at me.
"Salma..." he whispered. His voice was cracked—age, regret, and disease all clawing at it.
"I am here," I answered, sinking beside him. I held his hand—cool, thin, wrapped in veins—and studied his face. My face. The same almond-shaped eyes. The same curve of brow. So many years lost between us, but blood had always remembered.
"I searched… for you… and your mother," he said slowly. His lips trembled with each word.
"Why didn't you find us?" I asked, my voice low, but he shook his head gently.
"Politics," he said bitterly. "Scandal. Pride. Cowardice. The palace… it swallowed truth."
He coughed. Blood. I turned my face, tears burning behind my eyes.
He gripped my hand tightly. "You lived well. That is enough. I die happy."
His eyes lingered on mine one last time. Then they stilled.
And just like that… my father—the father I never knew—was gone.
---
The mourning period lasted forty days, as custom required. The palace women—adorned in black abayas woven with silver threads—wailed in rhythm with prayers. Men gathered in halls lined with Persian carpets and incense smoke, reciting verses and sharing memories.
But while grief moved in shadows, scandal stormed in plain sight.
It was whispered in the halls of the palace and shouted in newsrooms across the Middle East:
"The daughter of Amir Kareem found in a Christian convent!"
"Illegitimate child raised by the Church!"
"Royal family's hidden shame exposed!"
And then came the Kasims.
---
My mother's family was not royal, but they were powerful—the kind of power that didn't wear crowns, but built empires. Oil magnates. Real estate moguls. Diplomats. My uncle, Sheikh Omar ibn Al-Kasim, arrived at the funeral in a convoy of six black Rolls-Royces. He wore white robes trimmed with gold, and a red-checkered ghutra held with a black agal. His beard was perfectly groomed, his voice deep as thunder, his eyes like fire wrapped in ice.
He kissed my forehead gently and looked around the palace as if it disgusted him.
"This house," he said in Arabic, "has done more to curse women than raise them."
I watched in silence.
He turned to the royal council. "You took my sister. You left her to rot. You let her child—your blood—be raised as a stranger. You will pay."
The tension in the room could split marble.
"I'll sue your house," he declared, his voice rising, "in the International Criminal Court, if I must. You think your wealth makes you untouchable? We will see."
---
The palace guards stirred. Tensions rippled. But the Emir—my father's eldest brother, Prince Faisal—raised his hand.
"Enough."
Silence fell.
"She is of Kareem's blood," he said. "We will not erase that. Let her bear the name… and the title."
And so, the name Mostel was dropped like a veil.
And Salma Monstel became Salma bint Kareem Al-Kasim.
The royal court announced the title:
"Her Highness, Princess Salma of the House of Kareem, granddaughter of Hasan the Just, daughter of Amir Kareem."
But inside… I didn't feel royal. I felt borrowed. Between legacies. Between faiths. Between names.
I was placed in the Kasim estate—walls lined with glass chandeliers and fountains carved with ayahs from the Quran. Maids who spoke five languages. Tutors in calligraphy, Quranic Arabic, and tribal politics. Gold-threaded carpets beneath my feet. Fresh rosewater every morning.
But luxury is not identity.
I would walk in the gardens, where peacocks strolled beside olive trees, and whisper into the wind:
"Who am I? The nun's daughter or the desert's heiress?"
The people bowed to me. They called me princess. They dressed me in gowns. But every now and then, I would stare at myself in the mirror and ask:
"Would she—Mother Superior—have known what to do in this world?"
And worse still:
"Would she have recognized me?"
---
This was a new life. A new world. A new name.
But part of me still stood at the convent window, watching the rain fall over stone paths and silent prayers.
And wondering…
if I had gained everything—
or lost the only thing that made me whole.