Sheikha Ruqayya al-ʿAjība (Ruqayya the Strange)
In the annals of the Age of Ascent, Ruqayya al-ʿAjība’s name was whispered with both amusement and wariness. Towering at nearly 8 foot 7, with hair the color of polished ebony and a voice like a slow drum, she ruled the coastal emirate of al-Qamr.
Her private court was infamous: two hundred male concubines, each selected for youth, beauty, and above all, pliancy. Yet her pleasure was not taken in the usual manner.
Every afternoon, she would recline on a divan of crimson velvet, two or three concubines kneeling beside her. She would bare one breast, heavy with milk from some secret tonic she consumed daily, and command:
“Drink, and be grateful you are chosen.”
Some whispered it was a form of possession ritual — to bind the men’s bodies and minds through the intimacy of feeding. Others claimed it was simply her kink, a power game made physical and strange.
If a concubine hesitated — whether from shame, pride, or fear — Ruqayya’s smile would vanish. She would signal to her guards, who would drag the offender away. By nightfall, he would be gone from the palace entirely.
“A man who refuses my gift refuses my ownership,” she once told an envoy from the northern territories. “Such a man has no place in my world.”
Within days, a replacement would be brought in from the markets or gifted by a subordinate Sheikha, and the ritual would continue uninterrupted.
Her court scribes recorded the names of the obedient in gold ink; the names of the disposed in black — without explanation, without ceremony.
Even among other Sheikhas, Ruqayya was regarded as ʿajība — strange. But in the Age of Ascent, where dominance was the measure of a ruler, no one dared call her practice unfit… at least, not to her face.
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Scene
A private gathering in the jasmine courtyard of Sheikha Ruqayya’s palace. Present were several visiting matriarchs, including Sheikha ʿĀtika bint Munīra, who, after too much sweet wine, dared to ask what many had only whispered.
ʿĀtika:
“Sister, the world calls you ʿAjība. They wonder — I wonder — why you keep two hundred men only to feed them like infants. Is it sport? Is it lust? Or madness?”
Ruqayya:
She smiled slowly, resting her chin on her palm.
“You mistake the act for the meaning. I do not nurse them because they need milk. I nurse them because they need me. To feed is to claim. To let a man’s mouth seal upon me is to place his pride beneath my flesh, to remind him that without me, he starves — not of food, but of belonging.”
She took a sip of rosewater, her bracelets chiming.
“Some Sheikhas keep concubines for their seed, some for their service, some for their beauty. I keep mine for the pleasure of watching them surrender in the most ancient way a male can — as a child to his mother, but without the right to grow.”
Her voice lowered, each word deliberate.
“And if he refuses? Then he has chosen exile from the only nourishment he will ever know. The desert will take him. The sea will take him. But I will not.”
The other Sheikhas fell silent, some with the faintest curl of a smile, others with eyes narrowed in unease. Ruqayya only leaned back against her cushions, the conversation closed.