will make an effort to escape from the Seychelles and to return to the Warsangeli Country. Should he be successful in any such attempt, it might have very grave political consequences here; and I have, therefore, to request that the most careful surveillance of his movements. On May 3, 1920, on board HMS Odin, Sultan Shire was delivered to British authorities in the Seychelles from their colony in Bombay, India. At the time of his arrival on the Seychelles archipelago, a number of other prominent anti-imperialist leaders were also exiled there, including Sa'ad Zaghloul Pasha, the former Prime Minister of Egypt, with whom Sultan Shire would soon develop a rapport. Shire lived in a house in the Anse Etoile district on the island of Mahé, which sat on a path near the public road. The colonial government had leased the land from Charles Mederic Savy. Under the leasing agreement, the renting party was allowed to collect coconuts, gather water from the river, and keep poultry and pigs. Shire also had to check-in three times every day at the local police station across the street. Although the terms of Shire's deportation allowed him to bring a spouse, he spent most of his time in exile alone, without relatives or companions. Shire wrote a number of letters to the colonial governors of the British Somaliland Protectorate and Seychelles, which appealed for his release. These epistles were characterized by wilfulness, exaggeration and overstatement on Shire's part, serving to mask his resistance strategies. In the first such hyperbolic letter, sent in 1922, Shire pleaded to the Governor of the Seychelles to allow him to return to his family: As my Master, Excellency, listen to my poor voice and let me return home. I shall be happy to see my country under the protectorate of the English people, I ask no more to be considered as a Sultan, all my firearms and ammunition shall be for the English. I will be satisfied to be the most humble servant of the English nation; what I most desire is the pleasure to be amongst my family, my children and wife, and that is my only dream. Pardon I am asking, I promise to be obedient and respectful towards the English people, I would not like any more to be a Sultan, what I should like is to be under the orders of an Englishman. I swear to