Faisal Raqsein

Faisal Raqsein in the Raqsein shipyards circa 1861.

Faisal Raqsein (1843-1930) was a shipyard owner, university president and industrialist in Sayaffallah during the Industrial boom period.

History

Early life and childhood

Faisal Raqsein was born in Chopras, Sayaffallah the first son of a wealthy shipping magnate Hubard Raqsein and Indira Raqsein on January 2, 1843. Faisal Raqsein was raised in the town of Chapington for most of his childhood by a governess and later by an estate manager who looked after his education and early childhood. Faisal was brought up in a secular non religious household for much of his early life.

His father gave him a pocket watch in his early teens. At 15, Faisal dismantled and reassembled the timepieces of friends and neighbors dozens of times, gaining the reputation of a watch repairman and general handyman around the estate that he lived on. His parents soon rewarded him with his own pet kangaroo that he would ride on the back of across the estate hopping over fences and occasionally using to beat up a neighborhood bully twice his size. Faisal's childhood was anything but ordinary, his knack for building soon saw him building a wooden roller coaster in his backyard that would have been a success if he hadn't removed the entire series of decorative glass windows in the parlor to allow the track to pass into the house and through his bedroom upstairs.

Faisal's knack for repairing and taking apart things soon bled over into his school life, after taking apart desks and welding them to each other in a long row Faisal found himself expelled and on his own. Faisal's parents were not ones to give up on their son however and soon hired a private tutor who would quickly harness the curiosity of the young boy and use it to further his education. Faisal's curiosity meant that the tutor one afternoon arranged for a locomotive engine to be sent to the house, in pieces, and Faisal spent the next week reassembling the locomotive and in a test it was faster than it had been in its previous existence.

In 1863 Faisal was accepted into the prestigious University of Beyrouth where he studied in an improvised program that covered the basics of engineering and applied mathematics. Faisal's excellence in the field of mathematics and engineering gave him the ability to study on a graduate and eventually post graduate level from Beyrouth. At the tender age of 30 Faisal was summoned by his father who told him that a shipping industry waited for him to take charge. Faisal until this point had always been told that his father was a wealthy businessman but that his business dealings kept him away for great periods of time, never had Faisal understood the extent of his fathers business empire until this point.

Shipping Magnate, University President and NEA Leader

Faisal took the reigns of his fathers business enthusiastically and soon expanded operations into 30 different countries and began working on an overland rail system within Sayaffallah to transport goods directly from port to industry and from industry back to port. This network of goods soon became his crowning accomplishment in his youth and managed to reduce expenditures by over 70% that formerly were accrued by utilizing a railroad belonging to someone else. By age 35 Faisal's railroad experiment became one of the largest railroad networks in the country ferrying goods on a constant basis with a track gauge capable of having four trains running various directions all at the same time. This volume of business increased to the point that Faisal formally consolidated his business holdings by buying out the existing railroad company and all of its holdings and converting it to a passenger rail service which soon became the most luxurious railroad option in the entire country.

The railroad and shipping holdings gave Faisal significant influence and clout and in 1875 the Sultan of Sayaffallah tapped Faisal and Isaiah Brimley to lead the National Educational Authority the first of its kind in Sayaffallan history. Faisal worked to develop a competent national educational system and soon within a course of just a few years the nation had its own fully functioning educational system capable of training up engineers and key vocational areas needed in the economic areas of the world. During this time he also worked as President of the University of Beyrouth while simultaneously creating the criteria necessary for the NEA to function on its own.

Later Life

Faisal later developed a severe depression within his life and disappeared from public life altogether in 1910 prompting the University of Beyrouth to formally dismiss him from his role as President of the university and the boards of the companies he ran also removed him from leadership. Faisal became very much a recluse from society and during this time penned a series of memoirs called "My Life: Tales from a Depraven Tycoon" which went into much detail of his life and how disillusioned he felt with living a life of wealth despite the poverty of his fellow countrymen. His memoirs detailed how he attempted to reconcile his wealth with the lack of wealth in the rest of the country by consistently raising the wages of his employees across the board and working to establish hospitals and training programs across the country.

Faisal simply could not continue to function under the intense pressure to perform that existed within his world. It was soon found that Faisal had gone to sail around the world on a sailboat in an effort to get as far away from Sayaffallah as he possibly could. The boat Faisal took was a small sailboat he had bought from a retiring fisherman just days before he decided to leave for his around the world voyage. It was with great sadness that many newspapers soon reported of Faisal leaving and many editorials spoke of the impact he had on the country itself. Faisal would never be seen in Sayaffallah again, for many years he lived among natives in a jungle community some 1,000 miles away functioning as their King in a role they appointed him to.

And it was in 1930 that Faisal was found dead on his sailboat as it crashed against rocks only 2 miles from Chopras the town he was born in. On the boat was Faisal's journals which recorded his loneliness and longing to return to Sayaffallah and the closer to his day of passing were the words of longing and that he was running low on provisions. Upon hearing of his death the parliament voted to have Faisal buried under the steps of the Parliament in a gesture of honor as only the most distinguished citizens are buried under the parliament steps and in addition to this a large bronze statue was built in the central square of Chopra to commemorate the life and times of Faisal Raqsein.