'Children?' said Belinda. 'On the profits from the Alma Chorda? How would I afford it? We should have been born on Unlox Brocade - at the Breakup.'
The Breakup of Unlox Brocade, the Third Pearl, bulks large in Chalakanesian legend, for a grossly improbable myth claims the island to have been converted to a single block of rock cocaine by the action of the metapsychic faultline. Positive disproof is difficult (it was a long time ago, and the surviving records are few and fragmentary), and, since the notion of an Island of Crack has a certain garish appeal to those with a taste for the fantastic, this grossest of all improbabilities is sincerely believed by a great many Chalakanesians, who believe that the refugees became fabulously rich by selling bits of their disintegrating island to unscrupulous traders from Heaven and Hell. [EoH Ch4]
A more sober theory claims that Unlox Brocade was undermined by the spatio-temporal displacement of some portion of its foundation rocks, and consequently subsided, the subsidence revealing the fabulous Lost Treasure of Rikitus Tavitus, the feudal ruler who fled from Midas Makorum with all his wealth after he was overthrown by the Head Keeper of his Mongoose Squad.
Certainly the evacuees possessed enormous collective wealth, which gave them sufficient financial clout to preserve their political independence - and so Unlox Brocade survives to this day as a political entity, even though its physical fabric has long since been reduced to some pretty coral reefs inhabited by sea urchins and aquarium fish.
'If we were Brocaded,' said Belinda - by which she meant, 'if we were rich' - 'then I would be happy to have your children, married or otherwise. But as it is, I cannot take the risk.' [EoH Ch4]
Pedants will protest that Islam Demaxus is not a nation, and so cannot experience nationalistic pride. Certainly, Chalakanesia is technically a federation of seven states, these being (as we look from north to south) the archipelago of Cherwin Skam, the island of Midas Makorum, the reef known as Unlox Brocade, the archipelago of Solakarno, and the islands of Jaz Diva, Sopwith Dromedax and Islam Demaxus. But, though Islam Demaxus is technically just one of the states in a federation, the Seven Pearls are so far-scattered, and separated by such deep historical divisions, that the emotional resonances of statehood are akin to those of nationhood elsewhere. [EoH Ch5]