The Bahrain Posts - Numero Uno
I feel there will be a lot of reminiscing about Bahrain in the coming weeks. I really really miss it already and it's impossible to pay homage to an experience like the one I've had in one short post so it's going to have to be a series.
The Top 10 things I dislike about Bahrain:
10. The legalisation process for NGOs. One word: "insha'allah". The pain, the searing pain. May God help us.
9. Snotty white expats. Stop complaining, it's a great country, go and get drunk in BJs/JJs like your other stupid friends.
8. Some people's attitudes to foreign workers. They are not your servants, they are also people and you are not better than them because you are Khaleeji or because you are rich.
7. English-language media. The GDN is a fairly primitive tabloid riddled with spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, pro-government bias and very limited opinion pieces. There are 6 Arabic language papers. Lift your game and learn from the UAE.
6. Bahrainisation. A short-term fix to a long-term problem.
5. Roadwork. Please. You are killing me. Why block a busy intersection at 9am on a Sunday morning? Why? WHY? Why block all of Juffair for months? WHYYYYY?
4. The education system, it really needs more than one dimension.
3. The pace of construction, that library was supposed to be finished soon after I ARRIVED and it's still not done :(
2. Saudis (and Kuwaitis and Qataris) invading on the weekends, GO HOME.
1. The speedbumps, they are never painted and your car goes flying randomly.
The Top 20 things I love about Bahrain:
20. Ba7rain Fort. Big, imposing, cool and lit up at night.
19. The cars. Maaaaaaaaaaaan. I wont even list them. Just, the cars.
18. Thobe and '3itra/Shma'3... it looks, cool... just dont wear it too freakin tight :P *cough* Saudis *Cough*
17. Al Bare7 Gallery with the cool little cafe and very nice gallery with different exhibitions and things, wish I went there more.
16. Seef Mall. Not the greatest mall in the world but a great place to people watch and chill, sometimes.
15. Cheap cigarettes. Where else can you get top quality US/Euro smokes for 600 fils (1.2€)? Well the Gulf. Have to quit smoking now though cos cant afford it in Australia of course.
14. Watching football at the Qahwa, with shisha and everybody cheering.
13. Beirout Coffee Shop... I miss Altav, A7med, 3Aboud and the rest. Top quality 3ainab Fa5er shisha for 600 fils (1.2€) and Laimun Na3na juice for 300 fils (0.6€). And I miss playing tricks, even if I wasnt that good at it.
12. The best shisha and ma3asil in the world. Tafa7tain, 3inab fa5er, you name it, we got it.
11. Tikka and Kabab from Jahan Grills. Whether you eat it in the park, on the roof, in the apartment or in your car, it's good.
10. The Adliya party strip where you can see Lamborghinis, girls in miniskirts and thobed men flashing cash. Specifically:
9. La Ventana. An oasis of cool with paintings on the walls, the hairy eared owner giving us free cake and the best damn sandwiches on the island.
8. Costa Coffee. Free wifi, comfortable seating and the staff are just the friendliest people around really, it's a pity so many people treat them like crap.
7. Lebanese Oven shawarma with EXTRA MINT. I miss you '3azi, my Syrian shawarma friend, you always gave me extra mint even when i didnt ask and said Shu A5bar to me like i was your brother after greeting me in the carpark with a big big smile on your moustachioed face.
6. Mandhi @ Mo7ammed Noor. The food, the people, the experience. Enough said.
5. Jan Burger. The best burgers I have ever eaten in any of the countries I've travelled to and they only cost 800 fils (1.6€)
4. Being a lazy bastard and driving up to just about anywhere, honking your horn and getting service. Thank you to the many Cold Store owners that met my demands with a smile.
3. Ramadhan. Enough said. For more information, check my posts about it in September last year.
2. Hearing the call to prayer at many different times during the day.
1. The people. Some of the most amazing, warm, intelligent, friendly, open-minded, high potential people in the world. Bahrain should be proud of its intellectual product. Whether we were talking about religion, politics, cars, movies, books, AIESEC or just random shit, those conversations will always stay in my heart.
Labels: bahrain
Qatar قطر
The weekend before this one that just passed (err yes last weekend I guess it's called), I went to Qatar. Been meaning to head down to Qatar all year because its the closest other country to Bahrain (45 minute flight), apart from Saudi Arabia (which I cannot enter). I decided to time my visit with the Qatar vs. Australia World Cup Qualifier though, so as a result, didn't get around to heading down there until 2 weeks out from the end of my term.
I spent all my time in the capital city, Doha. Impressions? Doha is like a bigger, more developed, richer, sandier, more desert-like version of Bahrain, which is more compact and more congested. The traffic was horrible in some parts of Doha though. Horrible, horrible. And full of Land Cruisers. Everyone has a Land Cruiser. Well the Qataris anyway, given that they are 25% of the population they must have a lot of Land Cruisers for so many to be on the streets at the same time. A friend told me every Qatari family has at least two. TWO. Land Cruisers. Among other cars that is.
The expat population in Qatar is larger than in Bahrain and far more disconnected from the local population, the gap is much huger. Qatar's wealth far exceeds Bahrain and for this reason, many Bahrainis view Qataris as somewhat stuck-up, whether this reputation is deserved or not. The fact of the matter is though, that Qatari society is indeed considerably more segregated between locals and expats than that of Bahrain. Whether this is because of their relative wealth, their general attitude or their greater religious conservatism (Qataris follow the Wahhabi school of Islam, as in Saudi Arabia, which includes segregation of the sexes in public life, they just tend to make more exceptions where making money is concerned) or for what reason, I am not sure but I hung out with non-Qatari expats my whole time there (not that I didn't enjoy it), this would hardly ever happen to a visitor to Bahrain. But yes I hung out with Dutch, Algerian, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese and Czech people... cool. :-)
In usual LX fashion, I didn't get to see a great deal because I was too lazy to get around to seeing stuff but I did see the following things:
- ASPIRE area including the big stadium, the big tower which is actually a big screen and other technological wonders. This was all pretty cool and impressive and all but would've been cooler if the weather hadn't been sandstorm all over and a blanket of invisibility.
- Villagio Mall. Because apparently "Villagio" is a clever play on words on "Bellagio" ala the famous casino in Vegas. Clever. The mall was no less opulent, however. It was all shiny marble and whatnot, a part of it was decorated in a European style with pretend houses with balconies and things built into the walls and the piece de resistance. They had a freakin' Venice style canal system running through the mall, complete with gondolas controlled by small Filipino men in Venetian style getup. Classy. Doha is the Venice of the Gulf.
- The Landmark Mall. Yep another mall. Big and stuff. Hard to park. Yup. Lots of Land Cruisers. Yuuuup. Shops and cafes. Uhuh. Marble and columns. *Sigh*. Well we went to a cafe called Opera which had fairly sub-standard fare mostly but decent cheesecake.
- The Corniche. Was as nice as people said, 24km long, but not like super-amazingly splendidly spectacular. In the sense that, it was a stretch of concrete along the sea with skyscrapers around, some of which are still under construction. Maybe I'm just desensized to cool things, I mean it was nice to sit there and chill but yeah... we have corniches in Bahrain too, they might be smaller but theyre just as good imho. Plus there were huge amounts of cockroaches everywhere. yuk.
- This old souq area the name of which I forget. This was my favourite thing in Doha actually, sort of like the Bastakia Quarter in Dubai but with shisha cafes and different shops. It was really nice, old Arabian style buildings and whatnot. Chilled her with some shisha and Lemon/Mint and watched the football channel.
- And finally, of course, the football match! Yeah baby. Australia 3 - 1 Qatar. We came, we saw, we dominated and we conquered. It was a very interesting experience being at this match. I'm still yet to understand why marching bands seem to be a common spectacle at football matches in the Gulf. Seeing a wall of men in thobes taking up half the stadium was a novel sight, I must admit. There is also the Khaleeji habit of leaving a match halfway when your team is losing. Was quite shocking seeing the stadium half empty at the 65 min mark when it was at capacity at the start of the match.
By the way, we managed to randomly get into the VIP area which was invite-only. We accidentally went through the entrance for it and were just standing at the door looking lost and wondering where to go when I asked a random Aussie guy where to get tickets for the match. He said he had no idea cos he got his invitations from his company but offered two spare invites to us. Though there were six of us, we thought we'd try our luck anyway and they let us all in. So there we were with a bunch of Sheikhs and important business people, being treated to free food and drinks and a nice seating area with kash7a furniture and whatnot. It was pretty cool. Plus we were really close to the action. :)
Labels: qatar, travel
Because Islam has held the monopoly on suicide bombers for far too long...
So recently two bombs were planted in Bombay auditoriums Thane and Vashi. One was diffused by police and the other went off and injured 7 people. Well there may have been universal condemnation in Indian media but it was not all quite for the right reasons.
“
When we heard that Hindus have been making bombs, we were happy. But we felt ashamed when we read that the blast injured were Hindus,” says the editorial for the Bombay paper Saamna, a mouthpiece for the Hindu Nationalist
Shiv Sena party. In fact the piece was titled: titled
"The dud bombs of Hindus! Why embarrass us?". Yes those shoddy bomb-makers put upon all Hindus a grave shame, the shame of not being good enough to even put together a decent bomb, let alone have the guts to go and blow their guts all over the place with it like their Muslim brothers.
That's right folks, Hindus need suicide bombing squads to compete these days!
"
Islamic terrorism is on the rise in India and in order to counter Islamic terrorism, we should match it with Hindu terrorism," the unsigned editorial said in Marathi. "
Just like Islamic extremism, to safeguard the country and Hindus we must create Hindu suicide squads if Hindu society is to be saved."
One has to wonder, this is a Hindu nationalist party... and isn't Hinduism meant to be a peaceful reilgion? I mean there may have been a lot of bloodshed in the past but does this make sense? I mean how far back into samsara do you think one gets thrown? They probably get reincarnated as cockroaches. And what happened to the great Hindu tradition of ahimsa, or peaceful resistance? I think Gandhi has turned in his grave so many times by now that he's burrowed a hole to the centre of the earth.
Let's look at the Goverment's reactions? The Congress Party, aka. staunch defender of secularism says "The Congress strongly condemns the remarks said to have been made by Mr Bal Thackeray with regard to the formation of suicide squads. This is a clear call not only to lawlessness and violence but will be also the death knell for peaceful democracy," its spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan told reporters in New Delhi. I agree, India is a secular democracy, not a Hindu nation.
And the BJP? Aka. the moderate Hindu nationalist party that used to hold Government in India and is still a major contender? Criticising the comments, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday advised its ally to respect the law. “People should not take law into their hands. It is the duty of the government to counter terror,” BJP Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said. Fairly weak response designed to not lose any Shiv Sena supporters. Nice.
So seeing as the monopoly may be broken are we going to see Mormon terrorism now? Jehova's Witness extremism? Scientological suicide attacks? I'd like to see Tom Cruise blow himself up on Oprah's couch, that'd be something. Or maybe he'd do it Last Samurai style and go nuts with a big sword? OK I know I shouldnt be making light of this but seriously this is ridiculous. Has Inda not seen enough bloodshed during partition? What about Bombay? The riots? When will people learn?
HT Times coverage here and here for the Government reaction. The Age coverage here (yes it made the Aussie papers).
Labels: india, politics, religion, world happenings
Written: [Courtyard of Al-Rabie Hotel, Damascus] 7.45pm 17th May
The courtyard is truly a blessing as it gives character to a hotel that would otherwise be fairly unremarkable. The marble tiles, fountain, chirping birds, old furniture and hanging vines all contribute to the generally relaxed, old and musty atmosphere of the hotel. The young guys that run it haev evidently run out of people to be interested in or foreigners to be surprised by as they approach their work in a relaxed but business-like manner. Although, maybe it's just me that they don't like given their general bruskness and constant rebuffs of my attempts to communicate in Arabic with their more than adequate English.
This place must certainly be over 100 years old yet everything in it seems normal, utilitarian and serves a purpose. The tourists recline on the more comfortable of the older chairs as if they were musty old armchairs in their livingrooms, as they read books. The older tourists huddle around small tables reading guidebooks, talking in hushed tones and reacting with muted wonder at the loud call to prayer that emanates from the large mosque.
The Chinese girl wearing a beautiful silk robe (knee-length, black) that contrasts perfectly with her alabaster skin thinks nothing of traipsing along the marble tiles, probably laid over 100 years ago, on her way to the ancient stairwell leading to the room in which she sleeps, that has probably never seen the modern wonders of TV and Air Conditioning, born of an older, more practical form of climate control and entertainment, before the advent of such luxuries. As she trails the sickly synthetic yet strangely emasculating (for me, not for her) scent of designer skincare product, it seems to stand at odds with the shisha pipes and decaying wooden furniture around it.
This is the beauty of Damascus, as LP says, the locals shop in the ancient souqs, live in the Old City, pray in the Ummayad Mosque, bathe in the Ottoman-ear hammmams and fill the streets with a lifestyle that has changed so much yet so litle in Syria's long and turbulent history. The two old men playing backgammon outside a butcher's shop in the shade of the stone buildings of the old city. The men sharing a shisha and a conversation in the qahwa opposite the Ummayad Mosque. The women bargaining for spices and textiles in Hammidya Souq, 100+ years old. The kids bouncing a football against the eroding stone walls, a grey that is not so much unforgiving as seemingly eternal.
How many empires have these people seen come and go? Romans, Persians, Abbasids, Ummayads, Greeks, Ottomans, French, Ba'athists, and now, slowly encroaching, the empire of the tourist. The clothes may now be made of cheap manufactured Chinese textile and there may be satellite dishes above the slums, but some things in Damashq, as-Sham, will never change. And all those things can be found in the smile of the tea-maker as he serves the young German girl tea, directs his older son on where to place more stools, grips the shoulder, reassuringly, of his younger son who's playing on his electronic keyboard, and takes a relaxed, pensive drag on his cigarette as Damashq moves before his eyes.
Labels: architecture, damascus, travel, voyeur
Written: [Sheikh Zayed Mosque, Abu Dhabi] 5.23pm 4th May
Prayer Room
It is possible to swallowed up in a place like this, the light bounces off the white columns, dances around the room like so many fingers of God. As the tourists wander around, mouths open, looking at the opulence, they seem irrelevant, ants, no identity, no uniqueness. Humbling. A man-made structure can contain God in it if the minds of the men are turned towards Him. He made us in His image or do we make ourselves, our experiences, our work in His image?
Now empty, the hall seems less Heavenly. The sound of a vacuum cleaner reminds me that even Majesty requires hoovering. Was God in the minds of the architects or simply grandeur? Glory? Biggest mosque in the world? Who is flexing their might here? Man or God? I can outbuild you, man says, towers reaching towards the Heavens, sprawling Halls, domes, minarets, colours, volumes, carpets, marble and gold. All to bring me closer to You, closer to knowing You. But what is the achievement? God resides in our hearts, our minds and our souls. A simple prayer rug in Gaza holds more power than 1000 Sheikh Zayed Mosques. Anything over and above that is conflited.
God or Glory? If the minaret is built tall enough can it pierce the clouds and the Heavens themselves? Steadfastly reaching towards God, declaring, we will outbuild you, see Man's might. Man is foolish, Heaven has always been in our heats and we get closer to God on that Gaza prayer rug and more distant with every shiny marble column.
Labels: abu dhabi, architecture, philosophy, religion, travel
Written: [My Room] 5.40am 24th April
'Some people would never have fallen in love if they had never heard of love,'
aphorised La Rochefoucald. Love is never a given, it is constructed and defined by different societies."
Alain de Botton - Essays in Love, Pg. 82
Through popular culture like music and cinema, Arab, Desi and East Asian cultures seem to have a much more intense and passionaet view of relationships than their Western counterparts. East Asian in particular are societies where a couple is expected to engross themselves in each other almost totally with a great focus on care, compassion, self sacrifice and companionship. In this way, it's a very practical bond, even if the couple are not married.
South and West Asian (Arab/Persian) cultures, as expressed through their films and music, tend to have a much more passionate approach where being with a lover or separating from them can mean the difference between life and death. Interestingly I'm not sure how often this translates to their real life relationships, though I'm thinking not very much directly. Undoubtedly it does have some impact on how they view 'love'. There are also religious factors involved here which make things a great deal more complicated.
Western relationships tend to focus more on the need for chemistry, intellectual and emotional connection and physical pleasure. This could be related tot he much more individualistic focus of Western society where if two individuals come together then their respective identities need to match. Thus we are talking a different kind of practical.
Attitudes to marriage are also very different, thus affecting attitudes to love. Ie. in the West it can appear as if there's no such thing as a real commitment. Divorces and break-ups are by now so common that they are easily understood by all as 'irreconcilable differences'.
Labels: love, philosophy
Written: [Costa Adliya] 1.47am 23rd April
In our more expansive moments, we imagine romantic loev to be akin to Christian love, an uncritical, expansive emotion that declares I will love you for everything that you are
, a core that has no conditions, that draws no bounaries, that adores every last shoe, that is the embodiment of acceptance. But the arguments that hound lovers are a reminder that Christian love is not prone to survive a move into the bedroom. Its message seems more suited to the universal than the particular, to the love of all men for all women, to the love of two neighbours who will not hear each other snoring.
pg. 65, Alain de Botton - Essays in Love
But is de Botton focusing on the right thing? Is it the particular detriments we observe in our partner, like snoring, that are the obstacles to "Christian love" or rather our own insecurities? Christian love is easy because its impersonal, it does not involve massive vulnerability or opening yourself up to a particular person to stab you in the heart. It's the power of need, dependance and expectation. If you do not depend on all humans or expect anything particular from them then it's far easier to love them. But the profundity of that love is then also called into question.
If you are not prepared to let go totallyt hen what sort of fulfillment can you expect? Surely, the Hell of your expectations not being met can be equated with the Heaven of them being met and surpassed? Love is a game of extremes.
Labels: literature, love, philosophy
Written: [My Room] 5.00am 20th April
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be myserious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because we must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the seacoast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
Pg.205 Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Very simple, very obvious, very true and very well written. Adventure tourism lives on, as does our quest for beauty, but beauty can be found everywhere, not just in nature. From the bazaars of old Cairo, to the warrens of Barcelona's Barri Goti. From the metropolish of Tokyo to the serenity of Turkey's Blue Mosque. From the sophisticated Melburnian cofee culture to the relaxed Bahraini way of conversation, hospitality and family. Beauty can be found everywhere.
Direct your eyesight inward, and you'll find
A thousand regions in your mind
yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography"
Pg. 207 Henry David Thoreau - Walden
I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundations of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly forever?
Pg. 209 Henry David Thoreau - Walden
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life poor as it is. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brigthly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contendly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
Pg. 211 Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Labels: literature, philosophy, travel
Written: [Anna's Cafe] 9.45am 16th April
You don't really notice places like this unless you walk. I wonder what this calm Filipino lady thinks of me wandering in at this time with my old jeans, flip flops and several day old beard confessing that all I have in my pocket is 600 fils. As expected when I walked past earlier this morning, there is no one here. I wonder how she makes her money. I must come back. There's nothing particularly special about this place apart from the fact that it's not very Bahrain. It's tiny, quaint and hardly patronised yet it still feels more European than Bahraini. It's nto a chain, no wi-fi and no credit cards. No shisha either, it seems, but they do bake their own bread and pastries and things. This would be a paerfect little local to frequent.
It has a very odd style about it. Rounded little hotel lobby-style camel chairs with a mahogany trim. Round pink ashtrays on tiny round black tables, pictures of pasties and cheese on the wall, all the same size and all in a row along the top of the wall. They all look like they're from the mid 90s. Some random fake vines in the corner and square wooden tables with green tablecloths and wooden chairs along the middle. Oh and a ceiling high circular shelving unit adorned with magazines on the bottom and faux wedding cakes at the top. All to the smooth commercial sounds of Radio Bahrain. Yet somehow the quiet mishmash of this place somehow fits together and it feels homely like Costa never could. The Filipino lady also seems pleasant, like a young aunt. I do wonder why the menu refers to it as a Cypress coffee and not Turkish. Political statement or gimmick?
Well you wouldn't call the coffee good yet there's still something enticing about this place. Maybe I'm just craving something different like this after all the cafe chains and shisha joints or maybe I just want to fall in love with a place that's so cosy and so human. The massive windows are a bonus but you wouldn't call the view 'beautiful'. On the other hand, this is the real, typical Manama neighbourhood. Road 3614, faceless grey apartment blocks, vans and old cars frame the dirtyish narrow concrete streets with not footpath. Random corner DVD store with posters of Egyptian and Lebanese posters adorning its window wall. This is Bahrain, or Manama at least. Rusty satellite dishes sit atop roofs of buildings a few stories high, all grey with dirty walls, grate square balconies and AC units sticking out. It's all function. Light colour walls, block the heat, ACs cool and satellite dishes entertain.
There never was a gothic period here, no renaissance. Surviving in the Gulf means protecting your family (women) behind thick walls and cooling your home from the 50 degree summer heat. They don't need flourishes, detail and fancy buildings. They live functionally, always have, maybe always will. They build beautiful monuments to Allah and they aim for their hearts to reflect the same kind of beauty. You don't need European charm for that. Life is simple. You fear God, protect your family, provide food and stave off the heat. Nowadays American TV and Asian labour takes care of the rest. America, a country born of the same functionality and simplicty seems a perfect cultural model for development in that sense.
Labels: architecture, bahrain, food+drink, people
