Bahrain is insain!
Trip Start
Aug 30, 2006
1
19
33
Trip End
Jun 11, 2007
Manama,
Bahrain
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The woman behind me asked the friendly clerk, who addressed everyone as "sir" and wore thick glasses that obscured his eyes, if it was possible to remove the cheese from the egg salad sandwich. Upon being informed that there were in fact no egg salad sandwiches left, something it took only a glance to figure out, she thought for a moment, then said, "give me a cheese sandwich." My superiority complex, lurking deep in my unwashed hair, ate that one up.
It had a field day with everyone else as well, mostly American and English businessmen who just looked like they were having a ball--red faces, cups of coffee in their hands, sunglasses, talking about deals and money and suits and cars and all that. I thought, they must be in paradise! This is what they went to business school for--to fly halfway around the world to a place where they could hobnob with the richest of the rich, eat fast food and drink fast coffee, and essentially never leave home.
Fishing boats
They had hit the Big Time. The dream American businessman vacation, it seems. But something about it rubbed me the wrong way. Don't get me wrong--being oddly comforted by being in a Starbucks in Bahrain, 11 hours ahead of New York, put me squarely in the pro-capitalistic sphere. And surely my family, my country, and the world in general have benefited from the sort of business--revolving around money, oil, and precious commodities--that gets done in Bahrain. But that doesn't mean I feel comfortable with it.
My moral conscience wrestled with its feeling of dread, and so I decided to have a look at the water. The sun was very hazy, and even in the small Gulf of Arabia, you can't see any land surrounding the archipelago of Bahrain, 33 islands of which Bahrain is the largest, Manama being the capital and largest city. It is connected by bridge to Saudi Arabia, and is not far from Qatar, the United Arab Emerates, Kuwait, Iran, or Iraq (which, indeed, does feel sort of weird). Less obviously, it is only a couple of hours' flight to India, which is reflected in the many Pakistani people here--at least I assume they're Pakistani because Pakistan is Muslim. Many people wear the white robes with the shawl covered by a fancy rope-like apparatus, which I admit looks very elegant and lends its wearer an air of importance, although I don't know what the significance of the outfit is. The rest? Businesspeople.
Bahrain has a rich history, which you can read about in a couple of minutes on their website, www.bahraintourism.com.
Going up, still (although finished in the ads)
Some higlights--they were the first country to yield oil that had been drilled for, in 1932, now commemorated by an Oil Museum. They like to dive for pearls, and sell them for a lot, and this also has a museum. And for those of you oldsters not in the know, Michael Jackson lives here somewhere, but something tells me they don't give tours. Besides, I heard he was planning to move this fall anyway. Don't ask how I know.Bahrain also has a wonderful skyline, which I'd seen in photos all over the place, but when I reached it, there was something peculiar about it. Behind the large panorama of the Manama skyline featuring the brand-new Bahrain International Financial Harbor, the buildings themselves looked different. In fact, they were completely unfinished. Of the five discrete buildings in the photo, NONE were finished. One was close, but the others were far from done. This struck me simply as ridiculous. I tried to think of the rationale behind the decision--"we're setting a new standard in Bahrain's status in the global business community...in a few years." "Come see the sleek new international finance center...but maybe put your kids through college first." The photos of these nonexistent buildings are on postcards, on the airplane, in Middle Eastern magazines. But for now, the twin towers that look like dueling pianos, a sharp knife-like building sweeping and twisting through the air, even the working Visitors' Center (minus the facade)--all fantasy.
And that was what I realized made me feel so strange about Bahrain, I realized as I walked along the shore past all the rusty fishing boats with people cooking shellfish on them.
Good concept
I was approaching the construction site for wide seaside boulevard, the stones piled high like Smithson's "Spiral Jetty," Caterpillars frantically digging the shore up from the sea and loading it into dump trucks, the water covered with a fine oil slick. It's all pure fantasy here. All the businesspeople--it just seems like they're playing. And we're the suckers who make it seem like all this nice-looking stuff matters. Give me the dirty streets of Cairo, fluorescent bulbs that only get turned on late at night, the plastic chairs and the shaky televisions playing Premier League football on Saturday nights! Give me the camaraderie of the Everyman, the smell of exhaust, the MacGyver spirit of home repair! Money and all its derivatives were just invented to make certain people feel more important. But, far from feeling like an international anarchist conspiracist, this thought just made me feel sort of depressed, like knowing an asteroid will wipe out your town.
Of course, it probably isn't true. Many people who appear otherwise outwardly do in fact have good souls, and watch plenty of Premier League football. (Did you know that Argentine star Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona broke his foot the other day?) The Financial Harbor will probably look like it does in the photos when it's completed, although on the official project permit, the "completion date" was conspicuously left blank, and the windows were already looking a bit discolored from the sand in the sun. But why the need to dress everything up so completely? Now, it just seems comforting, and I don't know where I stand.
So in conclusion, being in Bahrain is sort of exactly like being in a resort town in Florida, , one like Marco Island, only where there's a little Arabic here and there, and business is done as well. And I never did find a beach today, after spending all afternoon looking--whatever the priorities of the international business community and their hosts in the Kingdom of the Archipelago of Bahrain, they certainly don't include swimming in that dirty water.
Comments
Billie Jean is NOT my lover.
Dude you have to find Michael Jackson somewhere and get a picture with him for me. I hear he walks around dressed as a Bahraini woman a lot. DO IT! I need some Dirty Diana love.
Love JB