The Real Bahrain

...is a small country with big buildings. This is a terrible way to sum up a whole country, but this is outdated (blog planning & promises fail - I returned from the trip on September 21st...). I could tell you that Bahrain is only 290 square miles (which means it could fit into Rhode Island 5.3 times) with a population of about 791,000 people (a population density about three times that of Rhode Island) - or you could just read that on Wikipedia like I did just now.

No, what you really want to see are the pictures and read about my adventures. They were split between cultural and social events, and both were phenomenal. All of the events took place in the capital city of Manama, which may or may not consist of everything the country has to offer. The basic schedule was to explore and find out what the heck Bahrain is by day, then to indulge in its liberal alcohol policies at night. The latter was performed at all manner of establishments - contrary to the Wall Street Journal article online that I posted in the pre-Bahrain post, which said that as of 2007 the only source of alcohol was at three-star hotel bars. The first place we passed on the way to our hotel was a Bennigan's (across from a TGI Friday's), where we stopped for a pint of Guinness. After this, E-Mart & I wandered in search of a liquor store, which at first was too crowded to get in and we had to come later:


All this alcohol freedom, but I still couldn't get a bacon cheeseburger or a ham sandwich anywhere over the entire three day period. I have since written the author of the June 2009 Wall Street Journal article to chastise his poor research and enlighten him that Sobriety (was) Second to Bahrain's Bacon Ban. I have not heard back for some reason. I'll take it as a compliment that a New Yorker possibly finds ME arrogant.

Now for some reason blogger is hassling me regarding photos, etc. So, instead of a witty and well-constructed storyline, instead enjoy short captions to about 3/4 of the pictures I had intended to show you. Not much, but I like to think of it as the thousand-words-per-picture replacement scheme.

Our first journey was to Bennigan's.




An anti sand damage car coating coats this Toyota; ironically made of sand and water. Protects your paint job. Makes your car look ugly anyways.


Bahraini money...


Just more evidence of the point made in my friend's blog that the expat population is quite high; here, some UMichigan feller has taken advantage of the Middle East's lucrative salary phenomena...


The grand mosque of Bahrain in the foreground, with the trade center (financial center?) in the background...





Random run-ins while wandering include this prestigious institution:



Above - they didn't check my ID or my religion... so we stocked up (below).




I really liked how the gas to our stove was provided via rubber tubing. I half expected we'd need one of those Bunson burner spark making starter...



The pool behind the lobby of our hotel was an excellent pre-game location; amidst all the flotsam and jetsam, the remnants of an exercise machine and several stereos were evidence of more prosperous earlier years in this back room area before it was rendered as storage. The general lack of upkeep in the room should have factored into our decision as to whether or not the pool was toxic. It's amazing how just a few beers will make you wave away any worries regarding bottom-obscuring cloudiness in a 6 foot deep pool.

The El Camino below is just sweet, and for a split second I considered buying it, my dream car, but I would never get it back to Saudi Arabia in one piece.


This was one of the best parts of the trip; on the first two days of the Eid al-Fitr holiday (our Bahrain trip), the grand mosque in the center of the city was open for tourists. Wow!!! I haven't felt too welcomed to the Islam of Saudi Arabia just yet - after all, the two holiest cities of Mecca and Medina are off-limits to non-Muslims. In Bahrain, Islam was having an open house.



Above, the grand mosque from the front of the parking lot; below, the inner courtyard... Upon entrance, we were welcomed by a British man who invited us to remove our shoes and try on a thobe as others flocked in around us.


While traditionally garbed, we were greeted by a tour guide below. I have unfortunately forgotten his name, for it was a month ago now, but he was from Ft. Lauderdale. In fact, not one of the tour guides was from Bahrain. Many were in the country for work and now on Eid were volunteering to show other non-Muslims what Islam is really about. Of course Ft. Lauderdale and I struck up a rapport; but there was also an Australian Muslim dude manning the guestbook, so we talked too.




At one point while walking around and reading some free literature from the mosque entitled "Islam and Christianity," a friend and I got in a little tiff regarding the following writing:

"One such approach [to bridge the gulf dividing Christianity and Islam] could be for a Muslim to explain to his Christian brother/sister that Islam is not an alien religion, as he might think; it is very much Biblical, in the sense that what was taught by all the prophets of God (as we find them in the Bible) is being followed today by Muslims. It is Muslims who are best adhering to the teachings of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), and hence they rightly deserve to be called 'the true followers of Jesus Christ.' This is exactly what this booklet tries to convey."

Now my friend remarked at the offensiveness of the comment. "I can think of so many people who'd get very angry at that," he said. This is where I became irate. For while I knew my friend was correct about the probable reactions to it, this booklet & others we picked up were attempts to build bridges, burn them. Wouldn't my fellow mankind try to not react indignantly to a pamphlet regarding peace? If a document was not meant to offend, why should you be offended? If anything, just be a thinker and say to yourself "gee, I'm not hiring that author to write my breaking-religious-barriers material," and move on. One of my favorite things about islam is the concept of niyya, or "intent." It basically means that Allah knows your good intentions. So, when people read this, I hope they can recognize the niyya of the text...





From the second level of the mosque, we looked down on prayer time. Curious "westerners," taking photos, fascinated with the five-times-a-day mindfulness of Allah. In my home country many people are Christian and their outward devotion and praise to Jesus occurs in the form of a once-weekly sermon-based sacrifice of time. Once weekly as compared to 35 times weekly... It reminds me of that story where Moses (I think?) kept sending Muhammad (pbuh - "praise be upon him," an appropriate addendum I learned from the free mosque literature) back to ask God to reduce the number of daily prayers for humanity, because Moses knew us well and said we would never pray one hundred / fifty / twenty times a day, or whatever it was. Muhammad (pbuh) would not go back after getting down to five, despite Moses' insistence. I think I would side with Allah/God over Moses, too. But the story certainly makes me wonder which saint it was that bargained Christians down to the once-a-week deal!



Outside the windows and past the mosque's protective spiritual concrete enclosure the modern Middle East loomed; a world of construction and imported goods where progress can't be stopped, skyscrapers remind you on all sides. Cranes are an eternal feature of Middle Eastern skylines as the stereotype goes, and it seems to fit.



I forget if this is the world trade center of the financial center, but it was vast and impressive. If there were tours or tour guides or information, I probably would have given you some more facts - but the base level of this behemoth merely contained the most expensive mall I have been to in my life, with two porsches-as-prizes at the front door and a Giorgio Armany that was charging $790.00 US for a plain gray long-sleeve cotton shirt, no logo or buttons or pockets - and indeed of a cotton so thin that it might as well have been manufactured from the cotton in a single sleeve of a Wal-Mart version...







We also managed to wander into the souq ("traditional" marketplace), just around sunset. A busy, crowded and male-dominated place, we walked past Bahraini football shirts and cheap electronics shops packed so thick and competitive that the very shop fronts leaned in against each other locked in a battle for tourist dollars, blocking any leftover sunlight not swallowed up by the hungry horizon or the height of the buildings that continued upwards beyond the souq.



Yet looking at the souq outside the shoes of an annoyed tourist (yes, your fascination will die quickly as you are hassled here and there and nearly run over by the occasional car navigating through the market as if it were a regular road), it wasn't hard to find the dreary motivations for chasing down the foreign dollar. As I've tastefully (oddly) chosen to depict in the edit of a below photo, the bright bright souq can distract you from what occurs just around it, outside of it, below and above it - as symbolized by the decrepit edifice just above the shouts of the market and possibly interpreted far too freely by my mind...






Finally, we spent the last day pre-airport exploring the two Bahraini forts, which were in service by the Portugese to fend off the Ottoman Empire. OK I don't think that statement is entirely true, but the buzzwords within it apply in some way to these structures. The second fort was really the ruins of the old capital of the civilization of Dilmun, and was in some form of use and level of construction as far back as 2300 B.C. This I did not know and therefore failed to appreciate in full at the time of my visit. But the museum that went with it costs like $15 to get in and I didn't have any loose cash. It was only later that I learned it was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And to think I was merely wandering around with a hangover and wondering what the heck the various rooms could have been used for...




So I don't know if I'll be going back to Bahrain; I feel like the land itself might ask me how I've been, considering how small the country is and how quickly it gets to know you. Besides, I had plenty of fun adventures to boot, including things I won't include in full detail, such as:
- how I got to drink Zam-Zam, the holy water from the spring in the Arabian desert that God let flow after a blow from Abraham's staff, and which is used even in medicinal academia now (Johns Hopkins University medical center) for its cleanliness
- how an American ex-pat read our minds and drove E-Mart and I back to our hotel from the liquor store after we just looked at him
- how to enjoy the Bahrain bar scene
- how to fail to enjoy the Bahrain bar scene
- how to be blamed for watermelon shenanigans...

etc...