Mosque visit

"Work as if you will live for ever; live as if you will die tomorrow."

I took a tour of the Grand Mosque here in Manama, Bahrain today. I have to say, the tour was much more than I had hoped for. The mosque is quite a sight from the outside...much different than the "mosque" we had back at my little base in Afghanistan, where we set aside a small room in a mud brick hovel as a mosque. I had heard the mosque was open to tourists, but not quite believing that I was a little apprehensive upon approach, having always thought mosques were off limits to unbelievers. I went on up into the mosque area though, and was nearly immediately approached by a woman dressed in the black covering that all the local women around here wear, asking me in flawless English if I would like a free tour of the mosque. I said I would; we took off our shoes and off we went.

She was clearly quite a devotee to her job and her religion, and proceeded to give me a very thorough and professional tour of the inside of the mosque. I learned or was reminded of quite a few facts about Islam and mosques...and it's true that most all mosques are closed to non-Muslims. The Grand Mosque seemed more of a showpiece than a real congregation though...the kind of place Muslims might go on special occasions, but not for their daily prayers. Perhaps for that reason it's open to tourists.

In any case, I was struck by the simplicity of the mosque. Though the structure itself, with its massive dome and high minarets is certainly very majestic, inside the mosque is mostly empty. I knew ahead of time that mosques aren't filled with adornments like many churches are, but nevertheless seeing such a grand structure mostly empty but for the admittedly gaudy chandeliers and some Arabic calligraphy (this Arabic calligraphy being straight lines, since their regular letters are curvy and flowing as we would think of calligraphy in English) on the walls was a reminder to me of the focus on Allah that Islam preaches. I've always been appreciative of simplicity and detested needless complexity (I can recall being chastised by my boss in a law firm "continually over-simplifying the issues"...perhaps all of this explains why I'm not a lawyer...?), and I come to appreciate simplicity more and more every day in an increasingly complex world. At any rate, the lack of distraction in the mosque itself encourages its adherents to focus on their prayers. That, and the togetherness the prayer ritual itself engenders (which I was allowed to witness, happening to be there during one of the five daily prayer times), by having the devotees line up with shoulders touching the persons on either side as they go through their prayer ritual, were the aspects of the experience that affected me the most. It's not hard to see Islam's appeal, for the simple authenticity and community inherent in it.

My guide, truly the consummate professional, refrained from outright trying to convert me to Islam, but I would not be surprised if she had people walking out of the mosque after a tour with her considering it. Every explanation made so much sense...women are covered because this helps men see them as equals...men not being distracted this way by the physical aspects of a woman, they can now focus on who she is.... Interestingly, apparently even Islam has found the need to substantiate its authenticity in a "scientific" way, my guide mentioning to me a couple of scientific facts which were revealed to Mohammad and which he would have had no way of knowing in the 7th century that were subsequently placed in the Quran. I also noticed a pamphlet on the scientific basis of Islam in the library on my way out...one of many free pamphlets visitors are encouraged to take with them.

All in all, the mosque visit provided a nice counterbalance to some of the negative impressions/thoughts I have had over the years about Middle Eastern and Afghan culture, much of which I have attributed to the religion that is so interwoven with it.

Getting lost

I was bored on Friday night and needed to get out of the hotel, so I figured I would start driving and see where I ended up. Bahrain is not that big of a place, so one really can't get too far off the beaten path or really get "lost" since there are so many signs around to point you back to Manama or the airport or some other area I could find on my pocket map. My general plan was to head south since I had not seen the lower 80% of the island at all.

I figured there wasn't much down there in the south, but all the same I was a little surprised by the emptiness of it. For some reason, I kind of pictured Bahrain as a small, but crowded country. Not so, small it may be, but it has plenty of wide open space in the southern 2/3 of the country. I distractedly noticed the pock-marked landscape while driving (Did I mention that this country, even out in the "hinterland" is very well lit by electric lights everywhere?). I didn't pay much attention to them at the time, being more concerned with watching the road and keeping some idea of my general whereabouts, but learned today at the Bahrain National Museum that those little hills are actually thousands upon thousands of burial mounds...people having inhabited this place for at least 7000 years.

The southern half of the island is very empty and industrial. I passed a military air base and some refineries as I drove down a beautiful smooth highway with virtually no cars on either side. The highway went nearly to the southern tip of the island. From what I could tell nothing much was down there, other than some resort housing on man-made islands. The development or lack thereof in the south didn't really seem to justify such a nice road, but maybe the road comes before development. At any rate, I headed back to Manama without having seen much on the way down. On the way back, I managed to take a few detours into little neighborhoods, with streets barely wide enough for my small car. It was not the most comfortable feeling - driving down those streets at night, not knowing the way out of the maze, and wishing I had a co-pilot with me, but it all worked out fine. Situations like that where I'm making every effort to avoid other human beings and being as inconspicuous (if that's possible for someone like me, even at night and in a car) as possible, really make me think what a shame it is that there's such distrust among people. My job keeps me well informed as to threat levels in various places, so I'm fully cognizant of what can happen (though Bahrain is very safe), and I guess that knowledge, while keeping you on your toes, also makes it tougher to trust anyone, especially at night in an unknown place. And so you end up making every effort to avoid everyone. Too bad really.

I made it back to the hotel around 1 am after being gone a couple of hours. The next day I got up and headed over to the Bahrain National Museum, which was interesting for the digital overhead imagery of the entire country of Bahrain painted on the floor of the main room. Not being sure where I had really gone the night before, I was able to walk along my route and figure out where I had been, which for someone like me that loves maps and exploration seemed serendipitous. The museum itself was certainly worth a visit, though not a long one.

After leaving, I tried to get directions to a gas station, which failed as usual. I am utterly unable to receive directions from people in foreign countries. In Latin America I thought this was due to a deficiency in my Spanish, but even when the person speaks passable English, I just can't seem to upload directions properly. No one gives you street names though...it's just turn here, turn there...doesn't work for me. I need directions laid out for me in a linear fashion - descriptions each step of the way. You don't get that often in other cultures it seems. Not sure if this is due to some different way of conceptualizing things on their part or something simpler, but at any rate, when I'm overseas I never get where I'm going by following my interpretation of the directions I just received.

And so I ended up just asking him to point me in the direction and give me a rough distance...forget about how to get there...just give me a direction and distance. This didn't work that well, and I ended up driving around for quite awhile before I found a gas station; by the time I found one I really was scared I was going to run out of gas...the gas light having been on since I got to the southern part of the island the night before. I'll mention that gas stations in Bahrain are few and far between, and the one station that I knew of was closed due to the pumps being broken. When have you ever been to a gas station in the States where all the pumps were broken? Thankfully, at least the gas was cheap...under $1 a gallon.

Intersections

It took me nearly an hour to drive home from work here in Manama last night. It's a trip that usually takes me 10 minutes. The chaos was partly caused by a road being closed, and exacerbated by people continually blocking intersections. In fact, blocking intersections is very common here. It's not uncommon at all for a car to sit blocking an intersection, holding up lanes of traffic from the other side, while a policeman or two sit impassively on the corner observing it all, yet doing nothing. The police just can't be bothered to do anything to help the situation. As I sat in traffic observing all of this, I got to thinking about Bahrain and its culture. Here you have a country that imports most of its labor from South Asia and the Philippines, to the point where non-nationals outnumber nationals.

Taking that thought a little further, we Americans are nothing more than imported labor as well. Driving or walking around, no one here really pays me any mind. I'm just another imported worker from abroad. What's my role? I'm here to help prevent this country and some of the other Gulf States from being overrun by the Persian hordes. When we think of Iran, many of us might think that only the US, Israel, and a few European countries take the Iranian threat seriously. Not so - the Gulf States, to include Bahrain, are quite wary of Iran as well, and I have no doubt that fact helps explain our presence here. The United States might not export a lot of tangible things these days other than agricultural goods, but we still do export our culture, and more relevant to my situation, war. (We'll call it 'security'.)

So if you're Bahrain, at the national level the decision has been made that allowing in all these foreigners is desirable, since with their presence you don't have to do those jobs yourself. As for the jobs you do have to fill with citizens, such as police officers (presumably), if the people filling those positions aren't able to take the initiative and make much of a positive contribution, you'll just live with the results and chalk up the resulting inefficiencies to culture.

Inshallah.

Bahrain

View Bahrain in a larger map





I luckily got the opportunity to come over here to Bahrain. I wasn't supposed to be on the list of those that came over, but it worked out for me, which I was glad for since I'm always happy to see a new place, wherever it may be. With the trip only being about three weeks, I can more or less consider this "deployment" a Middle Eastern vacation as much as anything else, since I'm well accommodated out in town and will have a few days off to see what sights there are.

Bahrain has a fairly large US military presence...one that seems to be growing. The headquarters for the Navy's Fifth Fleet is here, and the Marines have a couple of units here as well. The country itself is primarily located on one big island, the northeastern part of which is dominated by the city Manama, the capital, where we live and work. The whole country has maybe 1,000,000 folks and occupies some 620 sq km, making it about 3.5 times the size of Washington DC.

I have to say it's a little odd walking around freely in a Middle Eastern country. This is the first time I've really been "out" in the Middle East despite all the time I've spent in this region. I'm getting used to it, and the ever-present English on the signs makes getting around easy. Most of the workers that you might interact with in gas stations, stores, hotels, or restaurants are foreigners who speak English, often Indians and Filipinos. Like Dubai, Bahrain does not have enough local workers to support its economy, so it brings them in from abroad in large numbers - of those million people that live here about half are non-nationals. The strength of the Bahraini economy (supposedly the "freest" in terms of government regulation, taxes, etc. in the Middle East) has resulted in quite a few skyscrapers in downtown Bahrain and malls are pretty common. The buildings and roads are not much different from what one would see in an American city, though I'd be hard pressed to remember a place that had more construction cranes working on buildings in various stages of development. I can't believe that a market exists for all these buildings at this time, but when/if another economic boom hits the world I'm sure they will be ready for it. Walking through the souk (market) today we saw all the same fake goods you could expect to see in markets around the world. The watches are "Genuine good fakes!" according to one of the stall owners we spoke to briefly today.

The liberal attitude that prevails here results in a lot Arabs (often Saudis crossing the causeway that connects Bahrain to the mainland) coming to Bahrain on the weekends to explore the vices. We checked out a few bars last night and found them to be largely devoid of females, but everyone seemed friendly enough. I wanted to check out the clubs but none of my friends were interested. The majority of the folks out in the bars are dressed Western-style, but you'll see the odd traditional dress. The local women are more often than not covered up more or less completely in their black robes, though the foreign women dress how they want. Interesting to see such different styles side by side for both the men and women, but they co-exist peacefully enough it appears.

The little base where we work is quite nice. Much like the oddness I feel of being in public in a Middle Eastern country, the base has some strange aspects to it as well that I'm still getting used to. The base almost feels like a college campus since there are few roads and you walk everywhere on little tree-lined boulevards. You must park outside, walk through the security checkpoint and then head for your building. It just doesn't feel anything like a military base, but everything is very convenient and I have no complaints at all.

As for the driving, the cars are pretty similar to what we see back home. Not surprisingly, you'll see more small cars and compacts here than anything else, and few SUVs or trucks, but the cars by and large are the same makes and models we have back home. The driving is pretty tame and police do pull people over. The roads are wide and well cared for, so nothing is really interesting about the driving other than the traffic lights, which show yellow before green to give drivers a heads-up. I like that system - it kind of feels like a race with lights like that...gives you that countdown almost. They've got the lights set with a pretty good cushion of time between red on one side and green on the other - a fact that the drivers seem to be well aware of, since they will run red-lights blatantly. And they do let their women drive here. When a car is stopped on a merge ramp holding up traffic trying to get onto the road, don't be surprised to see a black-cloaked figure behind the wheel. Got to be tough to merge when one is wearing a mask with a small slit to look out of.

We drove out along the causeway today until we got to the entry point for Saudi Arabia, at which point we had no choice but to turn around. What we could see of Saudi in the distance just looked empty and brown as you might expect. I'll mention here that they are planning to build one that goes the opposite direction to Qatar, by the way, which will be the longest bridge in the world when/if it gets completed.

I think that's about all I've got for now. I'll be here another 10 days or so.