First Impressions - Bahrain

A short piece published this month (April 2006) in the Gulf Weekly. I was in Bahrain on and off for four months in the autumn and winter of 2005/06 to research and produce two films - "Bahrain - The Roads To Democracy" and "Imagine bahrain". This followied the production in the summer of 2005 of a three one hour series "A Man Of Our Times" for Emirates Media - a documentary series in Arabic about the Life and times of the founder of the UAE Sheikh Zayid bin Sultan al-Nahayan.


Preconceptions are the excess baggage carried by any traveller visiting a place for the first time.

So it was when I first flew to Manama last year on business. I knew something of Islam and the Arabs from working in the Emirates in the summer, but little about Bahrain. So I expected a similar experience.

My first surprise was finding a people with a long history who were as familiar with my world as I was unaware of theirs. I was also struck by the warmth of both the welcome and the weather.

On my first evening in Manama I discovered two enduring delights - sweet melon juice and the intoxicating aroma of Sheesha.

In the ensuing weeks I avidly gathered images of Bahrain by digital camera, but some things can't be so easily captured - the humour of Bahraini people for example or their ease in English, but surprising difficulty with classical Arabic.

Grasping the subtleties beneath the surface of Bahrain is harder and would probably take a lifetime for an outsider.

But a disturbing aspect was Bahrain's drivers. This is a nation speeding in more ways than one. Bahrain's hurtling cars are metaphors for a drive to develop Bahrain, clearly visible in such amazing projects as the Financial Harbour and World Trade Centre.

But it’s a country where speed is also a killer. Nearly every day I saw the grim aftermath of this fascination with supercharged motoring. Hopefully Bahrain's journey into the future will end more happily.

Other enduring impressions are positive. The passionate articulacy of the children we took to film at the Shura; great food in Adliya; the grace and beauty of Bahraini women in their elegant Abayas; the call to prayer resounding over the waters of the Gulf from several mosques and happy families on the corniche at twilight.