Page 519 - Belgrave Diaries(N)_Neat

... at times the members and the head master got very excited and angry. Afterwards I came back and
carried on with the court till 2.15. As we only have one or two more courts before Ramadan there is a great
rush of cases. Motored out a little way in the afternoon and then Mrs Holmes came to tea. She stayed a
long time. Ali bin Hussein called to see me very agitated about the Biladya intrigue. De Grenier and Howell,
the R.A.F. man who has come down to do their building, came to dinner. He is very like the sort of man who
would come to mend drains or paint a house, we played Bridge, he had no idea of the game so altogether a
most awful evening. The Howell man had not even got a dinner jacket. Very trying having to entertain such
people in ones house.

Tuesday 28th January 1930

Office. M called on the Kanoos in the afternoon and I went up to the Biladya garden, later Mr and Mrs
Adham came to tea. He is our Inspector of Education, a Syrian from Beyrout University. She is very young
and quite pretty, looks like a French girl and dressed in European clothes. She was quite talkative, he seemed
rather silent. In Beyrout she was accustomed to go about everywhere unveiled and used to play tennis etc
but here, in order to placate local feeling she never goes out except heavily veiled. The Tutor came in from
Sakhrir, he had been having a very thin time out there and evidently all the servants were up against him and
when the Shaikh's back was turned they all made it as uncomfortable as possible for him. He stayed some
time but eventually went back there in a more contented frame of mind.

Wednesday [29 January]

Court. Went out to Rafaa in the afternoon to call on the son of the Amir who died very suddenly a few days
ago. I forgot to write that last night I went out to dinner with the son of Shaikh Mohamed who married the
daughter of a man living close to the house. I didnt care for the party as all the people were members of a
very obnoxious clique who are up against the Government. The only redeeming feature was the Sunni Kadi,
Shaikh Abdul Latif. The conversation before dinner was entirely about James, what he ate, what medicine he
took and how he slept. They thought it quite wonderful that he slept all night, they said that their own
children wake up at frequent intervals and have to be fed in order to make them go to sleep again. They
have no system of regular meals. The Arabs are very fond of their children but spoil them completly. The call
at Rafaa was a difficult one, a meglis full of men sitting all round the walls and hardly any talk. The chief
person in the room was Shaikh Hamud bin Subah who I tried for murder some months ago and he was not
exactly amiable, however it was a call that had to be done. Rafaa is the most picturesque town in the islands,
it is built on a rocky cliff and is partly walled, the house of the Amir has towers and battlements like a castle,
down below there is a sandy plain with a tiny oasis in the centre, a bunch of palms with a well in the centre of
them where the best drinking water in Bahrain is produced. The Amir's son is rather a nice young fellow, he
was at Basra for a term at the Mission School.

Thursday [30 January]

Court. There was a meeting of the new Biladya Council at Muharrak but I did not attend. Much trouble
about the Biladya intrigue. Sent for one Ibrahaim Kamal and ticked him off in Court. He is a nasty little man