Page 9 - DILMUN 9

Manjoor music controlling their activity, The women
in their shrill, piercing voices, sang traditional
songs of a touching artlessness, urging the
captain not to be too hard on the men, bidding
« • 0 •
fA - to the boat sail true and steady, the sea to be
imv/A •UM. gentle, the time to pass quickly, and so on.
They celebrated the return of the fleet with
joyful zest. Fluttering the tip of the tongue
against the palate, they produced the loud,
shrill sound that is called ‘yi-bab’ and which,
*l! rising above the beat of the drums and
tambourines, sounds like some strange instru­
ment rising to a crescendo.
.V
At intervals during the months of waiting,
the women would assemble on the seashore
mmmm and practise a kind of sympathetic magic to
hasten the safe return of their men, each ritual
accompanied by its traditional song. Among
these was the throwing of a purgative into the
sea, so that it would purge itself of the boats.
Another was the torturing of a cat, either by
twisting its ears or throwing it in the sea. The
cries it uttered were held to resemble the
Arabic word for ‘ coming ’, and this, on the
principle that like begets like, was taken as an
indication that the boats were returning home­
It was a hard sad life, prematurely ageing. ward.
Few divers lived much beyond forty years of
age, even if they escaped the perils of sharks, Tamboora
jellyfish and other hazards of the deep. A
negligence on their hauler’s part could easily
end in death, and the great depths at which they
worked inevitably affected their hearts. The
crews too suffered from the hardships of their
life.
This melancholy awareness of the fugitive
nature of their existence pervades F’jeri music.
There is a peculiar sadness, fatalistic acceptance
of hardship and danger, which gives it its
special character.
It is an art extremely rich in idiom and
imagery, the repository of much of the tradi­
tions of the Gulf, and, now that pearling as an
industry is virtually extinguished, it is beginn­
ing to excite the attention of the generation
educated from oil-revenues for whom the world
of pearl diver and sea captain has the appeal of
‘Old, unhappy- far-off things and battles long
ago’.
The divers were the heroes of their communi­
ties and, when the pearling fleets set out for the
banks, the whole population would assemble on
the shore to see them go, and the day of their
return was eagerly watched for and awaited,
and celebrated with the appropriate songs.
Each stage of the business had its particular
rhythms and songs, from the hammering in of,
the first nail of the boat to its launching, its
departure and so on. Each operation by the
crew had its own chant, the rhythm of the