Page 11 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

One morning I said to Daly, ‘Where arc the Government offices?*
kept the water cool in porous earthenware jars. Sanitation was what is
He took me to them. The Customs House, Court and the Shaikh’s office
were in two ramshackle Arab houses near the pier. Most of the Customs
clerks were Indians, working under Claude dc Grenier, the Customs
Officer, who, with a young police officer, seconded from the Indian
Army, were the only two British officials in the Shaikh’s service. The
Shaikh’s office was presided over by Haji Seggar Zayani, a charming old
Arab with a white beard, who knew everything about everybody in
Bahrain, but nothing about files, typewriters or office management. But
he gave me valuable help, teaching me the way I should go, in a kind,
fatherly manner. He worked in my office till he died. Cue or two of the
young clerks who worked under him spoke a little English,
The police headquarters was in a fort behind the town, and there was
a police station in the middle of the bazaar, in a converted shop. The only
school was in Muharraq; there was a Municipality in Manama which was
presided over by the Shaikh himself, thus giving the force of law to any
decision. Later, I persuaded him to delegate the presidency to another
member of the family, which he did very willingly. The American
Mission had a small hospital and there was a Sub-Assistant Surgeon
attached to the Agency. He had a few beds in rooms below his house
which had the resounding title of the ‘Queen Victoria Memorial Hos­
pital’. Town roads were unpaved and those in the country were desert
tracks. Many of the houses on the edge of the town and in the villages
were ‘barastds’, made of date-sticks and matting. Water, from distant un­ began giving small dinner parties. I still have some of the menus and they
hygienic streams, was sold in the bazaar. At a higher price one could buy
water from a well, ten miles off, which was carried into the towns every
day in skin water-bags on the backs of donkeys. But the people looked
fit, cheerful and contented.
After a few days we moved to temporary quarters in an old Arab
house overlooking the site of the new offices which were being built.
Above them was a flat, which was to be our home. The ground floor,
which was full of rats, was used by the owner of the house as a store. We
had, two island rooms, which served as bedroom and living-room, an
expanse of open roof, and two lean-to sheds. One was the kitchen, the
other was a bathroom. There was no electricity so we used candles and i all these things.
oil lamps; the candles melted and the lamps gave out a great deal of heat
and threatened to explode when there was any draught. An. old water-
carrier came daily with two tins of brackish water slung on a yoke across
his shoulders. ‘Fresh* drinking water was collected from the mail boats,
which called at Bahrain once every fortnight. As there was no ice we
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known as the ‘Indian system*, which entailed a sweeper. Cooking was
done, very successfully, on a mud fireplace, with charcoal. Our three
servants cost us jTy a month, which I thought expensive, but during our
last year in Bahrain our servants’ pay was jT6o a month. The walls con­
sisted entirely of badly fitting half-glazed doors; they rattled and jangled
in the slightest wind. Daly lent us some bits of furniture which we used
until our own things arrived.
I was nervous when I first took Marjorie to see the ‘house’. It was
not a good introduction to housekeeping in the East. But she was quite
contented with it although it was tiresome not having any cupboards in
which she could hang her clothes and only a small spotty mirror in which
she. could, survey the rather elaborate trousseau which she had brought. It
was ver y different from the conditions in which she had lived at home. Our
first public appearance was at a party given by the Mission, attended by the
whole European community—about a dozen people. Marjorie, tall, slim and
fair, came in for a great deal of admiration from both men and women.
We were encouraged by watching the rapid progress of the new
building. From dawn till dusk we heard the monotonous song of the
Persian masons who worked on it. Everything in the house, including
our wedding presents which arrived later by boat, was permanently
covered in a thick layer of dust from the building operations below. But
in spite of all domestic difficulties we enjoyed life and Marjorie soon
seem to me, now, quite surprisingly elaborate with, usually, five courses:
soup, fish, meat, pudding, savoury!
Years later, when young men or married couples arrived in Bahrain
and at once began complaining about not having enough air-conditioning
units, or large-enough rooms, or the wrong colour scheme, I used to tell
them how we lived when we first came out. I found, however, that their
comment was: ‘Yes, that’s all very well, but in those prehistoric times the
amenities which we need now, which, you know, are really quite essen­
tial, did not exist. Now that they are available they should be provided.*
Yet we, and other people, too, worked and lived very happily without
Four days after we arrived in Bahrain, on Easter Sunday, the Shaikh
invited us and the Dalys to dinner at his country house at Sakhrir, in the
middle of the island. I was apprehensive about this first meeting because
• L found so much difference between my Egyptian Arabic and the Arabic
of Bahrain. We drove out in two cars; the party was the Dalys and their
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