Page 112 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

alarmed the responsible Bahrainis. Some of their supporters were re­
putable men but these concealed their political sympathies, being afraid
to incur the displeasure of the Shaikh. When they came to sec me they
expressed strong disapproval of The Committee, but it seemed to me
that they ‘did protest too much’.
The Committee was afraid of openly attacking the Shaikh but had
no scruples over attacking me. I became the subject of scurrilous
libels in the Press of the Middle East and in anonymous letters and
notices. My friends and my family were more upset by this than I was. It
was a very difficult time for Marjorie. People used to come to her with
news of what was being said about me and sometimes what was said was
very violent. However, she used to pretend not to be worried and she
went on with her work at the girls’ schools, where she was loyally
supported by the staff. I was disappointed to realize that so many of the
things which I had worked hard to achieve, such as Education, Security
and Public Health, were now the objects of bitter attack by the people
who benefited from them. So ended 1954. It had been a troublous, diffi­
cult year, both for the Shaikh and for the people who worked for him.
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Twenty-one
At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.
Thomas Tusser. 1524-1580
hristmas and New Year were great occasions in Bahrain. The
Arabs regarded these days as being almost as important as their
own holidays. There was some reason for this in the case of
Christmas for Moslems venerate Jesus Christ as a prophet, but the official
celebrations which were held by the British authorities on January 1st
commemorated the day on which Queen Victoria was proclaimed
Empress of India in 1877, an event in which the people of the Middle
East are not now interested.
On Christmas morning, after going to early church, we had a hurried
breakfast and usually before we had finished the first guests arrived. We
received them in the Veranda Room, where chairs, close together, were
ranged along the sides of the big room. The household servants and the
‘sparrows’ from the office hovered in the background with coffee,
sweets and biscuits. From about 8.30 a.m. until r p.m. visitors poured in.
They greeted us, drank a roimd of coffee and then departed. Marjorie and
I sat at opposite ends of the room talking to the people who were near us;
one could discuss the same subjects, as the people to whom one spoke
changed every few minutes. It was a democratic gathering; senior
Shaikhs would find themselves next to gardeners and policemen, mer­
chants would be alongside town watchmen, and sometimes men who
had been in jail visited us, looking only slightly awkward. Moslems, Jews,
Christians and Hindus came together and even some of the young men
who professed to disapprove of me called on us on Christmas Day. One
year we counted the callers; there were between four and five hundred.
' When the last visitors had left our servants transformed the room back
to its normal state and the luncheon guests arrived. They were Govern­
ment officials, leavened with a few outsiders. We and some of the senior,
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V.