Page 128 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

from Bahrain, which fully came up to our expectations. I then went back
programmes from the TV stations in Saudi Arabia on their television
to the Clinic from which I did not emerge until almost two months later, sets, the shops arc full of American clothes and expensive electric gadgets,
having had a very serious operation which, fortunately, was successful. over 7000 motor vehicles crowd the roads, groups of hideous Europcan-
This was the first time that I had been in a hospital since I had typhoid style bungalows spring up like mushrooms and posters advertising ‘soft’
fever in Egypt when I was in the Army in 1917- drinks disfigure the streets. Arab dress has become old-fashioned among
In hospital I had ample opportunity to look back on my time in the younger men, and the women and girls wear European clothes under
Bahrain. Except towards the end it had been a happy life, and it was hard cheir black cloaks. In the summer there is an exodus to Europe and the
to realize that I was not returning to my work there. It did not seem like Lebanon by those who can afford to travel, who have discovered that their
thirty-one years since Marjorie and I, still on our honeymoon, first health will not permit them to spend the hot season in Bahrain, where
landed at Manama on a morning in March 1926. The memory of our early they were born and bred. I11 the villages, however, life goes on much as
days was still fresh in my memory. What changes I had seen since then! it did thirty years ago. But the people are healthier, no longer ridden with
The term ‘The Unchanging East’ is now a misnomer, for in no part malaria, they live in better houses, they have a far higher standard of
of the world are changes taking place more rapidly than in the East. I had living than they had, most of their children go to school and they are well
watched, and tried to guide, the development of Bahrain from an provided with hospitals. They have electricity and water supplies, they
obscure little Arab state into a place of commercial and political im­ travel in buses, or on bicycles, instead of on donkeys. There is no taxation
portance. I had seen the transition of the Bahrainis from a simple agri­ and no unemployment, and there arc opportunities both in Government
cultural and. sea-faring community into a community mainly dependent service and in the oil company for intelligent young men to rise to respon­
on a great modem industry, the production and refining of oil. During sible posts, but still, I doubt if the people are any happier than they used
my time the revenue had gradually increased from an annual income of to be.
about £100,000 to about £5^ million a year, and I had witnessed the Education, travel and, most of all, the propaganda power of the radio
emergence of a political consciousness among the people and the growing have exposed the Gulf Arabs to outside influences and have filled the
pains of democracy. minds of the Intelligentsia with political ideas which appeal to their
Thirty years ago, when only a handful of the inhabitants had any j emotions, but which they understand imperfectly. As the most effective
education and few of them travelled abroad, the Bahrainis concerned, part of this propaganda is directed against the British, the feeling of the
themselves exclusively with local affairs. Such politics as existed centred Arabs towards the British has changed for the worse. The Intelligentsia in
around the personalities in the islands, and people were not susceptible to the Gulf are a very small proportion of the population, but they are now
influence from abroad. The British, who controlled the Gulf, were re­ the people who matter; they come from the ‘white collar’ class of young
spected, not owing to ‘gunboat policy’, for that had already become an townsmen, the rest are inarticulate and not interested in politics. The
outmoded method of ‘persuasion*, but because they were represented in Intelligentsia are mentally confused, they are dissatisfied with the British
the Gulf by men who understood the Arabs and who adhered to a clear- i and with their own Governments, but I have heard them argue that if the
cut policy. The people were happy, the only thing which roused them Gulf states were a British colony, at least they would enjoy certain
were sectarian differences. Living was cheap and their tastes were simple, advantages, such as a proper legal system and a stricter control of the
their way of life had changed very little in the last century, and Western activities of the police. As it is they have the British on top of them, inter­
fashions and habits were unknown to them. Their commercial con­ fering in internal affairs only when it suits them, without giving the
nections were with India, where they sold their pearls and whence they people of the Gulf any of the real advantages of British rule. Arab
imported their food supplies. They were not interested in the affairs of Nationalism has a strong appeal to them, it satisfies their desire to be a
the Levant. part of one great body, not small isolated units. At the same time I do not
Today Bahrain is unevenly coated with a Western veneer. In the believe that many of them would welcome the prospect of being directly
towns radios blare from every house and coffee shop. The six cinemas in controlled by Cairo.
Manama are crowded every night, people watch ‘canned’ American In Bahrain the young men who have been at school and those who
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