Page 30 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

open windows, causing my silugi dogs to bark violently. At the same
It was after this incident that the Shaikh instituted a Diving Council,
time a boatman came in with the news that crowds of divers from
which met two or three times in the year to discuss any amendments to
Muharraq had landed on the shore and had seized all the poles and oars the diving rules, to decide the amount of the advances and the date on
in the boats. I got my car and turned into the sea road, but seeing in front
which diving would begin and to hear any new suggestions, but as the
of me a solid mass of men, waving sticks and crowbars, advancing to­
members of the council were pearl merchants and captains they were apt
wards the bazaar l wheeled into a side street, meaning to get ahead of
to regard all new ideas, such as the introduction of mechanical apparatus
them. In my excitement I entered a narrow lane and jammed my car, so
for diving, with a good deal of suspicion and disapproval. When some­
I got out and ran to the police station. I arrived too late. body mentioned the possibility of producing cultured pearls in Bahrain
The mob had broken into the police station and released the men in
the suggestion was received with horror. Cultured pearls were forbidden
whom they were interested, while the rest of the prisoners sat cowering in Bahrain; in one case when two men were found to have ‘planted’
in the corner of the lock-up. Three or four of the newly enlisted local
cultured pearls among the catch from a diving dhow they were sentenced
police were on the roof of the building. They had recently taken over to seven years’ imprisonment. In another case a man from Qatar of the
from the Punjabis. The square outside and the sea road were full of wildly Al Bakor family who mixed cultured pearls with real pearls was im­
excited divers, now intent on raiding the bazaar where the shopkeepers were
prisoned and then banished from Bahrain. Hitherto Bahrain pearls had
frantically closing the light wooden shutters which protected their shops. enjoyed a unique reputation throughout the world and any suggestion
Facing the mob, at the entrance to the bazaar, was Shaikh Rashid bin that they might be mixed with cultured pearls would have damaged the
Mohammed, the Shaikh’s father-in-law, a son of the redoubtable Shaikh
whole industry.
Mohammed bin Khalifah. He was at this time over seventy years old. He I used to preside at the meetings of the Diving Council, and towards
had nothing but a light cane in his hand, but he advanced on the divers
the end of my time in Bahrain the members admitted that l knew as
and on seeing him they halted. I joined him and I shall never forget the much as they did about the rules and customs of diving, though I never
sight of the old man, his red, dyed beard quivering with fury, laying possessed any expert knowledge of pearls. The meetings were noisy and
about him with his cane and telling the mob what he thought of them
sometimes acrimonious, with everyone talking and shouting at the same
and of all their female relations. Suddenly l found one of my servants, a rime, and a stranger entering the room would have supposed that serious
young Arab, beside me clutching a rifle, a stout stick and one of my trouble was brewing. Most of the men were greybeards, all dressed in
presentation swords from the rack in my dining-room. He said he thought
Arab clothes with no concession to Western ways. One or two of them
I might need them; I took the stick and was glad to have it as in the melee
were illiterate. Some had started life as divers, but usually they were men
which soon ensued fists were inadequate. descended from generations of sea captains and there was nothing which
By this time more police had arrived, among them some of the re­
they did not know about pearls, diving and the sea. They were rough in
maining Punjabis, and fighting developed all along the sea road; later the their speech, never hesitating to say, forcibly, what they thought of each
Amir appeared with his armed guards. The police used their rifle-butts, other, or of me when I disagreed with them, which was not infrequent,
but the Amir’s men started firing wildly. Eventually the divers were dis­
but they were easier to deal with than some of the sophisticated young
persed, but not before several of them had lost their lives and a number Arabs who are now members of many of the Government committees.
of the police were injured. Next morning, by the Shaikh’s orders, the
ringleaders were arrested; they were brought to the market place in
Muharraq and given ten strokes each in front of a large crowd, and then
released and ordered to go back to their work. From that day there was
no more trouble over the diving advances, the divers eventually realizing
.. that the reforms which they had opposed were to their own advantage,
and they came to believe that what the Shaikh and I were doing was
intended to improve their conditions.
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