Page 37 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

broken his vow of silence, for he still occasionally visits the office and
enquires when I am returning.
The doors of our house, which was above the office, with stairs
leading up to it from the veranda, were never locked in the daytime and
very rarely at night. Some time before the last war a German woman
journalist, on the staff' of the Frankfurter Zeitung, who was highly recom­
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mended by the British authorities, visited Bahrain. She came to call on
me one afternoon. I was out, the office was shut and the servants were in
their quarters. Nothing daunted she climbed the stairs, walked into the
drawing-room and had a good look round. Later, in what I must admit Variety’s the very spice of life,
was a very complimentary article, she gave a detailed description of the That gives it all its flavour.
William Cowper. 1731-1800
room, describing the pictures and the flowers and the ornaments, and
marvelled at the state of public security in Bahrain—which made possible
Oh, had I a hound for the chase! And a hunting falcon!
her rather impudent adventure.
And a litde camel! We should place a saddle upon it—
We should ride between the troop of the chief and the migrating
tribe,
We should call the hound. We would cal], and the falcon would
hunt.
Translation from an Arab song. In the Arabian Desert.
Alois Mush. (1931)

T I was taken on by the Shaikh was ‘Financial Adviser’. But I soon
he official designation which I was given by the India Office when
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! found that dealing with the finances of the State, which in the early
days was a comparatively easy matter, was only one of the many duties
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which I had to perform. The Shaikh discussed with me and asked my
advice about not only the affairs of the State but many more personal
matters, such as the care of his gardens and property which for years had
been mismanaged by dishonest agents, the endless requests from relations
and others for grants of land and loans of money, loans which were rarely
repaid, and family rows, which were frequent. The Khalifah family was
not a ‘family* as we know it. It was a tribe made up of some 150 house­
holds with several different branches and any trouble among the family
was referred to the Shaikh.
In my first five or six years we had very little revenue and we had to
practise strict economy, but every year Arabs from all parts of the Gulf
made trips to Bahrain asking ‘help’, which meant money, from the
Shaikh. After oil was found they came in greater numbers, though for
some years we were only a little better off than before the discovery of
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