Page 43 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

sprinkled scent and rose-water over the occupants. I was in the car with
the Shaikh and wc were thoroughly soused with scent; it took a long
time before my clothes were free from it. Marjorie and my small son
were in another car and he greatly enjoyed this novel demonstration,
especially as the shopkeepers besides spraying on scent handed trays of
sweets and biscuits to the people in the cars.
The bazaar was at all times a fascinating place and remarkably clean
and free from smells, unless one ventured into the section where dried
fish were sold. The big stores with plate-glass windows, full of European
and American goods, cameras, cosmetics, electrical appliances, American
tics and shirts and everything that anybody could possibly want to buy,
had not yet been built, and one saw none of the unsightly advertisements
which now disfigure so many of the roads and streets. The narrow lanes r 1he history of the oil concessions in the Persian Gulf is, from a
were roofed with matting, the interiors of the shops were like dim little
caves, but shafts of sunlight pierced the matting and spot-lighted some of
the gaily coloured objects which hung on the shutters of the shops. My
favourite comer of the bazaar, which I tried many times to paint, was
where the Persians sold spices. They spread their wares so far into the
lane that only a narrow passage remained between the shops, but it was
wide enough for me to ride through on my pony, as I often did before
breakfast on my way back from visiting the police at the fort. The spice
bazaar was a symphony in browns and yellows. On wooden stands out­
side the shops were ranged baskets piled high with yellow saffron, dried
rosebuds, orange-coloured peas, dark-red chillies, cloves, cinnamon and
pepper, mysterious coloured powders and roots, tamarinds, all kinds, of
spices and cones of loaf sugar wrapped in butcher-blue paper. The air was
pleasantly scented with an aroma of spices and rose-water and the
merchants reclined lazily on old Persian rugs in the dim recesses of their
little shops, dozing or telling their prayer beads. As one passed they would
call an invitation to drink a cup of tea with them. At the top of this dusky
lane, framed by the shop sides and the roof, was a larger shop whose front
caught the sun which lit the vivid green glass of great flagons containing
rose-water, brought to Bahrain from Persia, and picked up the colours of
dark red Bokhara carpets and the yellow, white and orange-coloured
cloths hung on strings across the dark interior of the shop. In this quiet
backwater of the bazaar business was done in a lazy sort of way. The
street was too narrow for motor traffic and bales and sacks were carried
to the shops on the backs of big white donkeys, for which Bahrain used
to be famous, decorated with patterns of henna on their heads, with
usually a few blue beads hanging from their necks, to avert the Evil Eye.
78
Seven
Oil to make him u cheerful countenance.
The Bible
British point of view, a sad story. Towards the end of 1922 the
Eastern and General Syndicate, a small, purely British concern,
whose representative in the Gulf was Major Frank Holmes, commenced
negotiations with King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud for an oil concession over
35,000 square miles in the province of Hasa on the eastern side of Arabia.
The Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) is now producing
more than sixty million tons of oil a year in this area. Between 1922 and
1926 Holmes was successful in obtaining tor his Syndicate concessions in
Hasa, Bahrain and the ‘Neutral Zone’, an area lying between Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia, shared between the two countries. The British Syndicate
was unable itself to explore, develop and operate oil fields owing to lack
of capital. It did not even own an oil derrick! The Syndicate approached
the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) and also Burmah Shell, with
the object of coming to an arrangement for joint working, but neither of
these companies would play. It then tried to interest other concerns in the
project. No one was willing to back it. After hawking the concessions
around with no success the Syndicate, in 1927, with the approval of the
British Government, concluded an agreement with Gulf Oil Corporation
(American) whereby Gulf Oil acquired the options on Hasa, Bahrain and
the Neutral Zone. Shortly afterwards Gulf Oil transferred its rights to
another American company, the Standard Oil Company of California,
the parent of the Bahrain Petroleum Company. This transfer was made
in order to satisfy the conditions of the ‘Red Line Agreement’, about
which one heard much at the time, which precluded Gulf Oil, or any of
the other British, American or French interests in the Iraq Petroleum
Company, from acquiring separate concessions in an area which included
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. This, briefly, is how it happened that more
79 .