Page 55 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

building which they confidently supposed was the burial place of an
Pcarles* and ‘the finest asses in the world*. The pearls were from Bahrain
and the asses were the white donkeys for which Bahrain used to be
famous. In 1521 Bahrain was taken by the Portuguese after a bloody
battle. It was under the rule of an Arab chief from the mainland, who
was killed in the fight. His head was cut olf and taken in triumph to
Hormuz and the King of Portugal granted to the Portuguese Com­
mander the right to assume the title of ‘Baharem’ after his name and to
add a ‘King’s Head’ to his escutcheon in recognition of the conquest. The
Portuguese held Bahrain till 1602, in spite of frequent rebellions by the
Bahrainis, who on one occasion crucified the commander of the
Portuguese garrison.
These were the days when the Portuguese, the English, the Dutch and
the Persians fought for supremacy in the Gulf; later the Turks joined in
the fray and made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Bahrain. At another
time a Turkish Admiral, Pir Beg, visited Bahrain with three ships loaded
with treasure from the sack of cities. One of the ships sank, somewhere
in the shallow waters around the islands. No trace of it has ever been
found but when I was sailing I often looked dowm into the clear water
and wondered whether some day a pearl diver would come across the
hulk of the Turkish galleon with rotting chests full of golden coins.
In later years we often visited the Danish archaeologists from the Pre­ who were always pleased to see us, especially if our small son was with
historic Museum at Aarhus, who have been working in Bahrain, in the
cold weather, since 1953. Every season they made more exciting and
important discoveries, establishing the fact that Bahrain was inhabited in
the Palaeolithic period and that it was ‘the myth-surrounded site of
Dilmun’, a city which is mentioned in Sumerian and Babylonian inscrip­
tions in the third millenium b.c. Merchants from Dilmun traded between
Iraq and India, carrying, among other things, ‘fishes’ eyes’, the unattrac­ sometimes reached 90 degrees, so it was refreshing afterwards to bathe in
tive name which in those days was given to pearls. Around the Portu­
guese fort, and underneath it, the archaeologists discovered the walls of
the ancient capital of Bahrain, for the Portuguese evidently chose the site
of the old city on which to build their fort. At another place, off the
Budeya road, they found three temples, one built above the other, the
oldest from about 2500 b.c. Before long they will probably solve one of
the few remaining archaeological mysteries in the world—which is the
identity of the people who are buried in the vast necropolis, the largest
cemetery in the world, containing some 100,000 burial tumuli, which
covers over twenty square miles of the north end of Bahrain island.
Sometimes the expedition makes surprising discoveries. In 1957 they
dug deep below the foundations of the Portuguese fort and found a
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important person—perhaps a king. People were invited to attend the
opening of the ‘tomb’ and there was much speculation and excitement
about the treasure which might be found. The tomb was opened. To
eve rybody’s astonishment the building contained two sets of W.C.s.
They were quite unmistakable, very much the style of those which are
^till used all over the Middle East but with a stone drain leading down
from what may have been a water tank. Flippant people described them
as ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gents’; the Arabs found them more interesting than any
of the ancient buildings which had been disclosed—they came out in
busloads to view ‘the oldest set of W.C.s in the world*.
In about 326 b.c. Alexander the Great’s fleet was voyaging along the
Persian coast, after his expedition to India. Two of his ships visited Tylos,
as Bahrain was then called. Not long after I came to Bahrain some men
digging a drain behind the house found an earthenware flask decorated
with circular bands, on one of which were fragments of Greek lettering.
I spent a long time trying to decipher the inscription but without success.
Later I showed it to someone from the British Museum who shrugged it
aside with the words, ‘Yes, the Greek alphabet, a common form of
decoration.’ Yet I learnt Greek at school!
Sometimes we visited a police post and drank coffee with the men,
us. He had a young friend of his own age, the son of an escaped slave who
joined the police. He was called ‘Johar’, which means a jewel. He was very
black, with shining white teeth and bright eyes; he attached himself firmly
to our household and was known as ‘the slave of Hamed’, the Adviser’s son.
On Fridays, the Moslem Sabbath, we often drove to a garden on the
coast where there was good bathing. The heat of the sea in the summer
a freshwater spring on the shore, though the water in the springs and
artesian wells came out of the ground at a temperature of 80-83 degrees.
If we picnicked near a village the Bahama would invite us to drink coffee
with them. Then we sat in a garden or in the shade of a house, on a ragged
old carpet, drinking coffee and discussing the date crop or the pearl catch.
One might expect to pick up more than one bargained for sitting on a
dirty carpet, but all the time I was in Bahrain I never saw a flea. •
There were none of the ill-mannered children and youths who now
swarm around Europeans in country places demanding ‘baksheesh* and
often damaging cars if they are left unattended. The deterioration in
manners is the fault ofjheuEuropeans: Many of them have strange ideas
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