Page 62 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

‘Mother of sabaan shells*. Thornburg sank an artesian well and put the
co do, but at the same time I asked him for permission to build a little
northern part of the island under cultivation, and after-the war he and his
house at Jidda where I could retreat for week-ends and escape from
wife used to spend many months every year on their island, living in the
telephones and callers without being quite inaccessible in case of an
delightful house which they built and entertaining many of the Americans
emergency. The house was built by prison labour with a local mason. It
and British who lived in Bahrain as well as interesting visitors from
was perched high on the top of a cliff above the little pier with a steep
abroad—writers, travellers and diplomats. The low white house in which
path leading up to it. It had thick stone walls and looked, at a distance,
the Thornburgs lived, almost hidden by the branches of tropical trees, like a miniature Scottish keep. It was a modest building, consisting of a
stood in a grove of date- and coconut-palms facing a long avenue where !
I sitting-room with a bedroom above, reached by an outside stair, a little
oleanders, covered with a mass of pink-, white- and red-scented blossoms,
dining-room and a roofed loggia. The big window in the sitting-room
met above the path. Some of the windows faced the sea towards the
overlooked the sea below the cliff' and from the other side of the house
rocky island of Jidda, which at sunset was sharply silhouetted against the
there was a view across the garden to the strip of deep blue water which
sky. There was good bathing in the sea and in the big swimming tank on
separated the island from the mainland. At night the western sky was lit
the shore, shaded by palms, close to the house, and around the island there
« by the flares of burning gas in the oil field on the Saudi Arabian coast.
was first-rate fishing. In 1958 the Thornburgs decided that they could no
Sea birds circled round the tower and in springtime in the early mornings
longer spend part of every year in Bahrain so they handed back the
the desert skylarks used to sing. The island was a great place for birds, and
island to Shaikh Sulman. Many people will remember with pleasure the
many nested there. In the winter the gales beat against the wails and we
gracious hospitality which they enjoyed on the island of Omm as
were glad to have a big fire burning in the open hearth, made of drift­
Sabaan.
wood, which sent out bright green flames.
A mile or two beyond Omm as Sabaan, westwards across the sea, I used to work in the garden with the prisoners; though some of them
was Jidda, another little island which was unlike any place in Bahrain,
had been sentenced by the court on which I sat they seemed to bear no
with high, steep cliffs and enormous yellowish-grey rocks which looked grudge against me nor was it thought odd that the Adviser to the Bahrain
as if they had been split asunder by an earthquake. On this island stone
Government and Commandant of Police should work in a garden with
had been quarried to build the burial chambers in the tumuli and, later,
jailbirds. As the years passed we made a very fine garden. Among the
for the Bahrain fort. On the smooth face of one of the cliffs was an in­
date-palms there were flowering trees and shrubs, flamboyants, coral
scription in Arabic, dating from 1561, commemorating the cutting of the
trees, pomegranates, hibiscus, lantana, cork trees and avenues of oleanders
100,000th stone for repairing the tower of the fort. When I first explored
which produced numbers of hybrids of different shades. In the garden,
Jidda there was no fresh water on the island and only one solitary palm
shaded by seven different kinds of trees, with heavily scented jasmine
tree on the strip of level land below the escarpment, but I liked the place growing around it, I built a bathing tank. After spending half the
and I found it cooler and less humid than the mainland of Bahrain. I
morning in the sea I used to retire to the tank for another long bathe.
decided that, if water could be found, Jidda would be a suitable place in There was good bathing from the pier and quantities of fish around it,
which to keep our long-term prisoners—in those days there were very which the prisoners caught on lines or in traps and which, when they had
few. We sank an artesian well. It turned out to be a gusher, with a head
a big catch, they dried in the sun. Once I brought back a fish spear from
of water over twelve feet high of better quality than the water in Kashmir and had some success in spearing big fish, until the barb was
Manama. Some simple buildings were put up to accommodate the few , broken by striking a hard coral rock. The prisoners used to wander in
r ' prisoners and the police guard. They were built of local stone and and out of the kitchen, bringing vegetables from the garden, or firewood
much of the wood which we used was driftwood from the shore; later a or bunches of flowers—usually tightly tied bouquets—for the house. I
large jail was built against the flat side of a cliff which had been a stone think they looked forward to the times when I visited the island. One day
quarry centuries ago. when I was in the pool in the garden an old prisoner who worked there—
A few years after ‘Devil’s Island* had been established the Shaikh he was ‘in* for gun-running—spoke to me quite severely because I had
wanted me to postpone my summer leave until the winter; this I agreed left niy watch and signet ring on a stone near the tank. ‘You should not
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