Page 69 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

always seemed to expect me to support them; nor did they easily accept
then, after some time, lie became our butler, a post which he held for
any suggestion from me that their policy might sometimes be wrong. several years. One day lie came to Marjorie and said, ‘Please, I want to
The Resident in the Persian Gulf, of course, and the Political Agent in leave your service.’ ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘You are doing quite well here.’
Bahrain, ranked senior to me, even in my later years when sometimes the He told her that he wanted to work in the bazaar, in a shop, so reluctantly
Political Agents were young men with little experience of the East. let him go. After some time he hired a tiny ‘hole in the wall’ shop
wc
However, on the whole I managed to steer a straight course, doing my in a side street. If he had anything suitable we used to buy from him and
best to placate the Shaikh when the Politicals did something unusually he often came round to tell me how he was getting on. He seemed to be
tactless and persuading them to adopt a milder tone when they considered prospering and he moved to a larger shop, with a boy to help him in the
it incumbent on themselves to express official disapproval. All tilings con­ work. After a year or two he rented a shop in the main street, with a .big
sidered we got on very well together, though I expect some of the showroom, plate-glass windows and a storeroom. He bought some land
Politicals thought that I was a great nuisance and I, at times, thought that and built a house and he sent his eldest boy to school—at Brighton. His
some of them were very tiresome. Bahrain was a small place and the shop is now one of the most up-to-date shops in Manama. The year
personalities of the British and the leading Arabs acquired an undue im­ before I left we had been staying in Holland; when we returned Moham­
portance so that sometimes policy was affected by personal likes and dis­ med, as usual, came to see us. ‘I saw you when you were in Holland,’ he
likes. Shaikh Hamed once said to me, ‘I am like a man on the top of a said. ‘How was that?’ I asked. ‘I was staying with some Dutch friends,’ he
wall, with the British pulling me one way and my people pulling me the explained. ‘I was on a golf course and saw you drive past in a car.’ The
other way.’ I was well able to appreciate his feelings. only people in our household who did not altogether appreciate
‘ What changes there had been in my first fifteen years! In 1926 there Mohammed’s successful rise were our servants. I always felt that they
was only the shadow of an administration; Customs and police were the resented the fact that our one-time kitchen boy used to come and see us
only organized Government departments. There were two schools, one and sit in the drawing-room, which he used to dust.
Municipality and no Government hospitals. There was no budget, vague Another old man in Muharraq began life as a water-carrier. He
accounts, a ‘court* which could hardly be described as such, with neither became prosperous and his sons were wealthy men, but all through his
rules nor regulations, a bad state of public security—people went armed at life he kept the yoke, on which he used to carry tins of water, hung on a
night—no electricity or water supply, and roads which were almost non­ wall in his house, to remind his sons that they had started from humble
existent The mail came once a fortnight; there were about a dozen beginnings. He died leaving a considerable fortune, buried under the
Europeans in the place and the shops sold few European goods. But the floor of his room, which was the subject of a law case which went on for
cost of living was very low, there was no unemployment and the years. As soon as the old man was dead the sons removed and threw away
Bahrainis seemed happy and contented, although conditions in the the yoke. Some people said that it was because they did this that after
villages had hardly changed in the last century. their father’s death they ceased to prosper.
There had been social changes among the people, more in the towns Before 1926 the- Arab tribes living in Bahrain, such as the Naim and
than in the villages, during those fifteen years. As far back as 1926 a new the Bin Ali and, earlier on, the Dawasir, played an important part in
element was emerging, a Middle Class, made up of merchants, shop­ affairs. Their allegiance to the Khalifah family had been encouraged by
keepers and small landowners; somejof them were ^hi^. As the pearl grants of land and they had become wealthy from the pearl trade. As the
industry declined the merchant princes of the pearl trade ceased to wield industry declined the tribes became impoverished and the young men
influence and their place was taken by traders and shopkeepers. Many of broke away from tribal dependency. Today few of the younger genera­
them were self-made men. An example of this was someone to whom I tion attach importance to their tribal origin, and the fact that a man be­
will refer as ‘Mohammed’. longs to the Naim, or the Bin Ali, carries no social prestige, except in the
Mohammed started life as a kitchen boy in our house; he u$ed to sit eyes of the Ruling Family, who still remember the help that was given
on the table in the scullery studying a tattered English-Arabic school to them by the tribes in the pastT Sometimes I used to see some dignified
book, teaching himself English. H e was promoted to ‘second boy’ and • but shabbily dressed old Arab, followed by two or three tall sons, looking
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