Page 73 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

latecomers arrived and the general noise almost submerged the sound of
the band, who paid less attention than usual to their music as their interest
was centred on the horses which they were backing. Altogether there was
a real Derby Day atmosphere on Bahrain race days. Six races were run
with eight horses in each race. Most of the jockeys were Arabs, but some­
times a few Europeans rode and occasionally there were one or two
European women riders; I was always relieved when they reached the
finish without mishap. It was clean racing. There were rarely any inci­ Thirteen
dents for the stewards to deal with and I can only remember one rider
being warned. The great event of the day was the Bahrain Derby, a mile
The trivial round, the common task,
race, for which, besides the money prize, an inscribed silver cigarette-box
Would furnish all we ought to ask.
was presented to the owner of the winner. Shaikh Sulman was sometimes
John Keble. 1792-1866
rather bashful about the number of inscribed silver cigarette-boxes on the
tables in the palace, but then his horses were far and away the best in
Bahrain and seemed to win however heavily they were handicapped. ife under the new regime continued much as it had been before
Shaikh Hamed died. On Tuesdays and Saturdays Shaikh Sulman
came to the office and I usually went to see him once or twice
during the week. He and I were the same age, or within a year of each
other, and this made it rather awkward for ill-disposed people who,
later, would have liked to suggest to him that his Adviser was getting
too old for his job. Shaikh Sulman was mere active than his father and
had a more extensive knowledge of the organization of the Government.
In appearance he resembled his father but he was not so tall. On the wall
i in my office I had two large photographs of Shaikh Hamed and Shaikh
Sulman; people who did not know them well often mistook one for the
other.
The end of the war made no appreciable difference to the people
1 of Bahrain. Rationing and price control continued for several years,
though, by degrees, certain goods were released from control. To
celebrate the end of the war the Shaikh gave a dinner, Arab style, to
which he invited about 400 British, American, Indian and Iraqi soldiers
and sailors. Most of them seemed to enjoy the entertainment though
some of the British troops found it ‘a funny sort of idea to have to eat
1
1 rice and mutton without a knife and fork—at a party, too!’ When I
explained to them that it was the Arab custom they looked disbelieving.
In the last year of the war there was a good pearl catch and the price
of pearls in the Indian market was high; pearl merchants confidently
prophesied a revival of the pearl trade and many men who had been
divers, who were now working on shore jobs, left their employment
and signed on again as divers with their boat captains..These optimistic
132
133

v«