With fading profits from their sweet-water pearl industry and decades later the short-lived oil boom of the 1930’s, (and its collapse forty years on) Bahrain now relies heavily on oil refining, international banking, and aluminum smelting. Pearling and oil production is now done on a much lesser scale.
While the country’s economy depends on a strongly industrialized working sector, a significantly educated professional class also exists.
A thriving multi-ethnic labor-force from India, Pakistan and the Philippines reside and work on the island, while multi-national corporations locating their regional offices in Bahrain account for the constant flow of other nationalities. An American Navy Base maintains steady and temporary personnel.
For longer than a century Bahrain was a British protectorate, a fact evidenced in the usage of English as the common language for commerce and the working medium.
What I love here is the assortment of dress. Men are garbed in their white thobes -- loose fitting, ankle length, long sleeved robes, their white or red-checkered headgear (the guttrah), a square scarf held in place at the head by a black or sometimes white double coil made of camel hair called an igaal. There is a regal sense as people pass or drive by. I am mystified by women in their black abayas as well, some covering themselves entirely, only showing their eyes and hands but nothing else. Some others wearing exclusively western dress. Customs and habits vary according to background and those who cover themselves entirely mostly keep the company of others of similar thinking. Within the Islamic majority of Bahrain, roughly 75% are Shi’a Muslims while 25%, including the Royal Family, are Sunni. Shi'as share a conservative viewpoint while Sunnis seem to be more open to the west.
Bahrain and its smaller islands survive by importing most fresh foods from neighboring countries; Saudi Arabian dairy and poultry items are common as are European and Asian goods for the benefit of the expatriates who make nearly 40% of the population. Some produce is farmed locally such as Bahraini dates. I've also seen tomatoes, lettuces and cucumbers growing in nearby villages,that kind of production however, is kept for personal consumption.
From a gastronomic perspective, Bahrain offers a multiplicity of cuisines inherited through cultural exchange and migration. Arabic and Middle Eastern are favorites, but also Indian, Turkish, Pakistani, Persian and Malay food please the palates of the many foreign workers who are partly responsible for Bahrain's upward mobility.
The Manama skyline combines ultra-modern sky scrapers and time-honored Arabian architecture -balancing Western and centuries-old Arabian traditions.
Within the imposing silhouettes of minarets and domes lies the spirit of Islam and its universal values. As with all other faiths, Islam is inspirational -the call to prayer- most evenings as I prepare dinner, fills me with hope and I wish for tolerance and fair balance among all sects within this and other persuasions.
On clear crisp dusky eves, from the tower heights along the King Fahad Causeway which links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, the visible parts of the Bahraini island resemble a canopy studded with brilliant domes and spires rising magnificently in the twilight skies. If one is lucky enough to be there at ‘adhan’ (prayer) time, the invocation prayer coming from several mosques at graduated times is one of infinite beauty.
