I say he was the King.
My husband says he was just a Minister.
Either way, our story begins:
It was another scorching hot Friday at the Grand Mosque in Bahrain. I left the Women’s prayer hall, retrieved my shoes, and crossed out into the large veranda outside the Mosque’s side entrance. Waiting for my husband to emerge, I looked for a spot that would be less prone to an onslaught of men leaving the Mosque after Friday prayers.
Where to go? A river of men was about to come from up front, flowing straight ahead as well as to the right. And unusually enough, there were three police officers – two men, one woman – standing half-casually, half-warily to the left. Gingerly, I took a place near a corner pillar on the right, and commenced the waiting. The onslaught of men began.
An Arab passed by – with long white robes, grizzly beard, sunglasses, and a red checked head cloth caught between his teeth. Now, it has been my experience that some of these Arabs have learnt how to speak Urdu/Hindi, in an effort to better communicate with the large majority of labourers in the Middle East. Much to my detriment, I witnessed an example of this at that moment.
“Purdah lagao, purdah lagao.” (“Put a curtain up, put a curtain up”) The Arab gestured towards me in a disgusted sort of manner.
Heavily annoyed, yet mindful that I was at a Mosque and that it would be unseemly to create a scene, I gravitated towards the left and took standing room next to the female police officer. I didn’t want to be told off by another guy. And that, I thought, was that.
I was thinking of the particularly gross nature of the aforementioned offensive Arab, when there emerged another Arab from the Mosque entrance. This one was slightly older than the first. He had no beard, but a moustache instead. The sunglasses were most certainly there. There was also a white head cloth, along with the long white robes… But placed on top, made of some thin material, was an additional robe adorned with gold embroidery. I thought I had seen this man and the robes before. Of course…. The Malik, King of Bahrain.
Having recently received a ‘scolding’ from an Arab man for being visible, I wondered if it would be okay for me to give a polite Salaam to this much older man, or whether it would be seen as an indescribable offense. In my confusion, I mumbled something and looked downwards – and was immediately gratified to see a pair of plain, worn black shoes on the dignitary’s feet, his heels still jutting out from behind – like a little boy, or a man in a hurry. Yet he moved very slowly. No wonder he was lifting his robes as he went by, and shuffling his feet… His shoes weren’t on right!
I felt an almost motherly tenderness towards the simplicity of this man. Men are men, after all.
A single black BMW stood waiting by the veranda. The man - the King – went to it, and shook hands with a few elderly Arabs who were either with him or had gone forward to meet him. I did not look on longer – I had my own husband to watch out for – and eventually left with him without looking back. But it had been a refreshing thing to look upon while it lasted. Royalty that was polite, simple, and had a certain amount of humility.
When I described the scene to my husband, he argued that the golden robed Arab was probably just a minister and not the King himself. I could have been mistaken because of the sunglasses, and maybe other people wore the same gold robes. But King or Minister… Both belong to the Royal family of Bahrain (the democratic system here is what in other, more Western countries might be called hogwash) and the fact that a Minister or King could walk around so simply, and could enter and leave a mosque so inconspicuously, really appealed to me as a Pakistani.
After all, anyone living in Pakistan currently would agree with me. With every other Minister, Member of Parliament, and certified Bandit going about with escorts; with road blocks placed for every other idiot who ever managed to manipulate a poor man’s vote; with each road-stopping escort comprising of 39 vehicles or more, including police vans, motor bikes, ambulances and BMWs; it’s a wonder we can move at all in that country. For God’s sake, people – or rather, I should say politicians, for a Pakistani politician and a normal, reasonable person are two very different things… Don’t make the local transportee’s life so difficult that he/she wishes that somebody actually would attack you and get things over with. Learn a little from the Arab counterparts whom you denounce so much, and yet mooch off of no end. Sure they have their faults, like anyone else. But at least they don’t evoke the curses of the whole city when they go to their local mosque for Friday prayers
