Dunya's Bahrain

Since the unrest in Bahrain started, I could only think of my Bahraini friends and what they were going through; I would recall their thoughtful quiet concern for me and my family when we were facing our own forms of conflict in Lebanon, and I shuddered at the analogy. That sweet island nation that I had always held as the pride of the gulf (from the opinion of an expat who grew up in one of the gulf states), that country and those people were too sweet and, well, innocent to become jaded like us.

The twist that drove me completely mad was when the ripple effect of a Lebanese leader’s speech led to the discontinuation of all flights between our two countries, also cutting off phone connections. We were left to the one last channel of communication – the gracious internet.

I was ecstatic to see Dunya appear online and could not find larger letters in which to greet her. Her sweet subdued greetings were immediately followed with a sardonic “See, we can’t come to Lebanon these days”. I could imagine her mirroring my disappointed restrained smile at her end of the connection, and a simultaneous unspoken thought “thank goodness they managed to come for a visit to Beirut late last year”.

I wanted to know how she and her family were, if the images we were seeing on the news were accurate or exaggerated, and I wanted her to write about it. I so desperately wanted to hear the inside voice of someone as secular and balanced as her infusing the overriding discourse with simple humane insight. She had already started it with a short poignant email that she sent to her friends, simply saying “My name is Dunya, I’m not Sunni and I’m not Shiite: I’m Bahraini; I want to live in peace and justice”. This would be the sentiment she would repeat when I asked how she was, “we are all a mix in Bahrain, you see it in my family and others (families of mixed religions) and we are all okay… (how can) we have a clash between Sunni and Shiite? We never thought of it that way, we were always only Bahraini.” She was upset at this instigation of sectarian confrontations, insisting that they represented a smaller portion of Bahrainis trying to change the system, which was not accepted by all of them. “Even here”, she continues, “we say that not all who acted were Shiite”. And right then came the exclamation that news reporters and politicians often overlook, “I just hope everything will finish soon”, she sighed, “so we can get back to normal life.”

These are the voices that people needed to hear, I insisted, and went on trying to persuade, push and goad her into writing something, at how important it was for the outside world to access what was actually happening on the ground. “We are trying”, she would say, “but we need them to be stopped first…” I would insist, then she would demure “I am not a good writer”, I would continue with offers to assist, trying hard not to push her too far. I paused, waited for a response, a little silent lapse was followed with “will try, but writing is very emotional these days”.
I stopped. I just continued with our chat instead, and found myself asking her when we were wrapping up if I could share what she had told me with others.

“I know you know more thank you think, you met my family which gives you a sample of what it is in Bahrain. I am Bahraini, the thought of being Sunni or Shiite was irrelevant, we live in one house and you can see that I am Sunni, my sister is Shiite, but quite simply we are all Bahrainis.” She continued, “We all need more rights in Bahrain, as everywhere, but we want the royal family because we don’t want the country to be ruled by religious men, like in Iran or Saudi Arabia. When I was in the UK, I hated it when people looked at me suspiciously because I am Muslim (because of my veil), as if I was the one who had a hand in what happened in the US or the undergrounds, so I will never do that to a Shiite. I believe that in this world we have two types of people: good people and bad people, regardless of religion and ethnicity.” Dunya was raised in a Sunni-Shiite home and I asked whether that balance from inside the family and home might have had the larger influence on her. “I’m sure it has”, she said, “but this is how we all lived in Bahrain. I might have been more affected, but you will see that even Bahrainies today, when this is passed and forgotten, they will get back to how we were. As we always say ‘al deen lillah wal watan lil jamee’ (religion is for God and the country is for all)”.

But if that was the overriding Bahraini sentiment, then why were some people resorting to protests and clashes and touting them as rights along sectarian lines? “Politics is a dirty game”, she said simply, “people play it for their own agendas.” As much of the protest was against the royal family, I wondered for a moment what would happen to Bahrain without them, “We would be like Lebanon”, she stated plainly, the analogy that I had chased away at the beginning of our chat re-emerging on its own. “We would end up in civil war, because the Shiites and the Sunnis will fight for everything, and religious leaders will rule. So, yes, we do need change, we all say we deserve a better life, more freedoms, more rights, but removing the royal family is not the way to get those things. Besides, those factors are not all controlled by the royal family, and if you compare us to other gulf states, it’s clear that Bahrain is better off than the others.”

With that insight, I was suddenly a little more confused and had to ask what other factors were there, then, that stood in the way of reforms? My wise diplomatic friend lobbed it back at me saying “people like you will know the truth without me saying it; some will only believe what they want.”

The subject somehow changed, could have been by either one of us, as we both needed a breather to take in all that was said. I was still bewitched by her response when I asked her what it meant for her to be a Bahraini. She was quiet for what seemed like a very strained minute and replied “Bahrain nour el ‘ein (Bahrain is the light of my eye)”. That statement took my breath away.

We got a little distracted with news of impending storms when she said, “You know, when the tsunami happened in Japan, I told all my friends (Sunni and Shiite) that it would be very bad if we died hating each other, so let’s work for improvement instead.”

Well said.

You Get Proud by Practicing - A poem by Laura Hershey

I feel sad that I found Laura Hershey's work so late in the day, after she had passed on. I have not been able to let go of this poem since I read it, and felt it really needed to just keep spreading.

You Get Proud by Practicing
by Laura Hershey

If you are not proud
For who you are, for what you say, for how you look;
If every time you stop
To think of yourself, you do not see yourself glowing
With golden light; do not, therefore, give up on yourself.
You can get proud.

You do not need
A better body, a purer spirit, or a Ph.D.
To be proud.
You do not need
A lot of money, a handsome boyfriend, or a nice car.
You do not need
To be able to walk, or see, or hear,
Or use big, complicated words,
Or do any of those things that you just can’t do
To be proud. A caseworker
Cannot make you proud,
Or a doctor.
You only need more practice.
You get proud by practicing.

There are many many ways to get proud.
You can try riding a horse, or skiing on one leg,
Or playing guitar,
And do well or not so well,
And be glad you tried
Either way.
You can show
Something you’ve made
To someone you respect
And be happy with it no matter
What they say.
You can say
What you think, though you know
Other people do not think the same way, and you can
keep saying it, even if they tell you
You are crazy.

You can add your voice
All night to the voices
Of a hundred and fifty others
In a circle
Around a jailhouse
Where your brothers and sisters are being held
For blocking buses with no lifts,
Or you can be one of the ones
Inside the jailhouse,
Knowing of the circle outside.
You can speak your love
To a friend
Without fear.
You can find someone who will listen to you
Without judging you or doubting you or being
Afraid of you
And let you hear yourself perhaps
For the very first time.
These are all ways
Of getting proud.
None of them
Are easy, but all of them
Are possible. You can do all of these things,
Or just one of them again and again.
You get proud
By practicing.

Power makes you proud, and power
Comes in many fine forms
Supple and rich as butterfly wings.
It is music
when you practice opening your mouth
And liking what you hear
Because it is the sound of your own
True voice.

It is sunlight
Wen you practice seeing
Strength and beauty in everyone,
Including yourself.
It is dance
when you practice knowing
That what you do
And the way you do it
Is the right way for you
And cannot be called wrong.
All these hold
More power than weapons or money
Or lies.
All these practices bring power, and power
Makes you proud.
You get proud
By practicing.

Remember, you weren’t the one
Who made you ashamed,
But you are the one
Who can make you proud.
Just practice,
Practice until you get proud, and once you are proud,
Keep practicing so you won’t forget.
You get proud
By practicing.


More can be found about Laura Hershey, including her publications and how to order them, on her webpage: www.laurahershey.com

Remembering Usama…

“I should go…”, still seated, he pauses for a moment, looks towards the people walking in and out, almost as if he expects to see Usama among them, then finding him in a unique Usama-story or fond memory, he turns back to tell me all about it. He needed to talk about you, and I needed to listen and remember you and mirror the conservative smile lightening his sad grey face. It felt like we were two survivalists huddling around our memories of you to keep warm. The somber arrangements were very fitting of your stature, but they were too contradictorily dark to your generally buoyant nature. We missed you and we needed to bring you back through your stories.

It was natural that you were thus the hero of our stories, but what quickly emerged was that you were a hero in each of the stories. Calming one crisis with absolute logic, or wittily restoring dignity in another; deflecting our irrationality with kind humour, and encouraging us instead to colour outside the line and look at it all a little differently. When my brother first met you and asked what it was that you did, your spontaneous response was “I play”, and that’s how you made everything seem. I always thought I’d arrived on the scene too late to have had stories with you, but as I started to cling on to what my memory contained of you, I was happy to find that there were a few there… What I will hold on to most avidly is that excited feeling in the last few minutes as I would be approaching your house, when the same thought always came to my mind: “I wonder what Usama will be teaching me today…” Any day that revived my anticipation of wonder and reminded me just how vast the world was, was a good day.

I will miss you, Usama.

Abandoning Hope

I am going to throw out a theory that collections are outcomes of good intentions. Perhaps a better, and less politically correct, synonym for collections is ‘piles’. The piles that grow around your desk, next to your favourite armchair, or on top of the laundry hamper in the bathroom, on the kitchen counter, next to the washing machine, or just behind the door. These piles of newspapers, articles, missing parts, slightly broken pieces of unrecognizable function, bags, gift-wrapping paper, ribbons, half-used notepads, pens you didn’t like and have been meaning to pass on to someone who might – let’s face it, they really are just piles of stuff. They were not accumulated with the mind of a collector or archive-r or any such noble notion, but simply out of the pure good intention that they will be read, used, fixed, distributed.

In my attempt to organize one such pile, I bought a new wicker basket, carried it by hand when I travelled, and arrived to find that it did not fit under my coffee table, nor was it sufficient to hold my dusty and overflowing collection of newspaper supplements and magazines. Acting of their own accord, my hands smoothly switched from packing to throwing away. The time had come to abandon all hope – I was never going to find the time or the motivation to read all that was contained in what had become more than 5-years’ worth of collecting, nor was it necessarily interesting to read any more. It was time.

Having spent years with the misguided belief that I would miss these papers, or miss out on some nugget of wisdom or crucial knowledge for not having read them, I was a little surprised to find how oddly (and paradoxically) liberating it was to just eliminate them completely. This little epiphany unraveled an ‘energizer bunny’ sweep of the house and all its crevices as all piles, in all their different shapes, forms and functions, were duly eliminated or downsized to a bare minimum. And let me tell you something, not only did I feel liberated, but equally refreshed and rejuvenated.

As it turns out, abandoning hope is the flip side of embracing clean slates and clearing the ‘pending’ guilty conscience checklist, and truly could not have felt better. This got me to wonder what else was piling up somewhere in our worlds and would inevitably lighten our load and spirits if we were to abandon it?

Not surprisingly when living in a country such as mine, my first thoughts strayed to politics and politicians, and the daydream led me through the possibility of pressing an imaginary ‘reset’ button (more like an ‘eject’ button) and the clean slate that would follow. I am sure that we, as citizens and voters, would soon fall into the same patterns as I will with my slowly creeping piles, but I also know that having gone through the purging process, we would be wiser as to what we would choose to take a chance on and keep, and what we would throw out on the spot. Just picture the process devoid of any additional considerations of the length of time we’d held on to it/them, or the single creative but impractical idea (or hope) we’d had when we stumbled on it/them – elements that frequently give piles a false sense of value.

So before you discount abandoning hope as an escapist, defeatist measure, I suggest that you first gauge its ‘purging’ value, and assess if you really are holding onto treasures, or just deadweights.

Little War Drummer Boys

Though that was my favourite Christmas carol, I am not referring to that little drummer boy, nor to the soldier-looking nutcracker, nor to any other military type Christmas character (why are there so many?). We have, in Lebanon, spawned our very own species of drummer boys that only beat to the news of war. Most of the time, if not always, when they start beating, there’s usually no-one behind them – no troops whose arrival is being announced, no decrees or referendums being carried by messengers, no convoys of arms, or goods, or investments for which to make way. The sad thing is, if they beat long enough and hard enough, any or all of these do suddenly appear behind them, as if from nowhere.

Talk of war creeps into all conversations with practically anybody. I was at a dinner party recently when one of the guests asked another, who happens to be one of my mentors, what he thought about the possibility of war. The guest was right to ask my mentor, a knowledgeable reference, who then proceeded to give him a rather impressive, holistic and scientific analysis of the situation, indicating that based on historical patterns and power balances, nothing in the current situation pointed to the possibility of a war the like of which has been drummed into the ether. Joining this conversation was another sweet man, younger than my mentor but of comparable intelligence and critical thinking, lacking a historical depth in his analysis, and the objectivity that comes with age, but no less impressive in the arguments he presented. Though his analysis was on clearly parallel lines to those of my mentor, he could not completely silence the thoughts of war ricocheting off the back of his mind and could not conclude by fully discounting the possibility of war.

As I stood listening to this exchange, I felt that I was being presented with a representative sample of the population in Lebanon. My mentor represented the 0.05% who were able to detach from their emotions and political affiliations and assess the situation based on patterns and an intuitive know-how that only experience nurtures; the sweet man engaging him in the analysis represents 10% of the population who are aware and smart enough to pull the facts together into a critical analysis but have not yet attained that additional fifth dimension that allow them to stand back a little from their chosen ideology. The guest, the originator of the question, represents the remaining 89.95% of the population who express their concern for the situation by asking the question to someone whom they think knows better, and gains nothing from the rich discussion that he instigated (watching it as he was like a tennis game) other than retaining some statements that he will then go on to repeat in other conversations where someone else in his percentage category will ask the question. Some of those will be asking the question out of their pain, finding little comfort in any of the answers, recognizing that something is just not right but they can’t understand it or figure out what to do about it. My heart aches for them and for their continued suffering because, quite frankly, I feel their pain.

You will notice that this representative sample does not include the drummer boys. I have serious doubts that the drummer boys still belong to the general populace as they seem to have inhabited another plane that magically never touches the ground. And while I wait for the 0.05% and the 10% to bring others into their categories, I look forward to the day when we can confiscate the drummer boys’ drumsticks, and burn them to a silent crisp.

Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum…. Here we come.

The Long Farewell

It has now been two weeks since I’ve been back in Beirut, three weeks since I left Jaffna, and the last installment to my Jaffna diaries remains suspended in images that still inhabit my dreams, and memories that resist being committed to paper, where the stillness of the printed word will solidly put them in ‘the past’ and out of my ‘anecdotal present’.

I was lucky to recognize how happy I would be to come back to Beirut, because leaving Jaffna was not easy by any measure. My Sunday walks through the town, originally conceived as a mode of therapy to get me out of the house on the very still weekends, became such a joy of adventurous exploration, and such generous scenery for my amateur photography, that my departure countdown included checking off the imminent end to these little pockets of simple joy.

My initial feeble attempts at socializing with my non-international colleagues had borne fruit when I wasn’t looking. Weekend lunches for the ladies at the only house where there were no men (mine) became such fun that I wondered why we hadn’t had that many more during my short tenure. One of these lovely ladies commented that it felt as if we were childhood friends, and I must admit that my mind refused to compute why leaving Jaffna meant that there would be an end to these light-hearted gatherings that felt like part and parcel of my every day. The men, sweet as they are, were never invited to these gatherings, where I could picture their soft shyness getting in the way of any fun (for them, undoubtedly providing much fodder of fun for us), and I always wished when in their presence that I spoke better Tamil so that I could share a joke and put them more at ease. Their own witty jokes, whispered in Tamil under their breath, and given away only by the bursts of laughter that follow, were always so refreshing in our larger gatherings, even if I didn’t ‘catch’ the joke. The dynamics echoed those of an extended family, with members that are different and diverse, but also supportive and loving.
Two weeks in Beirut, and three weeks since I left Jaffna, I find that I miss the cultural criss-cross that we (I) had finally learned to maneuver, and the calm, warm company of my little Jaffna family.

Funnily enough, my last couple of weeks in Jaffna, ticking away louder than a Swiss cuckoo clock, resisted sentiments of ‘endings’ and kept hinting of yet more ‘beginnings’. The biggest task attached to my departure had to do with selling my electrical appliances and houseware, and I was lucky to find a buyer who was more than willing to take it all. He had, in fact, just arrived to Jaffna, and moved into a large, renovated and very empty house just days before I was due to leave. He wasn’t my replacement or even in my agency, which made the sudden barrenness of my flat, emptied of its possessions, ring of his new tenure in Jaffna rather than the end of mine. I was delighted to share with him stories of the various acquisitions, some as rare finds in Jaffna markets (which were stark around the time of my arrival) and others as ‘essential’ tools that were carried back from Beirut or Colombo. I smiled as I realized that he would one day sell them to someone else arriving in Jaffna, and that I had in some small way contributed to the comfort of future waves of internationals in this charming and remote Northern town.

Packing my office, however, was unlike any of my previous experiences. In the past, I would be packing with a sinking feeling as I came across pieces of project ideas that I never got to see through, or projects in their sensitive phases weighing me down with guilt that I may not have done enough to ensure their safe continuation. In the past, I would be ‘loudly’ labeling files and boxes so that the contents don’t get buried in a shroud of ill-knowledge, and so that my conscience is not burdened with the possibility of losing that which had been entrusted to me. In the past, however, I was working mostly on my own, and among the many thrills of working in a team is being able to pass on said files and boxes to them, sharing the odd project idea that did not come to life during my stay, and leaving it all in their capable hands. The programme was running before I arrived, and would successfully continue after I left. My empty desk, with all its files happily migrated to other inboxes, looked as it did when I arrived. Without any traces of me, it rang of someone else’s new beginning, and I hoped that their experience would be just as happy.

In so many ways, I was grateful that I could slide out of the office relatively painlessly, because I could not have been more emotionally drained from farewells to colleagues and partners. It is always humbling to find that you have been ‘seen’ and appreciated, and immeasurably rewarding to be told that you have made an impact. It was enough to make me wonder whether I was wise to leave this for a new adventure where I had no guarantees of success! But that was just a mere tickle compared to how blessed and lucky I felt.

Lucky! HA! The joke there lies in the past, in the beginning, when I first landed in Jaffna and became physically ill in my first few days, probably a shock to my system from the travel, the heat, and the ‘gasp’ at what would be my home for the coming year. The joke is that I should have greeted this experience in that way, and that, a year later, I would be unable to look back and speak of anything but my gratitude for my good fortune to have been there, because there was nothing hard that wasn’t balanced out – or even outweighed – by a little luxury, kindness or typical Jaffna charm.

It was not easy to leave Jaffna. The finality of my departure sunk in like a ton of bricks as I was being driven to the airport, a trip that was normally light-hearted because it meant I would be going somewhere with hot-water showers and fresh meat, was now just plain sad. It finally dawned on me that I would not tread these streets again with my camera in hand, that I would not be seeing these lovely people any time soon, and that I may never have an adequate reason to come back to this sweet charming town that will forever occupy a chapter in my personal history. As I shook hands with the air force staff, who had been so kind in various trips in and out of Jaffna, trying to modestly emphasize that I was leaving for good and receiving nothing more than a light, though warm, goodbye in return, I realized that I was one of many expats they have met and bade farewell to over the years, that this event that I was viewing as momentous was something of a routine for them. I realized that, when all is said and done, Jaffna had made a bigger impact on me than I did in return, and that it was the perfect swan song for one phase of my life as I returned home with a clean slate and dreams of drastic changes. And I shall always feel lucky and grateful…

Glorious Sunday

Last night saw the farewell party of one of my closer Jaffna friends, marking her last Saturday in town. It was a beautiful evening with the rare attendance of practically all the internationals, only one being away on leave, and as I looked around the group, I realized that most of the old faces had left and been replaced, and that I too would be leaving my seat relatively soon. This has come to mind more than once since I announced I would not be renewing my contract, and I found myself already nostalgic for certain Jaffna-isms, wanting to take extra care in affixing particular details firmly in my memory.

This Sunday had made its way on that list, tying together all the bits and pieces that made it a practically perfect day. A gentle respite from the beating sun and the messy winds and sporadic, aggressive rains, it is the first day in my 10 months in Jaffna that I was able to turn my air-conditioner off all day, letting the whole world delightfully pass through my windows. For reasons that escape me, the streets were quieter today, the activity seemingly filtered to the necessary and purposeful. It was almost reminiscent of my first days here during the curfews and blockades, and I say ‘almost’ as the assuredness and humour of today’s activity made it much lighter. Even the inquisitiveness with which I was being observed on my weekly walk was a sweet change from the earlier anxious – and dare I say, suspicious – stares. A restraint that usually laced the town and its people appeared to have lifted today, and everything and everyone moved in perfectly choreographed laps, confidently looking ahead rather than over their shoulder, meekly.

That rhythm took over the rest of my day as I returned home to attempt a dish for the third time (this time assisted with better quality ingredients), listening to show tune soundtracks, and a comforting hum of activity from my neighbours’ equally quiet Sunday. Tuning into an internet classical music station, I rewarded my improved cooking results with a cup of coffee on the balcony with my new novel. Pausing between paragraphs to turn a page, I looked up at the swaying trees that were silently keeping me company, and the contrasting red-cement colours of the buildings, I could suddenly hear the lazy sounds from the crows, chipmunks and other permanent residents of these grounds, and realized at that moment that this was a perfect Sunday.

This little town that I have called ‘home’ for the better part of a year presented me with a glorious gift, and as I write this, I remain ever grateful.