Exceptions to the rule

Im pretty tired tonight so I don’t know how much long I’ll be typing. Its so hard for me to mentally undertake a project knowing I’ll be gone in four days. I don’t want to get started and then have to have it wait for the 11 days which I’ll be gone.

There is a pretty tragic story going around that is affecting a lot of people close to home. In this area of Bahrain there are a lot of mixed marriages. Many of my friends are half Bahraini…half another culture. That is just common as Bahrain is a melting pot of cultures/races. But what has recently happened is the stuff of Hollywood and its going on right now. I talk about all the great things about Bahrain there are some negative aspects to Arabic culture as well. There is a child by the name of Adam. He is a young kid about 11 years old and goes to St. Christopher’s School, the school where we once held our acting classes and currently our church meets there. Adam had a mother from the UK and her father was from Qatar. Well Adam’s mother got divorced and subsequently remarried and stayed in Bahrain. Meanwhile Adam’s biological father, the Qatari, passed away. Im not sure when but I think it was a year or so ago. Adam was visiting his father’s parents with his mother. His paternal grandmother invited him out for an afternoon and he never came back home. She essentially kidnapped him. Adam’s mother tried all that she could to get him back, but since the people that took him were Qataris, she isn’t given any authority at all…even though she was the mother. So some the parents of St. Christopher school have launched a big grass roots “Bring Adam Home” campaign. There are facebook groups, everyone is wearing yellow ribbons, newspaper editorials have been written and letters to the UK parliament have also been written. They are trying to raise up enough awareness to prod the UK government into intervening. Its pretty sad how the child is being used in this matter by unscrupulous and self-centered people. Nader is doing a video of the story in an effort to raise awareness of the plight of the family. I hope it comes to a happy and quick resolution. This is just like a film they made in the 80’s with Sally Field called “Not Without my Daughter.” Kidnapping is a horrible crime but I don’t want this one event to color an entire race of people. Per capital there are multiple times more kidnappings in the U.S. than any arab country. But because its so rare here, that’s why its getting an inordinate amount of press.

Speaking of rarities, I had kind of a show outside my flat last night. I live on the second floor, but they call it the first floor, with the real first floor being called the ground floor. Anyways, Im about 20 feet above the street. I heard a ruckus last night and went to check it out. There was this drunk Bahraini, without a shirt and shoes, standing in the middle of the road with a brick in his hand and swearing at cars as they drove by. The cars would slow down for safety and then the drunk guy would swear at the car and rear back his hand like he was going to throw the brick at them. The car would then speed off and he wound up kicking the car. One car sped off and he kicked it. The guy got out of the passenger side and the drunk guy reared back as he was about to throw the brick. So the driver took off leaving the passenger in the middle of the road. He initially ran away in fear, but then saw another brick. So they started throwing the bricks at each other. Then the police arrived…and the police just stayed in their car for five minutes. Meanwhile…Im watching a great reality show. So the drunk guy throws the brick first and missed by a longshot. Then the other guy throws and hits the drunk guy square in the back with a brick. Drunk guy picks the brick up and then smashes the back car window with it. Im not sure if anyone was in the back. So then he started getting in a fistfight with a few people standing around and a group finally subdued him. All this while the police were waiting in their car. I don’t know if they were waiting for back up or what the reason was. So after this man is pinned, the policemen finally arrest him and it takes then like 10 minutes to get him into their car. All this right below my window. So finally they carted him off, as a crowd of about 50 had gathered, but I had the best vantage point. I imagine the guy had been drinking all day because he was upset about Bahrain losing a chance to go to the World Cup. They missed just by one goal. They would have been the smallest country to ever send a team to the World Cup. So a lot of people were very very upset. There is a lot of national pride for being so tiny. It was front page news on every paper today. Each paper dedicated between 6-10 full pages on the match. Its really a shame they lost, I would have liked to have been part of the celebration.