Al-Amn Magazine

CULTURE B ahrain’s World Trade Centre is a pair of colossal curved horns connected by a trio of bridges which support whirring wind turbines. A sky-scraping H turns out to be the Four Seasons Hotel. The glinting, gun-metal helix of United Tower – home to both the Wyndham Grand Manama and commercial offices – struck me more as a sky twister. For this mesmeric view of Manama’s skyline, I had taken to the water on Bahrain Bay. Trying to hold my balance while standing on a paddleboard, I gaped at the daringly-designed structures which spiral over the Bahraini capital’s harbour district. “When I was a child, none of these were here,” said my erudite guide Husain Alhabib. Like elsewhere in the Arabian Gulf, ultra-modern buildings are the trappings of oil and gas-fired riches. Nevertheless, in the lee of this surreal spectacle is an incomparably richer thread of culture and tradition going back centuries – millennia even. “Over the coming days you will discover the soul of Bahrain,” promised Husain. Pearl of the Gulf Bahrain is a tiny country, just 786 sq km scattered across a sandy archipelago of 33 islands in the Persian Gulf. Manama is on the largest, Bahrain Island, which is linked to Saudi Arabia by the King Fahd Causeway. However, the modern city has only been the capital since 1932, when it was chosen to be the face of a territory at the dawn of a new epoch. We reached the former capital, Muharraq, driving across a causeway from the neighbouring eponymous island. The joy I found in old Muharraq was meandering through the streets and alleys while discovering how much of the country’s fable-laden backstory is preserved. The call to prayer wavered in the air amid minaret-pricked roofscapes, scents of aromatic oils, and wooden-fronted shops selling brass lanterns, cloth keffiyehs and pearls. Ah, pearls. Diving for pearls, and trading these across the globe, are a giant part of Bahrain’s history and cultural identity. I followed the Bahrain Pearling Path, a waymarked walking trail and tourism project which weaves through Muharraq Island. Punctuated with pearl-shaped lamps it connects pearling landmarks such imposing merchant’s homes and divers’ cottages, mostly from the 19th century. Some have been renovated as museums, telling the story of pearling in the pre-oil era. I ended at Bu Maher waterfront where a visitor centre looks out over oyster beds in the tidal shallows. Bahrain, I had learned, means ‘two seas’ in Arabic, referring to the sweet water springs that bubble up into salt water. Over the glory centuries of the pearling era, this mingling produced the lustrous, perfectly shaped and subtly-hued specimens Beyond t he skyscrapers Di scoveri ng t he sou l of a nat i on