Precerpt from In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - Bahrain: And Later
The events that unfolded after I left Bahrain reached me only through messages from friends, each one carrying more fear than the last. I wasn’t involved in the politics swirling around the country then; I only felt the edges of it through the people I cared about as the ground shifted beneath their feet.
A group of young men from the village I had visited and
elsewhere had been taken in the middle of the night—boys pulled from their
beds, accusations that didn’t match the sons their families knew. The details
were always hazy, even at the time. Some said there were eleven of them, others
said seventeen. What everyone agreed on was that the arrests came suddenly,
based on information that later proved unreliable. The reason: public
demonstrations at the Pearl Roundabout.
I forgot what the political message was. I was only on the
periphery and not there at the time. I only know about the turmoil through some
newspaper articles I was able to access and through friends. I heard that those
who had been arrested were thrown into jail. I heard that they were beaten. I
heard that at least one of them became blind. I worried about Maha, about Maryam,
about all the friends I had made, including my “son,” Abdullah. But there was
little I could do. Even though I was working for the US government at that
time, I had no connections that could my friends though I dearly wished I had,
and I did reach out wherever I could to other friends who had better
connections.
Hope fermented that somehow the West or the world would step
in and solve the problem. The West did not. The world did not. But something else
did.
Residents from across the area took their prayer rugs and
lined the highways in Manama, row after row, praying without pause. It wasn’t a
protest in the political sense; it was a plea, a collective act of faith that
stretched across hours and into the night. The image of those prayer lines —
hundreds of people facing the same direction, asking for the same mercy —
stayed with me long after the newspapers stopped printing it.
And then, unexpectedly, while prayers were still ascending, the young men were released. Some said it was pressure. Some said it was a miracle. Some said the authorities acknowledged mistakes. I never learned which version was closest to the truth. What mattered was that the boys came home, changed but alive, and life in Bahrain settled down for the first time in weeks. Not quite back to normal: The government tore down the Pearl Roundabout.
by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver
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