MSI Press Blog

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 t...

The Baluchi Community One of the friendships I developed in Bahrain was with Naomi. I saw her on several of my trips there, and when my assignments came from the Ministry of Education, I worked directly with her. We saw eye-to-eye on so much, and professionally she lived at the cutting-edge of contemporary pedagogy. She was Baluchi. Bahrain has a long‑established Baluchi (Baloch) community, one of the oldest and most culturally integrated non‑Arab groups in the Gulf. They are not a recent diaspora; many families have been in Bahrain for generations. A population of 44,000 Baluchis makes them one of the largest non‑Arab ethnic communities in the country. The Baluchi presence in the Gulf — including Bahrain — goes back centuries, long before oil. According to regional studies, Baluchis historically migrated along the Makran coast toward Oman and the Gulf. Many served as pearl divers, fishermen, sailors, and tribal guards. In the 20 th century, Baluchis became especially prominen...

  Bahrain Imagine standing at the edge of a burial mound field at dusk. Behind you, the towers of the capital city shimmer like glass lanterns. Before you, the desert breathes with ancient memory. And all around, the sea whispers the stories of traders, poets, and pilgrims who once called this island home. That is Bahrain. The name means “two seas” ( bahr = sea, ain = dual grammatical ending). Bahrain is a shimmering archipelago in the Persian Gulf, where ancient burial mounds rise from desert plains and the sleek skyline of Manama glints across the water. It’s a place where Bronze Age silence and 21st-century ambition coexist—sometimes in the same breath. It is also hot. By mid‑summer, Bahrain feels like it has been placed under a glass dome. Temperatures climb well above 40°C (104°F), and the humidity rolls in from the Gulf like a warm, wet curtain. On the hottest days, the air itself feels heavy—almost tactile. It’s the kind of heat that doesn’t just sit on the skin; ...