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A COMPANY holding one of Bahrain’s most treasured photographic archives has launched the soft opening of its new premises after being forced away from its former home by a Molotov cocktail attack on a telecom outlet below it and the continuing disruptions on Budaiya Highway.
Khalifa Shaheen Digital Images (KSDi), now based at the Al Ayam Media Centre located close to the Saudi Causeway and Janabiya highway, once had a high-profile office suite at The Budaiya Commercial Building, close to Junnusan roundabout and villages hit by the recent unrest, where the business was set up in 2007.
Nader Shaheen, general manager of KSDi, said: “Sadly, it became impossible to continue to conduct business from there, as, the constant disruption caused by official and unofficial demonstrations and frequent tyre burnings meant that my staff could not always get away to appointments and bookings, without setting off ages before the event or coverage was due to start.
“It also meant that clients became increasingly reluctant to visit our offices and if a visit was braved by someone, there was no guarantee they could actually get away in a timely fashion because, again, the roads would very quickly clog up, because of some hooliganism going on up-or-down the road somewhere.
“It actually came to a head, when, one morning our driver Ahmed spotted some youngsters running away from the building with their faces wrapped in gutras.
“He very quickly noticed that a Molotov cocktail had been thrown into the Zain offices directly below us.
“If it hadn’t been for his quick-thinking and resourcefulness the Zain office would have gone up in flames and us with it, as our offices were directly above.
“The Zain office was shut for two or three months, as it was, and we mercifully were spared any direct damage. That experience, naturally, meant we had to move.”
Mr Shaheen said the company’s invaluable archive of images and client work, commissions and films needed to be somewhere safer than the highway.
“This was really the final straw in what had emerged as a systematic and deliberate campaign to disrupt peoples’ lives as much as possible and cause as much damage to civic property as was humanly possible and daub as much graffiti as could fit on any flat surface,” he explained.
“Above and below us, and left and right on both sides of the road, businesses were collapsing. As they did, more and more people were being put out of work or moving from the area.
“Whatever the ‘big plan’ of those behind the disruption was, it’s net result cost Bahrain and Bahraini business dearly, as it does to this day.
“Scorching the earth not only destroys entire crops it makes farmers reluctant to ever sow in that place again - if I haven’t laboured that analogy too much.
“Whatever one’s political affiliations are, wanton destruction only ever served to harden the resolve of those it was intended to harm. Dialogue, untainted by proxy interests, is always the way up and out of political intransigence with concerned parties agreeing to compromise their hardest positions for the sake of peace and prosperity.
“And, in the spirit of peace and prosperity Khalifa Shaheen Digital Images continues to offer professional photographic services, coverage of all events, Film and video coverage including documentaries and biographies not forgetting our wonderful archive of old images some of which have been regularly shown in GulfWeekly in the Bygone Bahrain section.
“We have an extensive library of contemporary images, which are royalty free, and cover everything from landmarks and government buildings to lifestyle and corporate shots. As the legacy company of Falcon Cinefoto, KSDi is determined to continue in our unofficial capacity as the pictorial archivists of the country, a duty we undertake with great pride.
“My father Khalifa has now been actively representing the nation for 45 years which provides us with a depth of experience I’m extremely glad to have. Whatever the future holds, we will be here working actively to provide clients with the support and service they expect.”
