Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
AUTHOR Robin Barratt was so taken by the kingdom during his recent stay that he has conspired with expats on the island to produce another record of literary admiration.
Entitled More of My Beautiful Bahrain it contains short stories and poetry about life and living in the kingdom and is available now from Amazon.com as a Kindle offering for just over a dinar and is likely to be snapped up as a Christmas stocking filler.
Robin told GulfWeekly: “This book isn’t written solely by Bahrainis as propaganda trying to promote their island, but compiled by me, a Brit, and written mostly by foreigners living and working (or having lived and worked) on the island.
“There are 27 chapters by 25 writers including English, Irish, American, Canadian, Pakistani, Indian, Palestinian, Kuwaiti, Australian, Nepalese, Yemeni and German enthusiasts, with a couple of contributions from Bahraini writers too, of course!
“I believe it’s a true testament of what people think of this tiny island state. Many of the writers do not originate from countries where English is their first language, and yet everyone has written wonderful prose in English in spite of it, and I have kept to their original contribution as much as possible, even if it is plain that they are not native English speakers. This makes for some lovely reading.”
The original My Beautiful Bahrain was first published as a paperback in Bahrain in the Spring of 2012, and then as a Kindle edition by Apex Publishing in the UK in 2014.
Robin explained: “I originally put My Beautiful Bahrain together in order to counter all the bad publicity the kingdom had been having in the international media at around that time.
“The Arab Spring had started in the Middle East at the end of 2010, and quickly spread throughout the region. Bahrain joined it in early 2011 and, at that time, the media worldwide portrayed Bahrain as a country in complete crisis and turmoil.”
Robin continued: “I was living there at the time and my friends around the world were telling me to ‘keep my head down’, as though bullets were flying and bombs were exploding. But, despite what people abroad saw on television, for almost everyone living in Bahrain it was life as usual and the vast majority of us were simply not affected by what was going on.
“As a resident of the country watching the international media’s reaction to the situation, I wanted to try and do just a little something to negate all the bad publicity the country was having, and to try and show the world that actually, despite what people saw or read, for most people Bahrain was still a really wonderful place to live and still full of the friendliest people I have ever come across; and I have travelled a lot over the years!
“I had just formed the Bahrain Writers’ Circle and so, with this little group of budding writers at my disposal, I started to put an idea together for the book titled – A collection of short stories and poetry about life and living in the kingdom.”
The first print run sold out within just a few days, and the second within a few months. Robin left the island at the end of 2012 and now lives back in the UK in Preston in the English county of Lancashire.
“I spent almost four years living in Bahrain and I have to say those four years were probably some of the best years of my life,” he said.
“I do miss Bahrain and would return in an instant if I could. On top of this, the people of Bahrain are genuinely, extremely friendly and just want to live in peace alongside everyone else, no matter what their colour, race, nationality or belief.
“This may sound very controversial, but I absolutely believe that everyone in the West should go to the Middle East to experience the people and the culture and to understand what really is another, very different way of thinking, and then there would be a lot less hatred in the world.
“Information brings education and education brings understanding; the problem is that we, in the West, often get the wrong information and so we just don’t understand! And, so I decided to put together another, shorter anthology of stories and poetry about life and living in the kingdom, just as a way of saying; ‘look, this is what life and living is really like for most people in Bahrain, a country in the heart of the Middle East’.
More of My Beautiful Bahrain is a fascinating and extremely enjoyable read, with each chapter very unique and personal to its writer and the story that he or she has about life and living here – from giving birth to desert camping and the tastiest home-made machboos on the island!
Also included is some very moving and poignant poetry about the island, its people and places.
“This is a must-read for travellers and visitors to Bahrain, as well as for people moving here, living here, doing business here, or just interested in what life is like here,” added Robin, 52, a best-selling true crime author and former bouncer, doorman and bodyguard trainer who has managed nightclubs, a security business and has worked in some of the world’s most dangerous trouble spots, including delivering aid to war-torn Bosnia.
During his time in Bahrain he also worked on a book for a leading local family focusing on an acclaimed businessman and company chairman entitled A Tribute to Abdulla Ali Kanoo.
