Bring Back Adam!

I can't imagine the anguish British mother Rebecca Jones is suffering.

Rebecca's son Adam is in year 6 at St Christopher's Junior School, Bahrain - the same school my daughters attend. Adam's father, Jamal, was a Qatari national whom Rebecca married in 1998. Although the couple divorced in late 1999, Jamal continued to visit Adam regularly from Qatar.

When Jamal was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in 2005, Rebecca stayed in touch with his family and took Adam to Qatar to visit his grandparents and aunts and uncles.

She and Adam were in Qatar visiting his relatives this October and had spent two enjoyable days with them. On the day they were due to leave, an uncle rang Rebecca at her hotel and asked if Adam could come once more to visit his sick grandmother. She agreed and a driver was sent for Adam. He later called to say he had arrived safely and would be back in an hour.

Rebecca was then asked by Adam's uncle to meet him to sign some papers relating to a parcel of land Adam was going to inherit. The legal papers were in Arabic, but this was an uncle she knew and trusted. She signed.

The papers were nothing to do with land, but were documents which allowed Adam's supposedly ill 77 year old grandmother to file for full custody of the child. This she duly did.

Rebecca has not seen her son since. She has had absolutely no contact with Adam since that date. Neither the Qatari judge nor the relatives have allowed her to visit or speak to her son. Nor did the judge insist on Adam being present at any of the court hearings so that his well-being could be established.

The final custody hearing was last week. The court awarded full custody to the grandmother.

It is inconceivable to me that any judge could grant custody to a 77 year old grandmother over the child's own mother. Adam has a sister and stepfather in Bahrain. He was born and raised there. He has friends he has been at school with since kindergarten. No-one, least of all Rebecca, knows how the situation has been explained to Adam. And how can any woman who has suffered the loss of a child in the way the grandmother did then callously inflict that same pain on another mother?

And it is unlikely the British government will do anything to intervene because the ruling was based on religious grounds. Its aim was to bring Adam back to the Islamic fold and to ensure that he is brought up according to his late father's religion. This despite the fact that Adam was enrolled in various classes in Bahrain to ensure his Muslim heritage was respected.

You see, in this part of the world, if a non-Muslim woman marries a Muslim man, that marriage and any children it produces are subject to Sharia law and if everything goes wrong, the "normal" rules as we see them do not apply. It was, apparently, pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Qatari relatives would be awarded custody, even though they were only able to bring the case through tricking Rebecca and Adam.

Friends of Rebecca Jones, parents at the school and the local press in Bahrain are all doing their bit to publicise the family's plight. I am trying to do the same by writing this post.

Technical problems

Sorry for the long silence; I have been having computer problems. Last week I went to switch on my laptop and nothing happened, no sign of life whatsoever. Just a black screen staring back at me.

This is something I dread for 2 reasons: first, I know nothing about computers. I am a member of techno-wizardry's "Lost Generation" - too old to have learned computing at school and having left full-time employment and the support of those nice guys in IT before I really had a chance to get to grips with anything remotely technological. Consequently I am totally reliant on others to fix any problems. Second, I live in Bahrain, where getting anything fixed efficiently, on-time and with minimum fuss is, quite frankly, impossible.

I set aside an entire morning for the task. The first challenge was finding the repair shop. When I lived in Australia, I used to laugh at the Aussie's lack of imagination when naming their streets and towns. Sandy Creek Road is a road next to a sandy creek, Mountain View Road is a road with a mountain view, and so on. But at least the Aussies bother to give their roads a name, even if they only select from a limited pool.

In Bahrain, unless the road is a six-lane highway - in which case it is named after the King or his father - it is not given a name at all. It is instead allocated a number. Then the district it is in is given another number. So, an address may read something like: Apartment 756, Building 333, Road 1230, Area 327. For Ian, who has difficulty remembering his 4-digit bank PIN code, remembering our address is impossible. Couple this with the fact that there is no such thing as a street directory and you begin to understand why going anywhere new becomes a nightmare.

I find the address of the Dell repair shop, which gives me absolutely no clue as to its location. I ring the shop and speak to a nice man called Umar who tells me the shop is behind the Kuwait Building in a part of town called Gudaibiya. I don't know where the Kuwait building is andUmar is not forthcoming. This is another problem - getting directions over the phone from someone whose first language is not your own and who frankly couldn't really care less whether you ever find their shop.

Some time and many u-turns later, I finally find myself in the Dell repair shop. Umar tells me I need a new motherboard. I don't know what a motherboard is, but it sounds important and my laptop is relatively new, so I'm cross. Umar smiles, shrugs his shoulders and tells me I've just been unlucky. Grrrrrrr.

"We have to order the part from Ireland," he says.

"How long will that take?" I ask.

Umar sucks in air through his teeth, shakes his head and tells me: "Four days, maybe five." He pauses, smiles and then adds: "Inshallah".

Ahhh, there it is, that word I dread hearing whenever I need to get something done: Inshallah, or "If Allah wills it."

Anyone who has lived in the Middle East knows that the word is liberally used by all repair men, or indeed anyone you ask to do anything. And in this context, particularly when followed by a knowing smile, means "in your dreams" or "not a hope in hell."

So when the plumber tells you he will be there this afternoon ... Inshallah, expect him next week and only then after you've made sixteen furious phone calls to his boss. When a parent at school tells you they'll pick up their daughter from a playdate at 4pm ... Inshallah, don't bank on them arriving until at least 6pm.

Inshallah - it's the ultimate get-out clause, said ever so politely, with a wry smile. Let's hope UK builders never latch on to it.

Joy!

Oh joy! Happiness, gladness, glee, delight, elation, jubilation ... you get the drift of my mood.

The children went back to school this morning. Home schooling is at an end. The house is quiet and I am calm - at least until 3.30pm.

A world record and a royal wedding

The Kingdom is abuzz with excitement as Bahrain is on track for its first ever entry into the Guinness Book of World Records. What for? Well that's the bit that's not so exciting - it's for having the most signatories on a cyber electronic card. Yes, really.

"Royal wedding card may set record" ran the headline in the local press. More than 3000 well-wishers have so far signed an e-congratulations cybercard marking the marriage of Shaikh Nasser, the King's fourth son. Contacts are underway for this "unprecedented achievement" to be officially registered as a world record.

When I was a girl, I used to receive the latest copy of the Guinness Book of Records each Christmas and marvel over the world's tallest building, fastest athlete or fattest man (he was always the best photo) but I'm not sure as a 9-year-old I would have been even a teensy bit titillated to know which greeting card had the most signatures, cyber or otherwise.

Personally I am far more interested in the event which generated this record attempt - the Royal wedding. Shaikh Nasser is a good-looking bloke, sporty (he leads the Bahrain National Endurance Team in all matters equestrian), a poet (he's apparently published countless poems) and loaded (obviously).

If this had been Europe, his and his bride-to-be's faces would have been plastered on mugs, tea towels and postcards in every souvenir shop for months beforehand; there would have been endless analysis of the couple and their compatibility; and comprehensive TV coverage of The Big Day.

Yet I struggled to find anything about the wedding in the Bahrain press beyond a rather stuffy photograph of the groom, his father and his new father-in-law, Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai.

Of course, this being the Middle East, weddings are celebrated rather differently with separate, totally segregated, parties for the bride and the groom. Still, even if there was no picture of her, it would have been nice to at least know the bride's name, instead of her being only referred to in the press as "a daughter of Shaikh Mohammed."

Yet even as I felt my feminist hackles rising, I wondered whether - religious requirements aside - there was not some sense in keeping the identity of a Royal bride under wraps these days. The newly married couple will be guaranteed privacy to start their new life together, and the bride will not be constantly hounded by the press, derided for her dress sense, criticised for putting on weight/losing weight/changing her hair and all the other things Diana and her ilk have had to put up with.

And hopefully, she won't end up being pursued by paps and driven to her death in a Parisian tunnel.

Qal'at al-Bahrain

We all need a bolt-hole; somewhere we can go and find breathing space when life gets on top of us. But when you live on an island that is only 48km long and 16km wide, and is in the midst of massive development, such places can be hard to find.

Whenever I need a bit of a breather, I head for Qal'at al-Bahrain on the Kingdom's north coast. Although only a stone's throw from the city of Manama, this World Heritage-listed site transports you to another world.

The site is believed to have been the capital of Dilmun, the ancient civilisation on the island which existed as long ago as 2300 BC. In the 16th century, the Portuguese built the fort you see in the photos to protect their trading routes between India, Africa and Europe.

The site has been beautifully restored and has recently been made even better with the opening of a museum and cafe housed in an innovative building on the water's edge -a perfect spot for morning coffee or even lunch.

There aren't many places in today's Bahrain where you can enjoy views of the coast unpunctuated by high rises and highways. But come here, and you can imagine how Bahrain must have been all those years ago when palm trees were plentiful and the developers hadn't hit town.

Just as long as you don't look too far to your right....

Is this progress? I'm not sure.

The joys of home schooling

Bahrain's education authorities have re-closed the primary schools until 18 October. Swine flu strikes again!

The girls' school is preparing weekly packs so that parents can teach their children at home until schools reopen. In other words, we have had home schooling forced upon us.

While many parents have been venting their spleen in the local press, a lone mother wrote in trying to sound a positive note. We must, said she, view this as an extraordinary opportunity to bond with our children. People should be more positive and start seeing this as a situation where the cup is half full rather than half empty. Coffee mornings and gym sessions should be put on hold for a month while we rally round our offspring.

Stirring words! But maybe she's right, I thought. I've never had the remotest desire to home school, but now that I have no choice, why not at least try to do it with a smile on my face?

We started today. After the first hour, I was finding it very difficult to view my cold, only partially-drunk cafe latte as a cup half full. After a further hour of Olivia's arguing, the only bonding I was interested in was of her lips, tightly together, preferably with super glue.

Only another four days to the weekend! And if anyone reading this home schools, my hat goes off to you - I don't know how you do it.

Double celebration

This weekend was a double celebration in our household: it was our 11th wedding anniversary and the end of Ramadan.

According to a friend of mine, 11 years is your steel anniversary - presumably because that's what you need nerves of to get this far in matrimony.

Neither Ian nor I are very good at remembering our anniversary, but luckily Isabelle and Olivia had elaborate plans in place to make up for our shortcomings. Isabelle ensured Ian was given an anniversary card out of her private hand-made collection on which to write suitable sweet-nothings and Olivia was in cahoots with him to buy flowers and lay a special anniversary dinner table.

Bahrain's preparations for Eid (the holiday at the end of Ramadan) were no less elaborate. Timing is crucial. The start of the three day holiday depends on four criteria being fulfilled. According to the vice-president of the Bahrain Astronomical Society these are:"...first, the moon must be born before the sunset, secondly it must be seen after sunset, thirdly the epoch of the calculations must be at Mecca, and fourthly the moon must be witnessed by people". Yes, I was confused too. For the fourth requirement, Bahrain has an imaginatively-named moon sighting committee.

Quaint as all this moon searching is, it does cause organisational problems. School calendars have entries like "Eid holiday starts - probably", which makes holiday planning a bit tricky.

For Muslims, the holiday is a time for great celebration when family and friends to get together, and wish each other "Eid Mubarak!" (Happy Eid). Children traditionally receive the "Eidiah" - a gift of money - from family, friends and neighbours.

I had a hair appointment on Sunday (the first day of Eid). The salon I use is owned by the daughter of a prominent local businessman and it was full of the females in her family being primped, preened and plucked in preparation for the festivities ahead.

Arab women take their grooming extremely seriously; most of them looked more polished when they entered the salon than I did when I left it. I thought the French and Belgians were beauty addicts - hairdressers in Brussels seem to outnumber all other professions - but Bahraini and Saudi ladies are in a different league. My appointment was at 10am and there was already more Prada and Jimmy Choo in the room than on an Oscar red carpet.

My hairdresser (an Aussie) took great delight in whispering a running who's-who commentary of the great and the good coming into the salon. The anecdote of the morning was the story of the lost watch. Apparently one of these poor ladies had misplaced her timepiece the previous week and thought she may have left it in the salon. It was gold with lots of diamonds - bling is big here - and a gift from her father. Estimated value? BD 14,000 (around GBP 22,700). Not really the sort of item you leave lying around while having your weekly mani-pedi then.