Friday in retrospect

If you were a regular reader of my blog, then you would have been expecting one from me yesterday, sorry for being away. If you were wondering why I didn't write anything yesterday, I will tell you, I was busy, very busy, doing absolutely NOTHING! true, I woke up in the morning, midday really, had my coffee, looked at some sites, skimmed my mail, went down checked the artwork that my daughter had bought, really nice especially the ones made with pieces of metal, then I checked on the cat, she is shy to see me as I shouted at her a week ago for bringing a dead bird to the house, I carried her and gave her a kiss, put her down and told her off again. Then I had another cup of coffee, checked the fridge, and asked the house keeper to make us fish and sweet rice for dinner; my son was fasting so I would join him for dinner; my daughter wanted an early lunch as she had some work to attend to, so we microwaved the previous day's food for her.

The Chinese lady came to sell us the latest movies. I tell you guys, the taste of movies these days is terrible, I don't know what these producers think of when they spend millions of dollars on lousy movies like these ones, nonetheless I bought 20, and the house keeper bought two Indian movies, we returned 4 that were not working from last week's purchase, gave her the money and off she goes.

I looked at the time, it was already three, so I went upstairs to see what I should do? I charged my Ipad, then sat on the chaise long, looking at the three stacks in my bedroom; one of them is almost a year old, the other two are magazines that I had kept to read, and newspaper clippings that I wanted to email their writers or comment on them, or just complete reading them as I had only skimmed through them. I decided that I must work on these stacks by date order, the first stack won, I can hear them photos clapping their hands together and chanting, as they were sick of having that dust collect over them, and being re arranged everyday by the duster. Did I say photos? oops, yes they are all the photo albums that I had collected since I was 6. I am sure you can imagine the heap on that table? of course some of them were in albums already, some in boxes, some in bags, some were kept inside notebooks. Other than the digital photos that I have inside my hard drive, I think I have more than 10000 photographs; I even have one of me when I was few months old. I had bought some nice albums ( these were also kept in their bags waiting to be used)so I brought half of the loose pictures to the living room, choose one of the movies, started it, and started the work at the same time; the movie was over, I put another one on, and continued to work on those photos. It was prayers time, so we prayed and had our dinner, great Safi fish and sweet rice. Then I went up again to resume. Had a third Movie on, and more photos went into the albums. It was twelve o'clock when I finished the last photo! that was a real hard work.

First I must tell you what went into my head whilst looking at those photos and sliding them into place. The first group was a trip that we took in 1987 to Holland. My son was only three, and I was as slim as a stick, my husband was thin too and had a mustache, strange looking one I must add. We have some photos in Madoradam and some near a cheese factory, others near windmills, and some in cafes and food outlets. while sliding those into their pockets, my mind was racing with thoughts about those places, the smell of the cheese, the aroma of the flower market, and the taste of the pancake was coming out of those pictures, my cloths were really nice, and my shoes were matching, my sons cloths were all purchased from a boutique in Southampton (I was studying there prior to the trip) he looked really cute, my husband's shoes were spotless, he had a nice hair cut too. My son was naughty when he was little, so we had to have him walk for a long time to reduce his hyper-ness a bit, but a photo of us carrying him in the bus while we were almost dead, he had a spark in his eyes that says let me loose, I want to break things. I remembered that we had gone shopping for gifts, my husband started to shout as what I had bought was breakable which meant that we had to carry it by hand, we already had few hand luggage and a naughty son, so I returned the vases, and bought wooden things that we can place in suitcases. We had split the money in half, I had some and he had some (no credit cards those days) so I used my lot to pay for the hotel, tours, lunches, dinners etc; when it came to those purchases I asked him to pay! he said that he doesn't have much, it never occurred to me at the time that he actually never spent from that money! i had some cash kept for emergencies, so paid from it. When the trip was over, we were at the airport, almost time to board, he looked at me with a mean smile on his face and said that he had some guilders with him, I said how much? it was the exact amount that we decided he will carry with him, I was furious, run to the duty free area, and bought all the stuff from there and finished that money; and didn't talk to him until we reached Dubai. I can still remember that flight, I was reading my book (no movies in those days to choose from) and the boy was asleep, so for 7 hours, I didn't utter a word. Can I do this now? I don't think so. I think we become less upset about things these days, or we used to be angry about stuff more in those days; whichever it was, that incident taught him a lesson, and taught me a lesson too. I always keep my gifts money in my own pockets.

Another lot of photos that was really astonishing was my son's birthday, it was one of the biggest that we had ever had. We must have had over a 100 people in the house (we were living with my parents at the time, and they had a lovely huge house in Jumeirah), most of the people that were present I had lost touch with, some moved to other countries, some just parted from this life, and some stopped being our friends. The house had since been sold after my dad's death, and my mum's move back to Bahrain, and each one of us the sisters and brothers had started their own lives, and are living in various parts of the globe. Funny how pictures remind you of things that are buried inside that little head of yours. One of those people that were at the birthday party was a great friend of ours, he died now from a brain tumor, he was a portrait artist in USA, and was drawing the court cases in Washington. I have three of his portraits in my house, two of my son, and another one of my daughter. He did one for my dad but we never found it when my dad died.

The most amazing photos were those that I had from my university studies, we the Bahrainis are a strange folk, we were stuck together all the time, all our trips and picnics were together, boys and girls and sometimes the families of the boys and the girls would join in too. I still remember that we never had asked each other what sect are we following, some of the people married each other of course, most from mixed sects. I am not sure what they are doing now in Bahrain with this recent problem? Are they still married? or are they going to be divorced because someone in his wisdom started to divide the country and promote sectarianism? I wonder?

My childhood friend's engagement party photos were also amongst the stack; I have her daughter on my BB list, so I sent her copies of those photos, and she loved them, she hadn't seen them before, as they were taken by me, not sure if they had a photographer at that party or not, but now two people are sharing those photos. thanks to technology, it made us very close even though politics is separating us.

I didn't want to end this blog with this tone. I think every once in a while one has to go into that road of memories and tries to capture the feelings that he or she had at the time. If you had seen the movie dejavu, it will remind you of what I am talking about. I believe that what I did a minute ago is recorded for ever, and we can rewind and go back to that minute any time. Hence I feel that if people were made aware of this, no one will do any thing wrong, as everything is recorded, and will be put on display one day. Some technology will be discovered that will make us rewind our lives, and see what we did, however it will be too late, as this movie cannot be edited, and no cutting is allowed.