Year of The Snake and Red Envelopes

Happy Birthday and Happy Year of The Snake!

You will be "70-something" this time, but I see no need to be specific since you forgot how old you were when we first met and fell in love and claimed it was 14 when you were nearly 16 and I was 17 a few months earlier. We carried on in between wars over the course of many years!

I play mahjongg with three Chinese ladies once a week and this week our game date falls on Wednesday, the 29th of January, which is Chinese New Year. It is celebrated in Seattle's Chinatown district with large crowds enjoying the great costumed dragons and lions and snakes in the streets, lots of red and yellow decorations and hordes of excited people waiting for the annual red envelopes with cash inside from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, lovers and friends.

Your birthday on the 28th of January is known, on the Chinese calendar, as New Year's Eve since the Chinese New Year starts on the 29th in 2025. The Year of the Snake is a year of wisdom, intuition and transformation.

Of course, since you promised me that you'd love me forever but pushed it down to the lowest part of your heart,

promised me a villa and didn't provide it,

promised me that I'd never be without a piano and a home in which to play it and broke those promises, 

promised that you'd provide scholarship for me to have the highest educational credentials but then cut the funding in the midst of my studies and I had to leave London before I could complete it, not having the tuition for SOAS when I returned from my studies at the courts of Bahrain, 

because of the promises you made to me and then broke, I have logically concluded that you are a knowing and serial promise-breaker, lacking honor.

I hope that you do indeed acquire wisdom in the New Year, that you are transformed into a man who keeps and honors rather than breaks his word, that your word means something to you, that you have the intuition to know what you should do and then do it.

I hope that you have a lovely birthday.

The Heart of Me

 I just watched a film starring Helena Bonham-Carter called "The Heart of Me" about a star-crossed love affair, betrayal, family interference and tragedies of war, things which I know very well from personal experiences.

 The male lead in the film was killed during the German bombing of London during World War 2. He was outside mid-day in the middle of a street strewn with debris from bombed buildings and there were policemen in tin hats doing their job of shepherding humans under cover. 

It was the tin hats which set me off tonight, thinking about the small collection of military paraphenalia which I brought you over the course of years and visits to you in London, Bahrain and Fort Leavenworth. One of those things was a tin hat from a former British officer's collection of WWII items he'd acquired. The man who gave it to me, now deceased, was a neighbor who lived in a flat in Dalmeny Court on Duke Street, St. James's, where I'd rented a flat while at studying at the University of London just a 20-minute walk away.

From the U.S., I'd brought you a soldier's helmet from the Vietnam war which was from my father's collections. 

More importantly, I brought you a 3-stemmed pink glass lamp made from a giant brass shell casing from WWII which had been turned into an exquisite piece of art with a crescent moon and a woman who looked as if the artist was imprinting a Greek-goddess with a flowing gown. The casing was reported to have come from an important naval ship based in Hawaii during the war.

I'd spent the wages of a whole summer's work to buy it for you just before I left Seattle and brought it to London when I moved there in the late 1970s to go to SOAS for graduate studies. I had it packed and crated again in London, in Mayfair actually, by a helpful business acquaintance of your family, Mr. Moore, in late September 1980 days before I embarked on my final trip to Bahrain just a few days after Saddam Hussein attacked Iran.

Major Johnson, who designated himself as your private secretary, collected it from me and said he would see that you received it. It needed cleaning and he said he'd designate "an Indian chap" for that task. 

I suggested that it may need rewiring due to electrical current differences between the U.S. and Bahrain. My suggestion was interpreted by the good major as a hint that some "delicate wiring" may have taken place in transit at some point. I told him that I'd imagined it in a war room such as I'd seen in films with a green-felted pool or snooker table covered with maps and toy-sized military hardware and men gathered around it re-fighting WWII as you and other chaps did at Command and General Staff School.

You never had the kindness to acknowledge my gift to you, but you should know now, if you ever did, that every gift I gave to you was from the heart of me, starting from the biggest gift a woman has to give the man she loves.

Your birthday, my grandfather's birthday and my great-grandfather's wedding day

I posted this on my Twitter/X on 11 January 2024:

" A think tank piece made excuses for #Bahrain's self-declared king joining #Biden's #RedSea coalition vs #Ansarallah for blocking Israeli ships until Israel ends Gaza op. Real reason: #Iran's historical claim to #Bahrain will be raised again. #Blinken told Hamad, "Join us or them."

(The so-called think tank is Gulf State Analytics and the piece was written by Giorgio Cafieri. I told him that his piece was a nothing-burger because there was nothing in it that I didn't know. I told him that it's obvious he's a shill for MSM because he didn't include fact that you had Ebrahim Sharif arrested for publicly opposing you for putting Bahrain at risk to join Biden's folly.

I posted the below on my Twitter/X on 15 January 2024 from a YouTube video of January 14th in which great Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin was interviewed on a number of subjects including the stupid US/UK military operation against Yemen in which you agreed to take part.

I did not use Dugin's actual words because they would have triggered Twitter's algorythm for hate speech. Instead I said that Dugin had made a grim prediction. Why? He literally said that you are a "dead man walking." Of course I do not wish that you be killed or die until your time has come as God wills it. I also do not wish for my Twitter account to be suspended for what could be interpreted as such a wish.

Especially because, again this year as for the past 58 years, I wish you a happy birthday.

"Alexander Dugin on Jan 14th makes a grim prediction regarding the fate of "Amir of #Bahrain" (who calls himself king) for joining U.S. kinetics against #Yemen, which is supporting #Palestinians through unilateral blockade of Israel-connected ships in #RedSea #BabAlMandab #ArabSea."

Today I changed the words to one of the many songs that I wrote about you or our relationship. The song title is "Does My Memory Linger on?" I kept the 2 verses and the 2 choruses, but added a bridge (or a Causeway, if you prefer.) It's a waltz. We could have danced to it at Annabel's the night David Niven was there with Princess Grace and their guests sitting at a table close to us. I always loved slow dancing with you. I wrote about it in my journals.

Verse 1: What will you do - when I say goodbye to you?

What will you do - after I'm gone?

Will you erase every trace of me?

Or will my memory linger on?

Chorus 1: I tried to tell you in so many ways

A better picture I could not have drawn

Perhaps you'll remember me after I've left

And my memory lingers on.

Verse 2: Do you regret - that August day when we met?

Did I bring joy into your life?

How could you - leave me all alone

And take another for your wife?

Chorus 2: I tried to tell you in so many ways.

A better picture could never be drawn.

Perhaps you'll discover it after I've left

And my memory lingers on.

Bridge: I stood aside

when your mother chose Bride 1.

I did the same thing when you

chose Bride 2.

But when you chose 3 and 4,

I said no more,

And hope my memory lingers on.

My goodness. This morning I got an email from the DNA and Ancestry provider telling me that the 28th of January 1891 was the birthday of my late maternal grandfather. Historically, his family came to America on the Mayflower! I learned that fact this summer when my daughter took me to Salt Lake City for my 75th birthday wish and I spent long days doing family research. Today I also found out that my great, great maternal grandfather was married on the 28th of January. Isn't that an interesting set of facts? Three men in my life had a connection to January 28th: you and two maternal grandfathers.

Meanwhile, I was wondering if you do the same things as your father did when he was the Amir. Do you sit in a chair under an umbrella on the beach looking through binoculars at the young girls and their mothers in their bikinis? Do you send trays of cold Pepsi and Fanta to them? Do you send little plates to them with small pieces of Sara Lee banana cake? Is the beach (where your first speedboat sank because you left the bilge open) still open only to white people from Britain, Europe and the U.S.? Is the vintage video jukebox still in that palace? Are you still entertaining at Safriyya?

No matter. I hope you had a happy birthday. For one day, I will spare you from my political advice and commentary, as my gift to you.

#Bahrain #HamadbinIsaAlkhalifa #KingHamad

Broken Hearts

Science! It's a scientific fact that females are not the only ones who always remember their first love and suffer from a broken heart. Males, whether they go on to meaninglessly fuck a lot of random women, marry and keep in separate palaces four women due to family and political circumstances, become a brutal dictator who takes orders from another, higher-ranking dictator, signs a silly agreement with the number one enemy of Muslims and makes nice with the most militant country in the world ... also remember their first love and suffer from a broken heart. 

I remember that I was your first love. I remember that you suffered from a broken heart. Look at all the horrible things you've done because your heart was broken.

15 August 1965, A Day Etched in My Memory

Every year I mark it on my calendar. Tonight there's one minute left of this day to honor that day. So I do. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLD LOVE

 Happy Birthday,

to the one I used to know.

Houbara

#HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #Bahrain #SelfAppointedKing #KingHamad #FirstLoves #OldLove #Ownership #Peregrine

You Look Like A Rabbit Waiting for A Carrot

Seeing this photograph of you with the brilliant President Xi Jinping made me laugh. You think he's got a carrot for you?

 

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202212/t20221210_10988580.html

#HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #SelfAppointedKing #KingHamad ##Bahrain #China #Petrodollar #BRI #PresidentXi #PresidentXiJinping