Worthless Men

Sometimes women love worthless men. Men who lie to them. Men who break promises to them. Men who put them in mortal danger, like you did to me. Men who don't have the fortitude to make things right.

Shaikh Khalifa put my life in danger, in grave danger, sending a goon to bribe the guard at Rainbow Flats, a goon who tried to break into the apartment Major Johnson had told me to rent, not telling me that most of those apartments were rented to whores.

Ali's father, the aging Salim with pearls and wisdom, with whom I sat in the court complex many days listening to history and stories related to my doctoral thesis, listened as I told him about that goon, what the goon had said to me as he tried to break down the apartment door, how frightened I was that your private secretary had suggested I stay in a place of such ill repute and danger. 

Ali's father, an important man during Belgrave's years, not only listened to my fears, but having his own daughters, knowing how vulnerable I was, he cared enough about my well-being to take action, to try and protect me from the Al Khalifas. He asked Ali to help me get out of Rainbow Flats into safety in an empty apartment across from Ali's. It was natural to take comfort in safety and to trust.

Salim was not a worthless man. He saw a young woman working on a worthy goal, a scholar, being harassed by a man who'd twice run her out of London. Do you remember when Shaikh Khalifa did that? Twice. Does it surprise you to know that he'd put me in danger in order to get me off the island and away from you one more time?

Khalid said to me in my last moments leaving your old office at the BDF, walking through his office to return to Adliya and get out of Bahrain before Ali found out that I'd named him as the father of my unborn child, when I didn't even know if it was true but needed to escape from both of you, "It's fine if you want to blame me for Hamad's decisions to end support for your studies at SOAS, and for anything else that you think I did rather than he did."

So I blamed Shaikh Khalifa because of my history with him. I always wanted to find you blameless, but now, knowing how little you care for the lives of others, I've begun to wonder if it was you who sent the goon to Rainbow Flats. After all, it was your private secretary who sent me there, wasn't it?

Worthless men. They may have power, fame, worldly unearned wealth, but they're worthless when one gets to the heart of them.

#Bahrain #ShaikhKhalifaBinSalmanAlKhalifa, #PrimeMinisterShaikhKhalifa #HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #KingHamad #SOAS #BDF #Manama #Adliya #AliBinSalimAlArrayed #AttorneyAliSalimAlArrayed #MrSalimAlArrayedRIP #RainbowFlats #London #KhalidBinAhmadAlKhalifa #ChiefOfProtocol #MajorJohnson

 

Nothing Is Ever Finished

 I learned today that the Holy Koran says "Nothing is ever finished." I was thinking that -- for my sister Laurie, whose memory is failing fast due to a neurological condition and who does not have letters, photos and diaries -- I would write some pieces about life and events in 1965 and 1966 when my family lived in Bahrain. Those were very important years in her life and mine, the memories of which are deep and lasting. For her, it is the story of her star-crossed relationship with your good friend at the time, Farouk Algosaibi, now gone, may he rest in peace. For her, that story is not finished and there may be parts which will surprise you.

Of course such an ambition to write again quickly led to thoughts of you, and of our young love and the years of love which followed, and of the fact that there seemed to be a war in West Asia, aka the Middle East, in between the times we resumed where we had stopped due to our circumstances and of being star-crossed lovers. I wrote journals during all those years, as a historian, but unpublished. Nothing is ever finished.

It is now 44 years since I've seen you in person and 60 years since we fell in love. Wars have abounded. Wars never finish, really. They are re-fought in military colleges. They resume on land and sea, although boundaries may change while the grudges linger on.

There was a 12-day war in June this year when Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran and were surprised by the strength of Iran's response. Trump sat on his gold toilet tweeting about it during the nights while Netanyahu begged him to declare a ceasefire after Tel Aviv suffered a few serious strikes, let alone the blow to egos.

There is an ongoing Israeli genocide enabled and supported by Biden and Trump, their European allies and with the aid of the cowardly Persian Gulf dictators like you, betraying the Palestinians and Palestine. The horrific, unspeakable genocide is daily murdering your Arab brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teenagers, little children, toddlers, babies and the unborn still in their mothers' wombs. 

Isn't the death of a family in a tent set afire in the night by a missile or drone as unconscionable as Nazi's poisonous gas pumped into a closed room? Isn't the starvation and denial of water and medical care of 100s of 1,000s of your Arab brethren as unconscionable as the Nazi experiments on Jews and gypsies and homosexuals? Have you once looked at the photos of the children blackened by the soot running barefoot in the rubble to escape a Jew with a sniper rifle or a tank? At the photos of children with their limbs hanging? Of the little girl thrown against a concrete wall by a shell, her dead body stuck on that wall? Of rows of dead infants left to die in incubators after the fucking Israelis killed the doctors, nurses and staff, then shut off the electricity? Of the 100s of blue plastic bags filled with dead children waiting to be buried?

Do you want the baby killers to own Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan and parts of Syria and all of Lebanon and maybe a chunk of Egypt and the part of Arabia named by the Al Sauds? 

Do you think Bahrain is going to escape unharmed if the fucking Israelis use nuclear weapons in Iran because they've got away Scot free while most of the world hates them for what they have done and are still doing? Scientists in Bahrain are already testing the air for nuclear fallout from the bombs dropped on Iranian nuclear sites by Israel and Trump. (According to expert nuclear physicists not owned by the U.S. deep state or the Zionists, Israel has already used small nuclear weapons with very low radiation when it bombed Beirut Port and Tartus in Syria and possibly in Yemen. As you know, they have impunity for all their crimes.)

While you've ignored the deaths of over 10,000 children, your own spawn follow in your footsteps. Your oldest son, television cameras pointed at him, microphones lined up in front of him, in his quaint British accent and a serious look on his smarmy face, condemned the Palestinians who cut through the undefended Gaza siege fence, then set about capturing Israeli military personnel and illegal colonial settlers. He did not condemn, not one word of condemnation, of the filthy pigs mass-murdering Palestinians in Gaza or setting villages on fire in the West Bank.

Why did the Palestinian militias carry out the most brilliant military operation of this century? To bargain the release of the Israelis they'd captured for the release of 1,000s of Palestinians, many innocent and not charged with any violation of code or law, being violently abused and tortured in the horrid jails and secret camps of the murderous thug Zionists. 

Accept this fact: Palestinians have the legal right to use arms for Resistance to the Occupation and Siege. 

Did you truly fall for the atrocity pornography spread by Biden and Netanyahu? Palestinians did not behead babies or bake them in ovens. They did not engage in mass rape of settler women. They fought and killed during their escape and while taking prisoners, but the Israelis killed many more Israelis under their Hannibal Directive than did the Resistance. The Israelis admit using helicopter gunships to shoot at 100s of young people trying to escape from a music festival on the Gazan border. The Israelis admit to using tanks to blow holes in houses. Palestinians had no gunships, had no tanks.

Your son Salman was so proud of himself for condemning the acts of Palestinians who'd escaped the fences built around them, escaped momentarily the siege, the withholding of food and medicine and water and building materials, who were often killed as sport by the Satanic demons with whom you signed a silly document and gave land and residency on the island of Bahrain. Salman's pride never ends, does it? 

Are you similarly proud? Do you think your abject betrayal of humanity for a bit of gold and silver from the Jews and protection of your neck by the U.S. military is worth the price you and your kids pay? Do you have a plan to spend Bahrain's wealth to build a Trump hotel or casino on the Gaza shore?

I've loved four men in my life. Three of them are dead, including the father of my only child, a man who refused to recognize her, never supported her in any way, but you, the first, are still alive. 

I ask God why has He let you live? Why do I still think about you? While my love for you was deep and long, I despise what you've become even more than I despised you for your lies, your broken promises as if you believed it honorable to break them, for the wretched way you treated me in the end, for being guided by the treacherous Khalid. 

Why do I feel that our relationship is unfinished? Is it because God wants me to complete a task set over 40 years ago? Must I tell and publish the stories at long last, bring out the unfinished books I've written about you, your uncles, your parents, your brothers, the history and events surrounding the personal stories woven in the threads connecting our lives? 

I recently sang, in public, a song I wrote about you long ago and hadn't sung for over 20 years. After I sang it, two other musicians declared that it seemed to have come out of a musical theatre production. I told them that I'd actually intended it to be a part of play that I had begun writing over 40 years ago, when I was living in the grotty garret on Duke Street, St. James's, in the West End of London, maybe 20 minutes walk to our old hangout at the Dorchester.

I told them part of the story, how I'd talked with you in Fort Leavenworth after the death of King Edward VIII who'd abdicated the British throne to marry his love, Wallis Simpson. My song is called "Abdicate." Do you recall the conversation, sitting at the graduation dinner with me and others including Paul Raetz from the Command and General Staff College? Nothing is ever finished, says the Koran.

#Bahrain #HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #KingHamad #FaroukAlgosaibi #WestAsia #MiddleEast #12DayWar #Israel #IsraeliGenocide #Iran #Palestine #Palestinians #Gaza #October7th #Trump #PresidentTrump #DonaldJTrump #Netanyahu #BenjaminNetanyahu #Bibi #EU #Europe #UK #US #PersianGulf #Dictators #SisterLaurie #DukeStreetStJameses #CommandAndGeneralStaffCollege #FortLeavenworth #KingEdwardVIII #Abdicate #KhalidbinAhmadAlKhalifa #ChiefOfProtocol #SalmanBinHamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #London #WestBank #Jordan #Lebanon #Syria #SaudiArabia #Egypt #DorchesterHotel #HannibalDirective #TrumpHotel #TrumpCasino #Mediterranean #WallisSimpson #TheResistance #AtrocityPorn #SiegeOfGaza #Nukes #NuclearWeapons #WarCrimes

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 studying at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies 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 for graduate studies at SOAS. 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 in Fort Leavenworth.

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.