Happy 76th Birthday with some remembrances

 Well, it's that time again. Another year of life has passed and you've just turned 76 years old. How do you feel? Do you look back on your life each year on your birthday?

Can you look back to 1965 when we met? To spring1966 when I had to leave Bahrain because I would graduate that June from high school in the U.S. and you had to return to the U.K. for your next school term there? 

Do you remember that you and I had to take separate flights out of Bahrain to London because your late father, may he rest in peace, had found out we were madly in love and it was an unwelcome complication for the Al Khalifa regime? Do you remember how we'd settled into a deeper relationship while staying at the Dorchester? Do you remember how Uncle Shaikh Khalifa arrived to lay down the law, to force me to return to the U.S. earlier than we'd planned?

Every year on your birthday, when I write to you, I look back on our history over many years. No matter how I feel about what you've become, my memories from those days still bind me to you. I wasn't just a passing fling, no matter the efforts of some in your family to downgrade me and the words you slung at me in our last meeting. We loved each other. We were lovers. Every time we met again over the years renewed love, even the last time when you said that you didn't have time to fall in love with me again. 

There's a quote which I believe. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. This year, which is my 77th, I remember that you are the only man who ever truly loved me. I wish you a very happy birthday.

#Bahrain #HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #FirstLove #TrueLove #Birthdays

#TheDorchesterHotel #London

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.

Golly, I hope this posts before January 28th birthday is over

Happy Birthday, Hamad. It's 4:14 PM here in Seattle so it might already be January 29th in Bahrain. If so, then belated wishes for your 72nd birthday yesterday. My advice for this year:

1) Get more exercise. 

2) Quit using poisonous dye to make your mustache black, especially on the parts you had implanted to make it bushy. Your mustache was never full, year after year after year. Dying beards and hair on old men looks silly. Salman doesn't dye his facial hair, so are you trying look younger than him? 

3) I recognize that you're a debt slave to killer Bonesaw and the egotistical Mohamed bin Zayed, but your support of their dirty war in Yemen to stop representative government, acquire oil, pipelines, ports and islands is going to harm you in the end. Perhaps you might consider just keeping your mouth shut instead of daily sending your reps to condemn Ansarallah for defending Yemen against the coalition committing daily war crimes. If Bahrain is still flying planes over Yemen and contribute to the war by bombing, my advice is to stop it. Retaliation is a bitch.

4) It was a stupid, thoughtless move you made to join Kushner's silly no-peace-for-Palestine plan and turn your back on the Palestinians. Most Bahrainis know it was a dirty, dirty deal that you did because neither you or the Apartheid State want representative governments in the Persian Gulf states run by Arab dictators, whether amirs or self-appointed kings like you. You had your reasons, but there's none good enough for what you did, including the acquisition of Pegasus software to spy on Bahrainis in exchange for your signature on the so-called, fancy-named Abraham Accords. That action is also going to bite you in the butt at some time, probably on the butt cheek with the big mole on it. 

5) As always, my best advice is for you to stay out of helicopters. You know why.

#Bahrain #HamadBinIsaAlkhalifa #KingHamad #Birthday #Yemen #MohamedBinZayed #UAE #Bonesaw #SaudiArabia #Ansarallah #Ansarollah #PersianGulf #ApartheidState #Kushner #Israel #Pegasus #AbrahamAccords #Helicopters

Birthday Card Is In The Mail

 

Happy Birthday, Hamad. 

I hope you are in excellent health. 

I read that you didn't attend Jared Kushner's and Bonesaw's fake reconciliation with Qatar because of ill health. I thought otherwise, since Mo Zayed will always compete for power, and you chaps in Bahrain have long-standing issues which were not overcome by you adding another wife to your harem.

I sent an actual birthday card to you via air mail, to the Riffa Palace, marked as personal, private and confidential. It was double-sealed.

It was mailed in Seattle on January 24th from my local Post Office.

It contains an important message which does not require your response. The message is my gift to you.

I wish you many happy returns of the day. If you were here, I'd bake you a cake or a tin of sweets.

INSHALLAH

    YOUR

INSHALLAHS

TURN INTO

MASHALLAHS

PEN > SWORD

A Wish for Your 70th Birthday

It's said that a life can be changed in a day. Of course, the change is made in an instant but the effect may last a lifetime.

I often think of the day in the second floor suite at the Dorchester with the bay window overlooking London's Hyde Park, the day when Uncle Khalifa first demanded a radical change in our lives. I had barely turned 18 and you were 17. I stayed in the room while he excoriated you in Arabic until he saw the tears streaming down my face and noticed that I could understand the substance of his diatribe and sent me into the bigger bedroom. Do you remember?

It was years later when I realized that Uncle Khalifa was leading you with a bit in your mouth, or, as Danny O'Leary so aptly put it, "carrying you all the way."

You know something? I'm sorry for calling you names which should more properly be aimed at that old fart and his charge-de-affaires in the office adjacent to yours, the dirty double-dealing Khalid who ratted you out to Uncle Khalifa.

I'm sorry that you've not found the strength to overcome his hold over you and that's part of what I wish for your birthday. 

You're 70 years old now. Your book First Light sits on my shelf and my plan for the boldest change in your life is written on a sky-blue note card only 3" x 5" and a few bullet points that sits on my desk. It's called "Lead The Way" Campaign. You could do it. You could be a peacemaker. It could change the world in a moment. It would be the boldest step you've taken in your life.

I await your reply whilst wishing you a happy birthday and a huge change in your heart. Be the peacemaker, darling. Do it.