Birthday Wish for 2019: Regime Change by Trump in Bahrain?

I might have hinted that my birthday wish for you this year, as in some past years, is that you abdicate. I'm feeling it again this year.

Of course that wish is for the event to be peaceful, with your considered consent and with the best possible outcome for Bahrain.

That outcome does not include the presence on the islands of the military and forces sent by your good friends and in-laws in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As long as those thugs control Bahrain, there's no chance of peace. I wrote about this a couple years ago so, rather than rewrite in different words, the link to that post is below. 

I'd only change it a bit, anyway. Now I'd suggest to President Trump that the path to his much-desired Nobel Prize lies not in North Korea, but in bringing true representative leadership to the tiniest Arab country in the Persian Gulf, Bahrain. It could be a fine example in the neighborhood. It won't take long. Hell, it wouldn't take a hot breath for Trump to open your jails and appoint an acting president of the Republic of Bahrain, which the U.S. can recognize instead of your self-created monarchy. It could serve as Trump's Grenada.

You could still move your whole gang to Nadj, live the good life there, build same-size villas for all your wives, chase around the desert and then the Pakistani woodlands for bustards with your Jeeps and peregrines. 

Golly, I could even bake you a cake, freeze it and ship it to you every year for your birthday in Nadj. It's the least I could do after advocating your peaceful abdication as an aid to Trump getting the same award that Obama got and did not deserve. It would be good for you and the Nobel very good for Trump.

https://unfundedpundit.blogspot.com/2015/12/time-for-regime-change-in-bahrain.html

#Bahrain #SaudiArabia #UAE #PresidentTrump #NobelPeacePrize #NorthKorea #PersianGulf  #RonaldReagan #Grenada #realDonaldTrump #HamadbinIsaAlKhalifa #Nadj #Abdicate #Obama #UnitedStates #Dictators #RegimeChange #TerroristSupporters #Corruption #Pakistan #Falcons #Bustard #Houbara #Hunting #RoyalIntrigue

Was protecting you a gift?

I wonder if you ever realized that this suggestion was a gift from me:  that we remove ourselves from outside and your car near the beach one night to inside a Yusef bin Ahmad Kanoo villa nearby. 

I said it was the sand and then the need for a shower afterwards, even while we had been eager at the car, outside the car to be more precise. You agreed and we moved inside the house where, you may recall, there was a small dinner party in honor of your Saudi friend Prince Bandar. Somebody lost something somewhere, remember? I do. Gulf Air stewardess. We all had a good laugh about who might find what was lost.

At least one of us was aware on the beach that night that Bahrain is a small island with a lot of eyes and very fast gossip. Your enemies could have had a field day. I stopped it that time. At least one of them was at the party.

It's My Birthday, So Some Thoughts on Gifts

Today's my birthday. 70. It rained this morning, even when I walked outside to accept delivery of a Tuxedo cake from a couple of my former neighbors. Seattle needs rain, so it was a gift. I took a bit of metaphysical credit, too. My birthday, my rain.

Then some good political news made for another special moment. Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to serious charges for which a Trump pardon will be ineffective and which will surely implicate Fat Nixon's lard ass in conspiracies and obstruction. Because I pay close attention to D.C. politics, I was happy for a bit that my birthday was the occasion on which it happened, so I thought of it as a gift.

Yesterday afternoon I made a decision not to do what I'd planned for this morning, to go and watch the new version of "A Star Is Born" with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, even though I don't like the venue where it's currently showing. I know the story line and my daughter suggested in Messenger from abroad that my mood wasn't compatible with a tragic film where the male lead dies in the end, so I had a rethink. Her excellent advice was a gift.

I needed to get out, it was sunny and so I walked down to the Majestic cinema on Market Street to watch "Crazy Rich Asians" instead of Cooper's film. 

I wanted comedy rather than tragedy, the reviews were good, some of the actors have been on the late night talk shows and it seemed like it might fit my needs. I didn't know when I walked in that it would be a stereotypical plot, only played out with Chinese and other Asian actors rather than white folks in the previous three versions. (The cinematography of Singapore is stunning in it, which I was reminded this morning watching Free Practice 3 of the Formula 1 Grand Prix going on there this weekend.)

In summary of the movie plot, a well-educated young woman from an ordinary background who's fallen in love with a young man from an extremely wealthy family -- much to her surprise -- is rejected by his family as unsuitable for them, despite her best efforts to please them. It is all so familiar and has a happy ending, though, unlike ours. I was in tears through half of it, but that's the sentimental me. I cry easily, too often, as always.

Today I thought about all the years that I've written you letters for your birthday, over 50 years now, albeit they've moved from hard copies to here, and some that I wrote and saved as I could not send them while keeping a very low profile and didn't care to have them intercepted. It was probably a gift to you that I didn't send them all, but perhaps you will have the opportunity to read them one day in a different format.

I thought about the fact that you never had to do a thing for any of the small gifts which I accepted from you, other than ask someone else to fetch them. 

Then I thought about the fact that I worked hard, all day long, every day, for a whole summer to save up the money to buy for you the last gift that I brought to Bahrain, the tall and beautiful vintage brass lamp made from a World War II battle shell, carved with a lighthouse and a lady in flowing robes, with the three fluted, matte pink lamp shades at the top. The major said that he'd have it polished for you.

I wondered if you appreciated it for one moment, let alone the gift of my efforts to acquire it, ship it to London and then bring it to Bahrain for your military treasure collection, just like the WWI battle helmet that I brought you in a prior visit and the helmet from Vietnam in an even earlier visit. Of course, our gifting cultures are entirely different. We say "Thank you."

I've never had a new car and quit driving over 20 years ago because it's expensive to maintain a car and I wasn't driving much. I don't like traffic and Seattle is one big traffic jam. I laughed at fast cars in the film because it reminded me that you just throw cars away. Out went the E-type. Out went the red Thunderbird. Out went the navy blue Rolls with our names on the inside doors. Not having to drive is a gift to me, most of the time.

I've never owned a grand piano or a house to put one in. I remember talking with you about pianos more than once, about you buying one and bringing it to Bahrain, then gifting it to one of your sisters. I remember you saying that I'd have a grand piano some day, ah yes, and you'd build me a little villa, that you'd get for me what my heart desired. I had to give up my little piano with the move here in May because the management won't allow it. That's been very hard on me, perhaps worst of all the negative things associated with this place, because playing the piano and writing music has been my saving grace for a long, long time. My music is a gift even without the piano.

I don't even have a decent kitchen with the latest move from the rat-infested house to this cubbyhole apartment that would fit inside the reception room at Safriyya where we spent so much time together. I'm still dreaming up and inventing new soft, frosted cookies for my artisan collection, but now must do half the preparation in my dining/living room/office space rather than the teeny kitchen, but I don't care because at least there's an oven. 

So, there are gifts, things for which I'm grateful today, moments and imperfect people to treasure.

The First Marriage

You asked me every time we met if I've married again.

I did not. I never married anyone but you.

I love this photograph which you sent me along with a love letter after I was sent away from you (one of the times when I was sent away from you.) You didn't like the photo because you'd shaved off your mustache and felt that it made you look like a monkey with a cigarette in your mouth. Remember?

Chapter

Hindsight

Hindsight becomes even more clear with age, but photos and diaries plus education and interest provide not only clarity, but understanding, an important aid in writing a memoir.

It doesn't surprise me at my age to discover documentation appearing to show that various intelligence agencies, both British and American, had an interest in our relationship from the onset when we were teenagers of 15 and 16 to the last meeting at your office in the Ministry of Defense over 15 years later.

It did surprise me to identify some of those involved over 50 years after the fact, and I'm not referring to your uncles, whose sources you were well aware of.

Tea and Chess

Oh, the irony. I just found this as I was packing curios into a box for the move out of this house. My daughter brought it home to me at Christmas time when she visited from London. Fortnum & Mason is just up the road a bit from where we lived for the first three plus years of her life, in a "grotty garret" as the Major said.

The grand chessboard. Remember how we used to play? My last move was providing cover for you.

Here's the closeup. Can you read it?