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

 

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.