THE QUEST

Apartments in our Hood-To-Be

Dearest Friends,

After a few hours of sleep that first morning, we managed to pull ourselves together.  Good thing we did, because that's when JH, a guy John had worked with back in Houston, showed up at the hotel.  He gave us a mini-tour of Manama, took us by to see what their house looked like, showed us the fab yard where John would be working, and then took us to a B&R baseball game (the first of many!) where we met some of the other families.

Our new home would have a tiny back porch, about like this one, where I would hang my laundry.

Over the next few days, John divided his time between learning the ropes at his new job, and searching with me for a place to live.  We didn't have a car yet (someone must have been giving John rides), so while he was at work, I was pretty much stuck at the hotel.  I ate all my meals there, went to the salon to get my hair done (must not have packed my portable dryer), sat out by the pool a bit, and spent the rest of the time in our room reading, doing needlepoint, or painting little stained-glass-like Christmas ornaments from a kit I had picked up while in the states.

One day, while looking at apartments, we stumbled across something wonderful -- a bookstore, with books in English!  We also got invited to go to the movies with a very nice couple, B & S.  Knowing there would be a bookstore and a movie theatre helped to make up for how crummy most of the apartments we had seen were.  The theatre was a bit strange though.  It was modern enough, and there was a snack bar of sorts.  I just didn't recognize anything they had for sale in it (mostly seeds and nuts, or little cakes of some sort).  This was also where I got the first hint that, though I had thought the women in Indonesia were still living in the dark ages with regards to "liberation", I hadn't seen nuthin' yet!  Other than a small handful of expat wives (who were getting lots of stares) there wasn't another female in the entire theatre.

Almost all the buildings had flat roofs like this, which were used like our backyard patios.

Finally, on our fourth day of looking, we found an apartment in our price range that we thought we could live with.  We were to have the whole ground floor of a multi-story building (I think it was the one on the far right in that top photo), right in the heart of town.  I would be able to walk to shops and enjoy the aromas wafting from our little street-side bakery, where you lined up at the counter and watched as they slapped a piece of flattened dough onto the ceiling of the wood-burning clay oven, caught it just as it dropped off, then handed it to you, fresh and warm.  I loved the idea of being surrounded by Bahraini neighbors this time, instead of isolated on an American compound.

Catty-corner from our place was a tiny shop with a louvered metal door, which an elderly gentleman lifted up early each morning, and slid back down late each evening.  The whole shop was probably no bigger than an American walk-in closet, and he sold cigarettes to the young men who congregated on the corners, and candy to young children going to and from school.  A day or two later, when we were there at the apartment, scrubbing floors and painting, he suddenly showed up at our door holding two cold bottles of fruit flavored soda.  He didn't speak a word of English, but we got the message.  We had a friend in the neighborhood.  We didn't know any Arabic yet either, but at least we had learned one, most important word.  Chukron.  Thank you!