TIME APART

Miss Becky With Kids at Isa Town

Our first month in Bahrain was a whirlwind of activity, but once I'd cleaned everything I could clean, painted everything I could paint, sewn curtains for every room in the house, and we'd finally broken down and paid the exorbitant price they wanted for a tiny Barbie doll clothes-washer (which we had to connect to our bathroom sink with a hose to fill, then put the hose down a drain in the floor to empty), I began to wonder what I was going to do with all my free time, while John was away at work.  I hoped eventually to find a job, but wasn't sure how much demand there would be for a girl with a degree in fashion merchandising, who couldn't even type.  The only wives I'd met so far who had jobs were all working as secretaries!  Well, except for BD.

Mr. S and BD

BD was a very interesting person.  For one thing, she was the first person I'd ever met who kept her maiden name after she married, and the only person I've ever met (other than her husband S., of course) who actually got married over the telephone!  There was even an article about it in the newspaper.  She was one smart cookie.  A lot of the guys we know got real lonesome, real fast, after going overseas, so they borrowed money from the company to pay for the $1,500 one-way plane ticket to bring their fiancees over (a huge amount of money back in the 70's, but B&R only paid the fare for wives, not girlfriends!), got married there in Bahrain, then spent the next fifteen months paying off that plane ticket.  BD did some research though, found out it would be legal to marry over the phone if there were a clergy person and witnesses present, then let B&R foot the bill for her ticket over!

Anyhoo, BD had a degree in psychology, and was working at the Bahraini mental hospital.  She had lots of ideas about how I could spend my spare time, one of which was to volunteer at a home for crippled children out in Isa Town -- not a great fit for someone who will slam a book shut if there's even a hint that something bad is going to happen to a child, but I didn't really know that yet, and I figured it might be fun to go check it out and do a little exploring.  I was wrong.  It was one of the most depressing days in memory.  Isa Town alone was bad enough -- Bahrain's monochromatic version of a government housing project -- but the children's home was a real heartbreaker, and I knew I wasn't the right woman for the job.

On an interesting side note, I decided to do a little research yesterday.  First I looked up Isa Town in that old book about Bahrain that P & T loaned us.  It said Isa Town was a "social experiment", intended to alleviate the shortage of good quality, low-priced housing for Bahraini families.  In hopes that it would eventually become more than "just a bedroom community", it was equipped with a large sports stadium, an olympic-sized pool, a movie theatre, a public library, and a technical college.  Next I googled "Isa Town, Bahrain" on-line, to see how this social experiment turned out some thirty or forty years later.  Know what I found?  Main Street U.S.A., complete with luxury villas, and a street lined with everything from MacDonalds to Fuddruckers!  My, my, my, how things have changed.