A Short History of the World of Bahrain.

Bahrain, like much of the pseudo-modern world, is a land of contrasts. It’s the rags-to-riches story of the whole Middle East really. The whole region used to be the poorest in the world. Devoid of agriculture and sustainability, Bahrain depended on pearl diving for survival. That is, before modern technology screwed it over by inventing pearl farming. Uh-oh. Luckily, at around the same time, oil was discovered. Who’d a thunk. Oil, in the middle of the desert.

Bahrain was the first country in the gulf to hit oil- and just in time too, cuz there’s only so many things you can do with sand. So this catapulted the tiny kingdom into a palace building, Ferrari buying frenzy. Of course, these palaces weren’t gonna build themselves, and with a population too small to support this boom, Bahrain went oversees to find its many palace builders. And so the importation of cheap labor began. But, alas, they discovered that there’s only so many things you can do with palaces too. That was a sad day. :-(

So, instead of bathing in cash or spreading chocolate on it and trying to eat it, they decided to stick it into things called banks. Bahrain soon became the banking capital of the Middle East; and once again, they looked beyond their borders for workers. Then, one day its big brother Iran decided that he wanted to eat some chocolate-coated money, and so he laid claim to Bahrain being his. Everybody laughed and Iran said that of course, he was kidding. He was then pacified with a couple of tiny desert islands (And I mean tiny). Maybe that’s why their president is so cranky. Ah, if only he knew that chocolate coated money rots your teeth.

So the little island-country of Bahrain grew and grew, importing more foreigners to do its dirty work and more Ferraris to fill the ever-expanding roads. Today, Bahrain is a kingdom of 600,000 people- a third of which are foreigners. This has led to the creation of parallel societies- both in terms of income and culture. It’s what has aided Bahrain in being the most open nation in the Gulf, embracing a myriad of different religions, ethnic groups, languages and traditions. This- coupled with the internal split of its own culture, which is now torn between its traditional mud-dried buildings and shiny new skyscrapers has created an interwoven instability in the country. It’s all these differences meshed together and resting upon themselves that stabilize this society. But how long will this last? Will this web crumble under the burden, or explode from all the pressure being cast on it?