Southern Arabia | Page 8

Mohamed, the heir-apparent, and the stout Seid bin Omar, the prime
minister of Bahrein. But Sheikh Esau refused to place his august person
within reach of our camera.
During our visit we were seated on high arm-chairs of the kind so much
used in India, and the only kind used here. They were white and hoary
with old age and long estrangement from furniture polish. For our sins
we had to drink the bitterest black coffee imaginable, which tasted like
varnish from the bitter seeds infused in it; this was followed by cups of
sweet syrup flavoured with cinnamon, a disagreeable custom to those
accustomed to take their coffee and sugar together.
Moharek is aristocratic, being the seat of government; Manamah is
essentially commercial, and between them in the sea is a huge
dismantled Portuguese fort, now used as Sheikh Esau's stables.
The town of Moharek gets its water supply from a curious source,
springing up from under the sea. At high tide there is about a fathom of
salt water over the spring, and water is brought up either by divers who
go down with skins, or by pushing a hollow bamboo down into it. At
low tide there is very little water over it, and women with large
amphora and goat-skins wade out and fetch what water they require;
they tell me that the spring comes up with such force that it drives back
the salt water and never gets impregnated. All I can answer for is that
the water is excellent to drink.

This source is called Bir Mahab, and there are several of a similar
nature on the coast around: the Kaseifah spring and others. There is
such a spring in the harbour of Syracuse, about twenty feet under the
sea.
The legend is that in the time of Merwan, a chief, Ibn Hakim, from
Katif, wished to marry the lovely daughter of a Bahrein chief. His suit
was not acceptable, so he made war on the islands and captured all the
wells which supplied the towns on the bigger island; but the guardian
deity of the Bahreini caused this spring to break out in the sea just
before Moharek, and the invader was thus in time repulsed. It is a
curious fact that Arados or Arvad, the Phoenician town on the
Mediterranean, was supplied by a similar submarine source.
Sheikh Esau's representative at Manamah--his prime minister or
viceroy, we should call him, though he is usually known there by the
humble-sounding title of the 'bazaar master,' by name Seid bin Omar, is
a very stout and nearly black individual, with a European cast of
countenance. He looked exceedingly grand when he came to see us, in
his under-robe of scarlet cloth, with a cloak of rustling and stiff white
wool with a little red woven in it. Over his head floated a white
cashmere shawl, with the usual camel-hair rings to keep it on, and
sandals on his bare feet. He was deputed by his sovereign to look after
us, and during the fortnight we were on the island he never left us for a
single day. Though outwardly very strict in his asceticism, and
constantly apt to say his prayers with his nose in the dust at
inconvenient moments, we found him by no means averse to a cigarette
in the strictest privacy, and we learnt that his private life would not bear
European investigation. He is constantly getting married. Though sixty
years of age he had a young bride of a few weeks' standing. I was
assured that he would soon tire of her and put her away. Even in
polygamous Arabia he is looked upon as a much-married man.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: P. 164.]
[Footnote 2: P. 328.]

CHAPTER II
THE MOUNDS OF ALI
And now behold us excavators on the way to the scene of our labours.
Six camels conveyed our tents, a seventh carried goat-skins full of
water. Four asses groaned under our personal effects; hens for
consumption rode in a sort of lobster-pot by the side of clattering
pickaxes and chairs; six policemen, or peons, were in our train, each on
a donkey. One carried a paraffin lamp, another a basket of eggs on the
palm of his hand, and as there were no reins and no stirrups, the wonder
is that these articles ever survived. As for ourselves, we, like everybody
else, rode sideways, holding on like grim death before and behind,
especially when the frisky Bahrein donkeys galloped at steeplechase
pace across the desert.
For some distance around Manamah all is arid desert, on which grow a
few scrubby plants, which women cut for fodder with sickle-like saws,
and carry home in large bundles on their backs. Sheikh Esau's summer
palace is in the centre of this desert--a fortress