Bahrain: Poetry Slammed! · Global Voices
Ayesha Saldanha

This week Bahraini bloggers express their concerns about the country's electronic identity cards. With the school year about to begin, education is a hot topic. Be careful what you write when you send a job application – you might unwittingly become one of the new superheroes, The Employables! We finish with some strong opinions regarding the literary scene in Bahrain.
Too smart, or not so smart?
The Smart Card (an electronic identity card) is being phased in in Bahrain, but a number of bloggers have expressed their reservations about the scheme. Ammar thinks the project is doomed for failure:
So we started this Smart Card concept and we're full blast trying to get everyone to carry one. FOR WHAT?! No one has a reader yet, and the card is useless to anyone NOT carrying one; there's no address or anything on the front, and even the driving license part of it is not acknowledged by the traffic police. WTF?! Second of all, the process to actually get it is SO GODDAMN ANNOYING, AND the people working there are total IDIOTS! No, i'm not exaggerating; TOTAL FRICKIN’ IDIOTS! And finally, can we really trust THESE PEOPLE with our data?! Keeping it private and safe? We are seriously screwed guys. And shouldn't we be thinking of fixing the other parts of the country still left in the dark ages before trying to advance? Go into the Ministry of Health and you'll see people still writing things down on pieces of paper. WHERE IS THE BLOODY TECHNOLOGY?! I wouldn't mind a 1985 IBM system at least, but NO! They don't even have that! WORK ON FIXING YOUR BLOODY PROBLEMS BEFORE TRYING TO ADVANCE; you can't run before you crawl, and shit, we're still on the verge of crawling. This is going to end up as such a HUGE disaster, I can feel it!
Mahmood is worried about the use of the Smart Card for political purposes, to further sectarian aims:
How is all of this going to affect us in Bahrain is anyone’s guess. My private guess is that it is going to be detrimental to our freedom – at best. Not because the card itself is a bad idea, not at all, things are moving in that direction the world over anyway. Its failure in Bahrain is the almost complete absence of its supporters simply because of the people who have been assigned to oversee it, and the clandestine organisation that is pushing it.
No project can succeed if it lacks the basic necessity of trust. This one, for all the potential good that it can otherwise bring, is destined to doom. Bahrainis simply lack the necessary trust to make it successful. Oh they will go and get that card issued, to be sure, because as we have seen with the CPR card that preceded it, no earthly transaction could be completed in this country without it.
What’s left to do but tell those who care to simply “brace brace brace” as this thing will come crashing down, or at least will never reach its full potential.
Unless of course full transparency is adopted and those who have hijacked this project for nefarious deeds are removed.
Education matters
With the new school year soon to start, education is on people's minds. Ammar wants change:
We have smart people in Bahrain; most of them just go brain-dead under our current system, we need our people to be challenged, strengthened, given the tools to promote and advance. We need that to get rid of the corruption, the unemployment, the shortages, the ignorance…
Please… Fix our educational system…
Yagoob is happy to be a teacher:
Teaching is one of the hardest jobs on Earth, we’ve all at some point in our lives have seen a teacher reaching the brink of insanity (or turning insane) in his/her quest to restore order in the class and feed you with information that you will either forget and never use in your whole life or the kind of stuff that will stick with you like a لزقة جونسون (a Johnson and Johnson’s band aid) for the rest of your life.
[…]
I’m a teacher trainer by day and a computer teacher at various institutes by afternoon and night, although I might add that I have had no studies in education other than a single ’train the trainers’ course I took earlier this year.
Working in these areas, the majority of the people you come across are there because they want to learn, the teachers fill in the appropriate forms and get them signed and switch around their timetables just to get to the training, whilst in institutes, putting it bluntly, they pay for it!
[…]
Luckily for me, whenever I mess up a lesson (and this happens a lot when you use technology and bloody Windows keeps crashing or the Internet is not connecting or even worse really slow) I can always rectify it with the next group I teach and once I get it right, I feel this soothing sense of satisfaction quite similar to the way you feel after drinking a cold glass of water in a month like this one.
Ebtihal Salman is dreading the start of the new school year:
New superheroes
Looking for a job? Think carefully what you put in your application. Sairafi is amazed at some of the CVs he has received recently:
Work has been taking too much of my time, but to actually make more time for myself i’ve started a mission this week, beyond ordinary…to create the next set of superheroes, also known as: The Employables
The Employables, in my mind are just like any superhero posse hanging out, with extra hip, extra cool abilities that are matched by no other! They’re here to save my company, to save this market, to save the country, and finally, to save the universe!
If i weren’t so objective about my unusual hiring process, i’d probably trash just about every CV that comes my way, i didn’t realize that a tiny ad in the GDN would get me all sort of potential superheros that by far leave Spidey and Batyboy look like cheesy amateurs living in a cookie jar. i’m pretty sure everyone has their CV story, i’m really not looking to outdo anyone, but i’ve managed to combine these talented individuals to create a group of superheros that would make the X-MEN look like sissies.
Lady AutoFire, don’t let her simple relaxed and feminine beauty fool you, this lady can pack a punch, sending her cv a good number of times to statistically guarantee a chance to be reviewed! unloading CV’s uncontrollably to by far drown her employer!
The Preacher, I had nothing good to say about him initially, but geared with ONLY his religious lecturing experience won me over, he will preach the rest of staff to success, and pray the company will be the next Google.
Ultimatum, no, he’s not Bourne, but he sure got me by setting an ultimatum for my response! By the end of his cover letter, I thought I was applying to his company!
Ms. Blaine, probably married to the illusionist David Blaine, she has the super-ability to make her CV disappear from my mailbox, I searched for a good five minutes till I realized her CV wasn’t attached.
Needy Many, Many, asked me to do “the needful” when it came to her application, I was a bit confused as to what “the needful” really was though? I suddenly “needed” her.
Poetry slammed
In these roundups I don’t normally quote from my own blog, bint battuta in bahrain, but this week I will, because I am amongst the bloggers who have written about poetry in Bahrain. My post described a discussion about the translation of an erotic poem:
I’ve discovered that it’s not such a great idea to discuss translations of poems in a public space. When I translate poetry, I always talk to the poet about the images and underlying concepts of the work. Until now, without it being a deliberate plan, I have always met the poets concerned in relatively quiet, private environments – their offices or homes. But last night I had a meeting arranged with a certain gentleman poet in a café, and I knew from the outset that our conversation was going to be difficult.
[…]
I was sitting with the gentleman whom I know, but not that well, in a very public environment. I like his work, and I respect him, and he always behaves very respectfully with me, but I had to wonder what anyone listening to us last night must have thought (and believe me, it was very easy to listen in). The poem we were discussing described, in an oblique way, the sexual act, so his explanation was littered with ‘members’ and ‘sperm’ and ‘climaxing’ and goodness knows what else.
[…]
The conversation was in Arabic, which I suppose gave it some distance for me, but of course made it all the more interesting to those sitting at neighbouring tables in the café. And this gentleman didn’t seem concerned at all. In fact not only did he speak loudly, but he happily threw my name into every sentence.
Butterfly attended a poetry recital a while back, and it left her unimpressed with poetry in Bahrain today:
وان قرأت قصيدة مماثلة واتحفظ هنا على كلمة قصيدة وأضع تحتها ألف خط لشاعرة بحرينية تتحدث فيها عن تجربتها مع صرصار فاجأها ليلاً
في كل الحالات فهناك خلل ما .. أما انها فعلا فنتازيا شعرية أو ان المشكلة تكمن فيني لأنني لا أستطيع تذوق الشعر البحريني المعاصر
Storm-swept seems to have a similar opinion about Bahraini poetry, and parodies it:
تفاحةٌ حمراء …
تفاحةٌ حمراء …
و بانكة مترامية الاطراف …
يا اخي ويش جاب تفاحة حمراء الى بانكة ؟
ويش هالوصاخة … معذور اكيد قاعد يكتب قصيدته في الحر …
A red apple…
A red apple…
And a widespread fan…
My brother, what has the apple got to do with the fan?
What is this rubbish? He must have an excuse as he surely was writing his poem in the heat.
More debates and discussions from Bahrain next week!