I soon learned that the minder’s reaction wasn’t unusual. The opposition, for all its merits, sought to impose a kind of thought orthodoxy on reporters writing about the uprising. The narrative was that the protests had been entirely peaceful and that no demonstrators had attacked police or anyone else. Yet I met Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi workers who said they’d been attacked by protesters. Other people of Asian descent recounted that they had been refused treatment at hospitals. But when I raised this matter with opposition leaders, they seemed offended. Such stories were not part of their carefully crafted narrative.
Later, I spoke with Farida Ghulam, an education official whose husband, Ibrahim Sharif al-Sayed, was the general secretary of Wa’ad, whose formal name was the National Democratic Action Society. In 2011, al-Sayed was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly planning to overthrow the government. Yet Ghulam mentioned that her son was studying at a university in Michigan on a scholarship from the crown prince’s office.
“Does it mean your child’s education is paid for by the royal family?” I asked.
She confirmed this. “But it’s their right,” she said of her son and his fellow scholarship students. “They worked hard for it.”
“And how are you paying for his studies now?” I asked, assuming that the scholarship has been canceled once the father had been arrested.
“No, it’s still going on,” she said.
I added this to my growing pile of evidence that we in the West might be viewing the situation in Bahrain in overly black-and-white terms, given its complexity.
Meanwhile, it was time for me to look for a permanent professional home, and I started writing for Der Spiegel on contract, returning after an absence of nearly ten years. The magazine’s editors were interested in the Bahrain story, and so in February 2012, a year after the uprising, I went back and dug deeper.
On that trip, a colleague and I interviewed the king, asking him about imprisoned activists and torture, as well as the human rights commission he had established, chaired by Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, an international law expert and human rights activist. The Bassiouni Commission was set up to investigate and report on alleged abuses, including accusations that security forces had tortured prisoners, and its report amounted to a stark indictment of the government’s handling of the protests. It found that thirty-five people had died during demonstrations in 2011, including five security personnel, and that hundreds had been wounded. The government had arrested nearly three thousand people, seven hundred of whom remained behind bars.
I decided to confront the king directly on the subject of freedom of speech.
“Your Majesty,” I asked, “what would happen if we were to shout ‘Down with the king’?”
The king didn’t seem offended. “They do shout it on the streets,” he replied. “As I emphasized in my speech last year, this is not a reason to imprison someone. It’s just a case of manners. But when they shout ‘Down with the king and up with Khomeini,’ that’s a problem for national unity,” he said, referring to the former Shia Ayatollah of Iran.
I found it notable that the king had made the reference to Khomeini, especially as Bassiouni and others did not report any Iranian involvement in the demonstrations. I wanted to see for myself and spend more time in the neighborhoods where the protesters came from. At a mosque in Diraz, where one of the most influential Shia clerics preached, large portraits of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei watched over the prayers. I began to wonder even more about the scale of Iran’s involvement in the Bahraini opposition groups and demonstrations.
Some activist groups talked about “systematic” discrimination against Shia. My regular taxi driver, Abu Hussain, who lived in one of the Shia villages outside the capital, told me the same thing. He blamed the royal family directly. “First of all, why would they bring people to work from outside?” he said, trying to keep his voice level and friendly. “These people from Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, India, or Bangladesh.”
I asked what jobs he was talking about.
“In offices, banks, or in the ministries. Why don’t they take my children or the children of my neighbor? These jobs should be for real Bahrainis first.”
“But maybe the other people are better qualified?” I suggested. Then I asked if he had a cleaning lady at home.
“Yes, of course,” he answered.
“Where is she from?”
“Bangladesh.”
“So Bahrainis should also do these kind of jobs, right? Your wife and daughters?”
“No, no, of course not. I would never allow them to do such work,” he replied. He sounded shocked that I would consider such a thing. “This is beyond our honor. What would you say if I asked if you would do such work, or your mother?” He mentioned my mother because I’d told him she was a sayyida.
He certainly didn’t expect to hear what came next. I told him that my mother had been a laundress and my father a cook. I explained how I had contributed to the family income since I was sixteen by working in bakeries, babysitting, cleaning floors and dishes, and cooking for and feeding elderly people in the church community where my mother worked. His face turned pale as he listened. “So when you say this is beyond your honor, it was not beyond mine, or my parents’,” I said.
Abu Hussain raised his eyebrows in shock. He searched for words. “I am sorry,” he finally said. “I didn’t mean something bad.”
On one of my visits, Abu Hussain took me to a house with a blue flag on top with “Al Wefaq” written on it. This was the office of Ali Salman.
The hall inside was filled with men. Soon, Salman descended the stairs. Though I’d seen him on TV and in magazines, I didn’t immediately recognize him without his trademark white turban. Salman invited me into a separate office and asked someone to bring tea. I listened and noted down what he and his party demanded: more rights, a prime minister not named by the king but elected by the people, restricted citizenship for immigrants, and an end to discrimination against the Shia. Then he accused the government of giving Bahraini nationality to Sunni immigrants to change the country’s demographics so that the Shia would no longer constitute a majority.
“Sheikh Ali,” I said, “I thought you were asking for reforms for all Bahrainis, right? I thought you weren’t just a party looking out for the rights of Shia.”
He agreed that he and his party were defending the interests of all Bahrainis. But like Abu Hussain he mentioned the jobs that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis got before Bahrainis and insisted that Bahrainis should have priority when it came to employment.