10 January 2007

Nostalgia

The sea..
Ain Qassari 1961 (dried up..)

Manama's Vegetable Market 1961

Budaiya 1961

For those into history, this is a really nice collection of photos of Bahrain from the Knight family album. The Knights (from Manchester) lived in Bahrain 1951-1961, loved it, and posted their collection of photos @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/knightrider/

The pictures are beautiful. Notice how clean and natural the environment was. Bahrainis looked poor and life looked difficult, but simple. Time doesn't go back, but I wish we Bahrainis could go back to our grandfathers' simplicity and contentment with life..

6 comments:

error said...

mashallah its so beautiful. i want to dive into 3ain qassari!!

LuLu said...

I want too! but it's dry land now as far as I know (v.sad!)

Qassoom said...

God...

I feel like... CRYING!

Who's responsible for the great lose of such a beautiful Bahrain??? Just look at that sea & that sweet blue 3ain...

God, I feel a crime was done to this country...

Allah yer7amha men ayam

Johnster said...

LulU those photos are amazing because....

my parents lived here 61-63, my Dad was a very keen amateur phoographer and took many beautiful colour slides. Of exactly the same subjects - the dhobi wallah, the al Khamis mosque, donkets!! These are the pictures I grew up with in rainy London - an exotic island where you drank Coca Cola and had someone else to do your ironing.

When my Dad came to visit me a couple of years ago (his first visit in 42 years), he gave a talk at the Historical and Archaeological Society with all his slides. It was magic.

Thanks for putting the link to the Knight family album

Johnster

LuLu said...

Truly magical and thank you Johnster. Btw would you consider sharing some of your father's photos or posting them online?

I'm still sad, though, because in our quest for development, we have been systemacially destroying nature in Bahrain. If you were here recently you may have noticed that neither Adhari or Qasari exist anymore. The so-called million palm trees are now about 1000, Jazayer beach is now a dump, and no one knows at what line will sea reclamation will stop. I'm usually for living in the present, but it's really criminal what people have done to the environment as qassoom said...

Johnster said...

My Dad's slides aren't scanned so not available in soft format. I am hoping he will visit me in bahrain this year and then we will have a similar screening somewhere. I also plan to get a local place here to scan the slides. They did feature in a 2 page artcle in the GDN a couple of years ago.