Contemplation

Modern photography, prose, poetry, and beautiful music; the venue substituted tables for chairs as the increasing crowd settled down for the event to start. Friends and family showed, a multicultural bunch followed, and closer friends thereafter.

Elham introduced the guests, who took to the floor one after the other. Arthur D’Souza discussed his unique techniques of combining positive film and colored paper to create beautifully framed layers that speak beyond the images created.

The dazzling, South-African writer, Melissa van Maasdyk then managed to lose her essay papers, however, short to be found and read to the audience. Personally, this lost-and-found theme gave new meaning to her short essay. Perhaps, this theme will extend its meaning to her “never-ending story”.

The venue was also honored by having the mesmerizing Bahraini poet, Hameed Al Qaed, recite some of his Arabic and English poems alongside the beautiful Oud music, played by Hasan Al Hujairi, who stole the end of the show with a Japanese-Arabic fusioned piece.

Elham, that is muse, and mused I was. What was once an unappealing, and then lost, identity that I associated with Bahrain, is now replaced with a newly discovered culture. I found a new home within an abandoned one.

Coming back to Bahrain a little bit more than a year ago, I found myself becoming increasingly misplaced; disappointed by the lost hope, the mechanical routine, that most people subscribed to. While I was then surrounded by saddened, despaired and despondent people, I now found those with a passion, a glowing core, and a bright future. These artists, my heroes, they found and realized what others took for dreams.

More to what I hope, is for such culture to be bolstered anew within a re-invented brand of Bahrain; to invite designers, artists, film makers, writers and musicians, to this island; to establish a hub of galleries and “culture cafés”.