Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
The beauty of expat friendships in Bahrain is after a while a few become like family. The only trouble with this type of friendship is you often go through the pain of saying goodbye all too often. But for a few special, real friendships it’s not so much goodbye when they leave for pastures new as it is, see you soon.
One of my special expat friendships lasted nine years in Bahrain until my friend left, first for Dubai and now to Norwich, a city on the River Wensum in East Anglia, approximately 161km from the English capital.
We gave birth to our youngest children in Bahrain, spent Christmas Days together and did the usual birthdays, anniversaries, sports days etc together, so it was only natural that we would visit them in the UK, during the longest school holiday this year.
We arrived at her lovely barn conversion to the warmest welcome and immediately the children were playing and laughing as if no time had passed, all ecstatically happy.
But, before we had chance to unpack our bags, one of my children had attempted to throw a dart onto the dartboard, but in the excitement had clearly missed and the dart had rocketed into a nearby glass door pane.
The tiny pin head of the dart proceeded to shatter the entire pane into thousands of pieces, which sounded like popping Rice Krispies … easily heard over the deadly silence that followed.
We all just watched intently, mouths wide open, aghast at the sight which met our eyes.
I didn’t know what to say, apart from ’sorry’ a thousand times and promises to pay for any costs incurred.
My friend and host, looked at me with a reassuring smile and said ‘thank goodness nobody was hurt, not to worry, accidents happen’.
A special friendship indeed.
