We originally came into the country on a tourist visa, which are only good for a few weeks/months. We left Kuwait and went to Bahrain to complete our work visa physicals and bloodwork. We had a lot of downtime. The following are some of my experiences in my wandering around the city.
This is Kumar. He is a shoe repairman.
I had napped from 1700-2000 the first afternoon, totally screwing up my sleep schedule. After I woke up, I decided to go exploring now that it was dark and cool. I grabbed something to eat from the restaurant hotel and began wandering. I found an internet shop and emailed home, then headed for the hotel. I passed a small bakery that looked interesting, and stopped to take pictures through the door. Their door was made out of aluminum bars with grates that the customer could open to pay for the bread. The pictures from the road weren't turning out, so I got permission to come inside.
This is an unnamed Bengali. He pinches off a piece of bread dough from the pile at his right, then rolls it into a circle like the ones to his left.
Then, this Iranian throws it back and forth between his hands like he's making pizza dough, and makes it its final size. He then lays it over the little pillow on the counter so he can put it in the oven.
He takes the pillow and SMACK!, smacks it inside on one of the oven walls. It cooks in around 20-30 seconds. When its done, he peels a little bit away from the wall of the oven with the rod hook, twists the hook pulling it out, then throws it on the pile to his left.
I got to try throwing the dough between my hands. It didn't go so well. I didn't do too bad smacking the dough against the inside of the oven, but that seemed like the easy part. I doubt they would hire me anytime soon.
I left the bakery to sounds of laughter and, with my battered and beaten bread looking like a horrible Easy Bake Oven experiment, turned south and started walking back to my hotel, somewhat in shame at the failed attempt at being a baker. "My friend (that's how they start every sentence, they are very friendly people. Or, maybe they just want you to buy from them. I think they are just friendly), come to my shawarma." It was the Turkish shawarma maker/salesman, Samer. He runs a chicken shawarma stand on the street corner. He is a very interesting fellow to talk to. We talked about politics, family, why Bengali's are lazy and don't want to work. I didn't feel it necessary to tell him that less than 150 feet away there was a Bengali working as hard as I have seen anyone work for a long time. I didn't want to ruin our newfound and tenuous friendship.
Samer's day starts in the early afternoon. Around 1400 he starts preparing the chicken. He slices the boneless chicken pieces very thin, then stacks them tightly on the spit rod. He only uses fresh chick, for everyone knows, the other 8000 shawarma spots in this godforsaken country only use frozen meat, which is why Samer's is better and why you should keep coming here. I nodded politely. I don't know if it is my unrefined palate, or just my general lack of chicken cuisenne knowledge, but I can't tell the difference. He seasons the chicken as he stacks it with a shawarma seasoning, which kind of makes sense. Then he chops lettuces, cucumbers, carrots, and some other vegetables I couldn't identify together for the "vegetable portion" of the shawarma.
For anyone who has never had a shawarma served to you by a Turk, let me tell you, they are delicious. As you can see in the above picture, the meat is cooked in standing rotissere style in front of three burners. The person making it turns the meat at certain intervals (pretty much whenever he feels like it; its not that scientific.) The meat is cooked all the way through, but then carmelizes slightly on the outside, then is shaved off. The shaving part is the difficult part, as I soon found out. The angle of the knife is hard to get down, and the burners singe the backs of your hands. I didn't do too bad, and Samer didn't laugh at me as hard as the bakers did.
The Tree of Life, Bahrain
This is the Tree of Life. It is a big tree in the middle of the desert. Science has not figured out why this tree is still alive, where it gets it water from, or how it got so big. Most of the other vegetation around this tree is 4 ft tall or less. The Bahraini running the front desk at the hotel fervently believes that this is the real Tree of Life from the bible, and he isn't alone. Many Bahrainis believe that. Those people under the tree aren't tourists, they are Bahrani soldiers. Very friendly, but somewhat imposing. They had been doing training maneuvers in the desert and were taking a break under the tree.
