Who Will Our Guests Be?

On my first visit to Bahrain City Centre mall, on Tuesday, I remarked on how quiet the mall seemed. Here’s the view from the Hotel Chocolat store, and the front of Saks, one of the anchor department store.

Hardly a soul in sight. “Just wait until tomorrow” they said.

We popped back in on Wednesday afternoon. What a difference! On Wednesday afternoon, the mall was heaving, and a very different style of mall guest too.

Thursday and Friday is the weekend in Saudi Arabia, which is linked to Bahrain by a bridge (I’ll take a trip out to the bridge soon and get some photos; it’s pretty stunning).

Anyway, the lifestyle in Saudi is a lot more conservative than in Bahrain. That means that as soon as the weekend comes around, many of the Saudi nationals and ex-pats head straight over the bridge for a relaxing weekend, typically accompanied by many children.

The mall filled up with ladies in their burkas (that’s the full black dress with the veil covering the face), or at least a hijab (headscarf) and abaya (loose black coat over Western-style clothing). The gents in traditional dress wear a thobe (the long, white robe) and a gutrah (or headscarf) secured by an agaal (corded headband). The agaal was historically used to tie camels’ feet together so they couldn’t wander off in the night!

You can see which of the gents come from Saudi because they are typically the ones in the red and white checked gutrahs. Bahraini men wear white, although, I must say, most of the Bahraini men that I’ve seen are in Western dress. The Bahraini women are a bit more traditionally Arabic in dress. I'll try to get some better photos but I have to be a bit surreptitious with the camera.