Tea Time in Bahrain: A U.S. Sailor’s First Middle East Encounter

by W. John Vandenberg

People always ask me how I became so involved in the Middle East, and I greet these questions with open arms. A question means that they are listening for a response. I tell them that I am involved because I like a challenge. As I have found, the American public in general hasn’t the faintest idea what people of the Middle East are really like, yet many are curious. Most Americans have been conditioned to accept the negative stereotypes of Arabs as terrorists, bedouins, or oil sheikhs. However, if those who know differently take the time to show others what a rich cultural heritage the Arabs possess, and how far the stereotypes are from the truth, then people will change.

In my diary, I called my first encounter with Arab culture “Bahrain Tea Time.” I was a sailor assigned to a ship permanently based in Manama, the capital of Bahrain. About once a week, when I got off work, I would wander into the souq, sometimes with friends and other times alone. One day I was a bit hungry and saw an old man selling dates from a large square tin. “How much?” I asked. He didn’t speak English, but a Bahraini gentleman from a nearby teashop overheard us, and came over to offer help. He asked how many I wanted, and when I offered him a dinar for a handful, he laughed.

“That is way too much,” he said. “Why don’t you just come sit with us?”

Before I knew it, everyone was speaking to me, buying me tea, dates, and bajellah. They were just as interested in my culture as I was in theirs. From this group of friends I learned how to count in Arabic, say hello and good-bye, and introduce myself. I also learned how much they value their families and like to laugh. As I visited my new friends each week our basic similarities became more apparent. The stereotypes, about them and the Middle East, began to fade away.

“Where are the terrorists? Where are the 40 thieves? The fanatics?” I asked myself. I wandered the streets alone late at night, safer than in almost any American city. I started to question the way I had been conditioned by the American media. Why did I so easily take it for granted that these people, who by now had voices and faces, were barbaric, or backward, or evil? I began to look for answers.

Flourishing Interest

After six months I returned to America, and my interest truly began to flourish. I tore into every book I could find about Middle Eastern history, culture and Islam. Yet when I tried to tell anyone about how I loved the Middle East, how these people had struck me as exceptionally friendly and noble, and how we could learn from their society, I was met with a blank stare. No one understood; they were all trapped inside a web of deceit stretching back to their youth. Didn’t the Arabs control all of “our” oil? Were they not trying to bomb us, and our brave allies, into oblivion?

I wanted to change this pattern of misunderstanding, and realized that I needed a degree to validate my convictions. The following year I enrolled in the Middle Eastern Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin.

There my inspiration acquired a solid grounding, and I became an activist. I took all the classes: Arabic, Politics of Oil, Contemporary Arab Thought. But after I learned about the history, the politics, the land, and the people, there still was something missing.

I remember well what sparked my interest in activism and group leadership. Dr. Walid Hamarneh, a professor of Middle Eastern literature at the university, in a fit of exasperation at what appeared to be apathy, asked his class, “Why don’t you make a student group? Why aren’t you more active? Why don’t you do something?” He was right, and the situation was about to change.

Everyone was amazed by how hungry people were to learn more about the Middle East.

There was a vacuum at the University of Texas. How could one learn about Palestine or Israel short of the AP stories? Where could an average person turn for an educated discussion on the Middle East? Nowhere, until the Students’ Association for Middle Eastern Studies (SAMES) was established. In the summer of 1995, five close friends (two Americans, one Egyptian, one Persian Jew, and a Palestinian) and I founded SAMES. Dr. Esther Raizen, our earliest and strongest supporter, allowed us to hold the first meeting at her home. SAMES quickly became a forum for all people interested in the Middle East to meet and talk about their views, a source for information and a vehicle for energetic people with ideas to make their mark. By all accounts, we succeeded.

SAMES enabled the many people who are curious about the Middle East to get together and do things that weren’t possible before. The campus responded overwhelmingly, and everyone was amazed by how hungry people were to learn more about the region. One of our proudest moments was the sneak preview of Elizabeth Fernea’s film, “The Road to Peace: Israelis and Palestinians.”

The showing, held in a local theater, was free due to its co-sponsorship by the campus Hillel group and the Palestine Solidarity Committee. There were so many people wanting to see this feature, a documentary about Israelis and Palestinians slowly and individually finding ways of living together, that we had to turn away over a hundred of them or risk violating the fire code! The Middle Eastern poetry reading, in which poems were read in a Middle Eastern language (Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Persian) and then in English, was another event attracting more people than the room could hold. A Middle Eastern banquet at the end of the year featured food, music, and dancing, with over 200 people in attendance.

But no matter how much one wishes to dwell on culture, one can never escape politics. I had always been disturbed by the quality of media coverage (or lack thereof) on the Middle East. Only in the wake of the Qana massacre did I see with my own eyes what happens when a newspaper attempts to provide objective coverage.

When our campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, printed a number of articles and editorials containing brutal facts about the April 1996 Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, there was hell to pay. The Israeli consulate called the editor to complain and threaten his job, and a Jewish student delegation had a closed-door session with him. To his credit, he kept the coverage fair and accurate, but I will never forget the unfair treatment he received simply for refusing to candy-coat an atrocity.

And that is the good news: not only do I see the light, but many in my generation do as well. We don’t have the mental baggage of older liberals who can only think of those “brave Israeli pioneers, waging a good war against their barbarous neighbors.”

Young journalists and editors are calling the shots as they see them, and don’t pull their punches. Students on many campuses across the U.S. are beginning to come together, attempting to find solutions not through the rhetoric of their grandfathers but through their own understanding of each other.

More and more American students actually know someone who is an Arab, Arab-American, or perhaps Palestinian, and they are beginning to ask questions. Their questions may elicit responses different from many things they have heard before. They will also see the light.

Because I began my trip with a journey of discovery, I will end it with one of hope. In 1990 I was on a warship in the Arabian Gulf, near Kuwait, scared to death that we would hit a floating mine as we sailed through the darkness. Six years later the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations provided me with an opportunity to visit Kuwait for a second time.

I stood on a marina pier one night and watched a pleasure boat cruise into the darkness. “Things have changed,” I thought. Kuwaitis no longer have to fear the unseen and dangerous minefields. I hope that someday my efforts will be rewarded by more Americans who venture out into the Middle East, undaunted by the minefields of misunderstanding that I and others are trying so hard to clear.