IT is with great interest that I read the GDN’s coverage of the new Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority (BTEA) cultural tours of the Manama Suq.
Having lived in Bahrain for more than 15 years, I headed over to the BTEA website to register for one of these tours.
First off, navigating the website is very complicated and even once I got to the tour registration page, it was only accepting registrations for a May 25-May 28 tour – very out-of-date!
And on top of that, these tours are being targeted at locals, but offer little value to someone who has lived here for more than a decade.
I do not need a tour guide to show me where the Hindu temple is or where the post office museum is!
Next, the tours’ timing is bizarre. Each tour is three hours long and, honestly, feels even longer. The cultural tour takes place between 9am and noon on Wednesdays – a working day, which especially during summer, can be blisteringly hot.
I also wish the tours focused more on the stories of those who have lived and run businesses in Manama for the last three to five decades.
There are some phenomenal merchants and small business owners who have created jewellery, made sweets and sold spices in the suq since Bahrain gained its sovereignty and even earlier.
A tour of Manama Suq should be a nostalgic stroll down memory lane of these cornerstones of Bahrain’s history.
I would gladly pay the tour fee to hear these stories and learn about how Manama has evolved through the years, from the time when merchants would have to trudge through mud to get to their shops to the Eid bazaars that would see the entire suq filled back-to-back with eager shoppers.
This is the verbal history that is being lost as some of these traders move on or close shop, in the face of Bahrain’s increasing ‘mall-ification’ and these are the nostalgic nuggets we need to treasure and highlight, both locally and internationally.
All in all, I do laud the efforts of the BTEA and the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities to revitalise the suq, but renovated buildings are still just lifeless relics, if we lose the stories that made these places treasured stops in the lives of everyone who passed through them.
Adam Relic
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