translations of bahraini blogs - ali abdulemam

Well, it's been a long time since the first in the series, but here at last is the second translation from a Bahraini blog. This time I have translated a piece – comprising two posts – by Ali Abdulemam, who is best-known for being arrested two years ago (see the website set up to support him for more information).

I just want to make clear that it is entirely coincidental that both this and one of the pieces I translated for Zarnooq deal with the same 'activity'. The bloggers themselves chose the posts they want translated, and the similarity in subject matter is quite by chance. And those who do not read Arabic should certainly not assume that all Bahraini bloggers are obsessed by this topic…

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Ali Abdulemam began the first Arabic blog in Bahrain. There were already a number of Bahraini blogs in English at the time, mainly written by students abroad, and Ali was encouraged by a friend in Britain to start blogging, in October 2004. When Ali first heard about blogs he had no idea what they were. However he was already heavily involved with online forums; he started Bahrain Online, the first forum in Bahrain, in 1999, and today it is still the most popular forum even though it is blocked.

His blog is mainly about politics, and Bahraini society and culture, and its intellectual life. He sometimes addresses issues in a direct way, and sometimes indirectly (as with the pieces that have been translated below).

Ali Abdulemam was arrested in 2005, for his involvement with Bahrain Online (on which people’s contributions are not censored, and where therefore strong anti-government opinions can be found). However, when the media in the rest of the world picked up on Ali’s arrest, there was more focus on his being a blogger rather than a forum administrator. This helped in building support for him, as there is a great deal of respect for bloggers internationally and people wanted to defend the freedom to blog. Ali received emails from all over the world supporting him.

The following piece (which is in two parts, posted in August 2005) which Ali chose for translation was his way of commenting on what he perceived to be happening in the Shi’a community. He felt the community was dividing, and not because of their actual beliefs, just how they talked about those beliefs. Ali felt the way the various groups tried to prove their beliefs was silly; it was as if they wanted to divide, so talked about dividing, rather than focusing on what they had in common.

He had some concern about posting the piece, as it crosses some cultural boundaries, but after he posted the first part many people wrote emails and comments in support, so he then posted the second.

The fart and its influence on Bahraini society

Part One

A fart is expelled from a person without them wishing for it, bearing a nasty smell and often accompanied by distinctive noises that would be difficult for any equipment, whether mechanical or natural, to copy. Occasionally it is accompanied by some other disgusting things, but this is confined to times of sickness.

Ordinarily it comes out by choice, but in front of people, unwillingly.

Yesterday while I was walking around my workplace, I noticed the director shifting his trousers around his backside while his enormous belly moved in and out, and I said to myself what a fool and a lunatic the man was. It will come as no surprise that he is one of the remaining white people that our country imports because it thinks they are experts in all sorts of things.

Anyway, I went on my way, and just two steps later I heard a noise, I swear it sounded like it was coming out of Ma'tam Bin Saloom's loudspeakers. At first I tried to tell myself I had a problem with my hearing, wanting to check what I had heard, because it didn't make sense that our director did it publicly at work with everyone listening. But it was too much to hope that my ears had deceived me, the ears which had often depended on me, and that I had depended on… The noise, which I had long been familiar with, was that of a loud fart which shook the coffee machine, and actually made it seize up. I think that some of the people in the vicinity of the fart were choked by the smell (they are now putting in transfer requests). The fart had a big effect – we couldn’t be anywhere near it.

I ran over to my boss to tell him what was going on. He explained that farting was no big deal for white people, even if it was shameful in our society. I was astonished, but there is no way I could go against my beliefs regarding farting, and switch to supporting it. I immediately pictured two opposing schools of thought in society. One school demands freedom with no limits, and the ability to make its own decisions in every matter – whether it comes to sleeping around, drinking alcohol, or interacting with foreigners. This school came into being when tension arose due to the repressive behaviour of the state towards the people, and there was a dispute about how to deal with this state. There were those who called for its overthrow, and worked towards this. They were thwarted because their numbers in the army were few, so they dropped the idea. And there were those who said that we had to infiltrate the system in order to change it from within, but the government was smarter than that, and that scheme fell apart. And there were those who said we had to request and appeal to and plead with the government to satisfy our wishes, but one of them rebelled, saying we mustn't debase ourselves for something that is our right.

The clamour between the supporters of each side increased, and one side declared, 'We must liberate ourselves completely from all subordination, and avenge ourselves, with no one acting on our behalf.' The other said there must be reasonable limits in dealing with the authorities, and with each other.

At this point the most prominent proponent of the theory of absolute freedom exploded, and he began to bellow and sputter until a noise burst forth from him just like the fart of Bahrani villager. It would be impossible to forget how it sounded and smelt, and it even had an unmistakeable flavour with traces of greens, as compared to boiled eggs. You could hear it clearly, and it combined with his fiery speech demanding freedom without limits. Then silence spread, until the people gathered started coughing, then murmuring, and mumbling, and muttering, all of it suffused with irritation at the strength of the smell and at the disgusting noise which obviously offended some of them. One of them said in a loud, embarrassed voice, as if he were hunting for the perpetrator of the fart, 'You bugger, damn that fart!' A second followed, 'What's that – it's not a fart, it's a bomb!' A third, a Sitra man, said in a real Sitrawi accent, 'Urrrgh, what's that stink, it's worse than Abbas's fishy smell!' The comments continued which the leader of those gathered profited from, and settled the matter by saying, 'If you were decent you wouldn't have farted.' Then the farter felt hugely embarrassed and said, trying to keep his head high, 'So what if someone lets off a so-called fart? In Europe people don't object to farts, but you're still judging others for farting in whatever way.'

Then one of them stood up and said, 'Do you want to set up a permissive society, where farting is commonplace and burping is unacceptable? Is this what you want to import from Western society – the burp with its delicate nature becoming something shameful, and the fart with its disgusting nature and violent smell being commonplace and acceptable? It seems that this idea has grown on our friend who expelled a fart without intending to, and immediately began to defend people's right to do anything, including fart, because farting is natural, and holding it in might cause health problems.'

At this moment the discussion took a new path, and those present divided into those who supported the fart, and those who were against it. People were distracted from thinking about the basic issue they had gathered there for. Each side began to philosophise about their standpoint. The defenders of the fart kept invoking the beliefs and culture they had inherited about the fart, and the lack of shame in expelling one. The others exploited the general outlook in society, which was against farting. Thus the society became divided, and the argument spread everywhere, between the supporters and opponents of the fart. They wrote books and tracts. The fart supporters wrote much on this matter, including: The Right and the Freedom to Fart, The Ultimate Aim in Humans' Farting Rights, Don't Say Our Fart, Health Problems Resulting From Suppressing the Daily Fart, and the last thing they wrote was a book of anecdotes about farts and farters.

On the other side the opponents of farting wrote tracts in response, which included The Shortcomings of the Farting Concept, The Similarity Between Apostasy and Farting, The Bankrupt as Farters, The Fart of Adel Al Aali, and Lifting the Veil on the Fart Heresy.

The two sides busied themselves with answering the other. After the opinion of each community polarised between the supporters of the farting and its opponents, a new political philosophy crystallised for each group. Each responded to the other referring to the same literature those before them had used. The fart supporters drew conclusions regarding the rights of the umma to fart, and the uttering of the word 'fart' became sacred to the extent that their literature always concluded with the phrase ‘In the beginning was the fart’, and the literature of the others also ended in the phrase ‘In the beginning was the fart’. Meanwhile each side interpreted this in its own way, and crystallised its political opinions around it.

The strange thing was that even as the two sides were arguing with each other about which of them had the right to oppose the government, they always ran to it for support.

And the matter ended in a bitter fight between the two camps, when they were drawn into a confrontation with each other.

Posted 19 August 2005

Part Two

The state of conflict continued between the supporters of the right to fart and its opponents. The title ‘Pro-farts’ was applied to the supporters, and that of ‘Anti-farts’ to the opponents. Different means and weapons were used in the call to both ideologies, and the appeals did not shy from violence.

In fact the country split into two, and the issue became bigger and bigger. A man of high standing, a religious sheikh, made efforts towards reconciliation, and brought together the Pro-farts and the Anti-farts to agree on how they could coordinate themselves and fight the government while maintaining each group's character and ideology. It was acknowledged that each movement had its own supporters and was different to the other, and this was the basis on which the meeting for reconciliation and coordination of efforts was convened. The two sides genuinely wished to demand the rights of the country's people, but they were most interested in the movements they had created and which had become sacred to them. Indeed each continued to invoke everything that strengthened the glorification of their movement.

During the meeting something unexpected happened (besides the deliberate fart by the Pro-farts to affirm their right to fart, and the protest of the Anti-farts to affirm their rights against the fart). A truly suffocating smell spread; they recognised what it was, but it had arrived without a sound. It was a silent fart; it came out completely noiselessly, and its source was the sheikh. The smell was so strong that those near to the sheikh began to cough from its potency, and one of them asked for the window to be opened to change the air in order not to suffocate. At this point expressions of doubt appeared on people’s faces. The Pro-farts considered this action to be deliberate, the intention being to insult them, for they were the people calling for farting noisily, and not silently. It was obvious that the sheikh wanted to inform them in an indirect way that they were worthless and insignificant. The Anti-farts also felt it was intentional, for even if the sheikh was concealing the sound, he was doing the exact thing that they were fighting against – how dare he! The confusion of both sides was obvious and the shame showed on the sheikh's face, and the meeting was adjourned without agreement.

Each group left, making a plan for dealing with the new situation after the insult of the sheikh. But what happened after that caused a stir. The sheikh met with some people close to him to discuss the crisis and one of them advised him to write a statement declaring that the silent fart was unintended and it was a natural case of necessity that the he had succumbed to, with the statement signed by him. But some others didn't approve, and advised supporting the Pro-farts in their pressure to fart. But that might have annoyed the Anti-farts, so after some debate, an agreement was reached to issue a public statement confirming the sheikh’s firm principles, which he claimed were the same principles as the Pro-farts and the Anti-farts.

After the issuing of the notice the Pro-farts responded with a very angry announcement, as did the Anti-farts, and thus the sheikh was compelled to reply with a statement. As a result a third group was formed whose supporters called it ‘The Silent Fart’. One of its slogans was ‘Not Pro-fart, Not Anti-fart – Just Silent’.

And thus, instead of the meeting for reconciliation succeeding, it resulted in the creation of another movement, called The Silent Fart.

Posted 24 August 2005

With thanks to both Ali Al Jallawi and Mohamed Al Mubarak for helping me with this piece, despite their disgust on reading it!