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On My Research:

Today, I presented my research plan - as it currently stands - to my academic advisor and to those in my research lab. Despite the heavy dosage everyone got of MS PowerPoint, I think it went well. My research is basically a comparative study of the History of Bahrain and how it measures to the rest of the Arabian/Persian Gulf Region (whatever it’s called!!), and through this study, I would be able to assess some of the Economic challenges Bahrain faces. The method I will be using is the method of analysing history as suggested by Fernand Braudel in which History should not merely be seen as a simple cause-and-effect timeline of events (as many school textbooks do) but rather a far more complex study that involves much interdisciplinary integration; History is made up of three different levels, each of which move at different speeds (Geographic time, Social time and Individual time). More on this is in the Current Research of this site. The only additions to my innitial plan that I’ve made came to much just a few days ago while I was reading The Corrupting Sea by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell and decided to toy around with the concepts of Connectivity and Microecologies.

Here are a couple of interesting quotes I’ve picked up along the way:

“The continuum is magnificent. The peoples around the Mediterranean and over to the Gulf of Persia are really one animate being. ” (Jakob Burckhardt (1959) Judgements on History and Historians, 23)

“Nobody sails the seas just to get across them.” (Polybius, Histories, 3.4.10)

â–¡ Imagines Himself Under the Waters of the Gulf:

Throughout most of his young life, â–¡ has been put in the position of having to ride boats and dhows more than most of his countrymen ever found themselves having to. Those who knew him said that he actually chose this lifestyle not for what measly income it brought to him and his family but to find a way to savour the taste of solitude one gets in the transit between two lands cut in two by a mass of water.

â–¡ knew, as did most of those living on the archipelago they called home, that the sea was treacherous. In an innocent manner, typical to that of children who just saw the sea as a place to play games and welcome back the pearl divers from their long trips, â–¡ always found happiness looking out at the marine-horizons. He would play games - when no one was looking - during those trips across the sea: imagining entire cities of precious stones - complete with intelligent mythical creatures and people who could eternally hold their breath underwater - literally passing by under their noses. He would touch the surface of the water with his fingertips and imagine that those dwelling in those magnificent cities were oblivious to â–¡, sailing in a world beyond theirs. He would even take this a step further, particularly on days in which he is tired after a long day of work and sailing, and imagine that he would get an invitation - whispered to him by the currents of the Gulf - to stroll among the serendipities of the underwater civilizations of his fancies.

These underwater adventures would begin with him hearing the murmurs of the sea telling him to look into the water and feel himself being reduced to a drop of water that flows unseen into the sea. He would slowly be carried away by the undercurrents to the place all undercurrents go to: the magnificent cities. On this day, however, when he finally channelled himself into imagining arriving at the end of the path of the undercurrents, he realized that the cities have been abandoned as if scared away by a plague or rumours of invading army. Had someone else found out about his fantasies or had they not existed in the first place? Somewhere along the distance of the two islands between which he was sailing and the last two weeks of his life, he lost his child-innocent visions and found himself gasping for air, thrusting his arms and legs into the water, trying to return to life.