The Tree of Life, Bahrain

Took a taxi out to the Bahraini desert this afternoon to see the "Tree of Life." A totally incongruous idea from a certain point of view. About a 30 minute drive in the cabbie's new 2005 Ford Crown Vic. (He was very proud, justifiably.) We cleared the outskirts of Manama and passed into the very tony area where the royals take up residence. This palace for the Emir, that one for his father, another for the grandmother, one for the cousin, etc., etc. All places mere mortals like me will never see the inside of. (I think of a line from the recent movie "Syriana," paraphrased: "A hundred years ago you guys lived in tents and rode camels over the dunes. A hundred years from now you'll be back doing the same thing.") But, I digress. (I never met a tangent I could resist going off on. How do you go "off" ON a tangent?

Nonetheless...after a time we were in the desert. Stark, rocky, forbidding. Oil and natural gas facilities dotted the landscape and pipelines crawled across the sands like packs of snakes.

On a little escarpment off in the distance the tree came into view. As trees go it wasn't much to look at. I don't even know it's species, maybe Juniper. I've certainly seen much finer, more magnificent trees in my travels. But it touched me in a deep, personal way.

It's about 450 years old and has no apparent means of support. Presumably it's fed by an underground spring. People come from all over the world and from all religions and ethnicities come to commune with it. There were Hindus there when we arrived offering incense and prayers. The driver said you can talk to God by channeling, more or less, through the tree. Like so many things in the natural world, the poor thing is in danger of being loved too much. Although there's a little fence around it, there is no protection. At one time a guard was posted 24/7. But, in spite of donations from around the world now the guard is gone. So people have scrawled and carved their names all over the branches. Twigs and limbs have been cut. Bark has been peeled. Kids climb all over it. That I don't worry about so much. A tree just begs for kids to climb it (See the Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein).

I spent a moment alone touching it's limbs and feeling it's life. Insh'Allah it will be standing long after I'm gone from this life. Maybe one day I'll have great grandchildren who will find themselves in Bahrain some afternoon and feel a pull toward a lonely life in the desert.

People fight and die and slaughter one another over things of little to no significance. The tree stands alone every day, every week, every year, decade, century and maybe some day, a millenium. Just striving to see another sunrise.

The driver agreed to take me to the Qala'at Al-Bahrain or Bahrain Fort on the way back. It's the only UNESCO World Heritage site in Bahrain. But, we got caught up in a mammoth traffic jam of people coming to protest the recent bombing of the Shi'ite Mosque in Iraq in conjunction with the celebration of Imam Hussein, who was the brother-in-law of the Propher Mohammed. Or something.

As a consequence of that and the festive Formula One (F-1) parade being held along the Corniche near our hotel, we were forced to skip the stop. Sigh! There isn't much to the fort, but it would've made the fifth UNESCO site on the Piles of Rocks Tour. Next time. We did get a tour of the backstreets of Manama as we tried to get back to the hotel.

But we passed these mounds of sand on the way back. Turns out there are about 100,000 of them. They are burial sites. I don't know when they are dated to. Many contain the bodies of ancient royals. It's not marked off or posted. You can just wander around in them. I'm more than sure they are ripe for looting and grave robbing.
So tomorrow off to Muscat, Oman. It'll be warmer and the hotel is on a great beach, the one place where I can run barefoot.