Both as Bahrain’s Minister of Culture and Information, a position she has held since the end of 2008, and also during an earlier stint as Assistant Undersecretary for Culture and National Heritage to the former Minister of Information, Sheikha Mai has been responsible for negotiating Bahrain’s membership of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, the reorganisation of the Ministry to make its mission more coherent, the planning of a 3.2 kilometre-long walk to celebrate Manama’s pearling heritage, the renovation of the venerable but long neglected Al-Khamis mosque, which dates back to the beginning of the Islamic era and the commissioning of a new National Theatre and seven new museums, which are being designed by some of the most famous architects in the world today.
As a private citizen, Sheikha Mai is single-handedly responsible for the resurrection of Muharraq, one of Manama’s most historic neighbourhoods, its rescue from neglect and decay and subsequent transformation into one of the country’s principal cultural attractions.
“I started [in 2002] with one house, that once belonged to my grandfather,” Her Excellency tells me, referring to the building that now houses the Sheikh Ebrahim bin Mohammad al Khalifa Centre for Culture and Research. “After that, I bought the house next door. I’ve ended up now with 10 houses.”
Rather than transforming the neighbourhood into a beautiful but sterile attraction, the Sheikha’s work has encouraged many of the families that own properties in Muharraq but who have long since left, to renovate their own properties, improving life for the many families that remain.
Alongside the Sheikh Ebrahim auditorium and various cultural centres, Sheikha Mai’s contributions to the neighbourhood include a very contemporary children’s library, a coffee shop and a workers collective, where neighbourhood women earn a living making the delicate traditional gold and silver embroidery work for which Bahrain has long been famous.
“What I do in Muharraq is I work on everything, even the roads. I give facelifts to all the neighbouring houses. I think [local residents] appreciate that I take time to change things for them, the nice roads, the nice lighting. Just recently, we added a small water garden. It’s very modern but it looks perfect amongst the old houses.”
“It really makes me happy to see Muharraq become elegant again. This was a place people never visited before. Now they come for exhibitions and lectures, to visit, to have a coffee or just to walk around and to see people appreciate their heritage, I couldn’t want anything more than that.”
It was the Muharraq project and particularly the strong reputation that the Sheikh Ebrahim Centre developed for its cultural programme that in her characteristically self-effacing words, “guided [her] to the ministry.” In fact, it was the other way around.
A housewife (albeit one who had already written a few books about Bahrain) and a painter, Sheikha Mai had no previous experience of government work. It proved something of a shock.
“To be honest, we didn’t speak the same language. So after a year and half, I quit and carried on with my work in Muharraq and at the centre.”
A year later, Sheikha Mai was asked to return to head the Ministry she had just left and admits that she didn’t immediately relish the prospect. Her work in Muharraq was keeping her busy and with the Ministry responsible for information and telecommunications, culture and heritage and promoting tourism as well, she worried that her time would be stretched too thin to be effective.
In the end it was the realisation that the extra responsibilities also brought with them powerful tools for developing what by then had become her over-riding passion – preserving and promoting Bahrain’s cultural heritage – that encouraged her to accept.
“It should be our mission to promote our history and to focus on the cultural identity of Bahrain,” she says, warming to her topic. “We are a tiny island but I believe that we are different to other Gulf States because of what we have. We are rich in culture and have many historical sites.”
Despite this fact, the Minister says that much of her work is focussed on explaining the importance of Bahrain’s cultural inheritance to its own citizens. If Sheikha Mai can speak proudly of her country’s archaeological inheritance – Dilmun-era settlements and burial mounds that date back 5,000 years, the presence of Alexander’s Greeks who named the island Tylos, thousands of years of trading with Egypt, Rome, Persia and India and an openness to the world that has resulted in modern Bahrain’s sectarian diversity – that pride is not necessarily widespread.
“We haven’t benefited from [our heritage] as a society. There is little awareness of it among the new and even among the older generations. It’s our fault. There has been no clear message about the historical importance, let’s say, of the burial mounds. I’ll give you an example. We are facing a problem with housing and one member of parliament recently stood up and said that it’s more important to concentrate on the people alive now than to preserve old jars with bones in them,” the Minister pauses for a second, choosing her words before continuing. “This is wrong. Of course we must take care of the people, but it shouldn’t be a choice of one or the other. We need new homes but [the mounds] are a unique part of world heritage and of our identity. Many of them have already been lost and we must work very hard to preserve what we have left.”
This is where Bahrain’s membership of UNESCO plays a vital role, helping to promote the country’s heritage initiatives to the world. Although it’s four-year seat on the World Heritage Committee – the body that establishes which sites deserve to be listed as World Heritage Sites and which is also responsible for their protection – is coming to an end, Bahrain’s involvement with UNESCO is far from over. In 2011, the island will host the Committee’s annual session, making it the fourth Arab country to be chosen and the first since Morocco in 1999. The meeting will bring the entire Committee to Bahrain for 10 days, thrusting the island into the global spotlight. Slightly further off, Bahrain will become the site for UNESCO’s future regional headquarters, which will be housed in part of a museum and research centre being designed by Japanese starchitect, Tadao Ando. “To be able to invite the whole world to Bahrain was a dream,” the Minister says, “but getting the UNESCO regional centre is important for the whole region.”
What Sheikha Mai doesn’t say, at least not out loud, is the enormous coup this represents for Bahrain. In a region drowning in ancient civilisations and historical wealth, Bahrain isn’t at the top of list when it comes to archaeological heritage and frankly, countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and even Iraq might seem more logical locations for the regional headquarters of the world’s guardians of heritage. “We managed to get the nomination because we worked hard to show [UNESCO] that we cared, that we wanted the centre and we’ll have to work just as hard to make it happen,” she says. “The centre is here but it will represent all Arab states on an international level.”
In the Gulf, Dubai is the capital of economic adventure, Qatar plans to become the educational capital and Riyadh is the political capital. Bahrain, with a little of all of each of these attributes already, appears to be staking its future on becoming the region’s heritage and research capital. Is the trend then, to complement, not compete? “What is happening in Dubai is incredible. All the events and exhibitions. To be able to see what’s going on in the rest of the world, just half an hour from me by plane, this is amazing. As someone from this region, it’s something that makes me proud but we need to show our identity. Bahrain is uniquely positioned in being able to do that. So this is my focus; our buildings, our culture, our music, to show we have something different here, to show our history and as someone from this region, I’m very proud of that too.”
