I received an email today from a recruitment agency, asking me to teach in Bahrin (I was informed immediately that this is a country in the Middle East – as if I wouldn’t know). My long lover affair with the country has left me a familiarity that often deludes me into thinking I have visited there before. I often gaze affectionately at pictures of the ‘Kingdom of the Two Seas’ and drift into a fantasy about a land where I truly belong. The country and I seem like the two colours on the national flag respectively, jaggedly matching each other.
So, as you can imagine, I proceeded to read the rest of the very excitedly. Unfortunately, the excitement was short-lived. The following passage dissuaded my excitement from furthering its jittery course:
“It's perfectly safe to work in Bahrain, as long as you use the smallest amount of common sense. Use the same rules as you would in any city, with some allowances for Islamic morals, don't stumble around in the dark on your own, don't wear mini skirts and plunging necklines in public malls, and show respect to the local population.”
What a ridiculous error and thoughtless assumption! Don’t these savages know what a semi-colon is? They talk about ‘morals’, yet they don’t have the decency to put a semi-colon after the word. Feck that; I don’t associate with such reckless joy riders!
