“Cabin crew, get ready for landing” the pilot of Air Arabia flight number G9103 announced as the aircraft headed towards the destination Bahrain International Airport. My daughter and wife’s eyes turned towards the window as they wanted to have a glance of the park that is adjacent to the airport and where we have spent many evenings. The flights are hardly 150 feet above the ground and are clearly visible from down. I remember my daughter use to jump with joy with every flight that use to land and this time she was in the flight trying to watch the park.
As the wheels touched the runway the excitement in us grew as we were back in Bahrain after a span of 5 years 6 months and 13 days. Having lived in this country for almost 6 years it was a nice feeling to be back for few days to spend Eid holidays, which also gave us another opportunity to meet two of my best friends Peter Michael and Shyamlal. They worked as drivers in the company I worked for but since they were good human beings I came closer to them and till date we are in touch with each other.
It took us hardly 5 minutes to get through the immigration process as we are entitled to get visa on arrival in Bahrain. Any person living in any GCC country in the capacity of manager is entitled to get visa on arrival in Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Oman.
As we moved towards the exit we saw these two gentlemen Peter and Shyam waiting there to receive us. They were at the airport on 31st-March-2008 when we left Bahrain and I remember Shyamlal had moist eyes while Peter cried loudly like a baby after we had collected our boarding passes. The same friends were waiting this time to receive us with smiles on their faces. To us it seemed as if we have just returned from vacation. Seeing them at airport was such a great feeling that we stood there and talked for more than 15 minutes before we started to walk towards their vehicle and were driven to a hotel that was booked by Peter on my request. The hotel is in the Juffair, an area which is one of the posh localities in Bahrain and my daughter use to go to a school in this area.
Yesterday we went to Umm-Al-Hassam Avenue, which is the area where we have lived for almost six years and it was like as if we have returned after spending a vacation. Though everything was so familiarized but still some development has taken place in this area since we left. I could see the happiness on my wife’s face, which was a crystal clear sign indicating that I didn’t make any mistake by choosing Bahrain to enjoy the short vacation. We are scheduled to fly back to UAE on 16th evening and the two ladies that matter to me have a big list of things to do in Bahrain while we are here. They are enjoying and I am happy to see them doing that.
At the end I have no hesitation to say that this trip to Bahrain wouldn’t have been so wonderful if I didn’t had the presence of my friends here who managed to squeeze out sometime from their busy schedules and are giving us company. I am glad and consider myself very fortunate that I have managed to make some good friends and have maintained relations with them by some means of communication (Mouthshut, email, phone, etc.).
