a death in Sitra

While our “parliamentarians” were busy entertaining themselves with the news on the Danish front, the very first day of the Hijri year broke a heartbreaking tragedy to a Bahraini family. Their young daughter of 13 years has died electrocuted. Fatima Jaffar, who went to the washroom shortly after midnight on Tuesday night, was found by her mother lying on the floor fifteen minutes later, but was still breathing. A relative called for an ambulance which took too long to arrive, and when it finally did, it was too late to save the young girl’s life.

A tragic accident? An accident it is not.

Fatima’s mother told Al-Wasat reporter that her sons and daughters had suffered frequent electric shocks in the past due to the wearing-off and the bad shape of the electrical wirings in their house. The family didn’t have the money for electrical repairs, as the father had a disability. The mother said she always hoped and prayed that nothing sinister will happen before help arrive. But help didn’t arrive and a sinister thing did. Al-Wasat reporter who printed the story in the lower corner of the first page - an upper corner headline was about the upcoming IPO in Al-Salam Bank- said the family’s home in Abu-alaysh village in Sitra was a wreck of a house.

And perhaps Sitra explains it all; an island hard hit by successful exclusionary policy, that almost guaranteed that this island, brimming with poverty, misery and crammed humanity as it is, saw nothing of oil wealth over decades, in good surplus years or bad. But who really knows of an island so neglected, it has no public transport service for its 60,000 inhabitants? Who whould care enough about Sitra to hear the pleas of Fatima’s mother before it was too late? A government busy redressing Sitra’s wrong sectarian imbalance with gradual ethnic in-sourcing? A pseudo-political class busy angling for an election year? Or a clerical establishment with more immediate concern for a cover on every girl’s head rather than a safe ceiling over her family?

" أحد يعرف رخيوت وحوف؟

فما تلك من الأفلاك السيارة والمكتشفات

ولكن وطنا عربيا

مملكة للجوع والأوبئة الجلدية

وللثورة أيضا"

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