The Daily Memoir (2019) cover page. Princess Diana attending a formal state dinner in Bahrain during a Gulf tour in 1986.
My father has an obsession. Unlike his addiction to cigarettes, which he has now quit after a heart attack in January 2017, he still orders every printed newspaper on our tiny island home of Bahrain. It is rather surprising, but nevertheless indicative of diverse popular thought and opinions, that there are twelve printed daily newspapers in a country with a population of approximately 1.5 million. The number of people inhabiting my archipelago of just under 300 square miles is never exact and not always true. The area of land is also inaccurate and likely to increase with future land reclamation projects. Half of the dailies are printed in Arabic, two in English, and four in Malayalam.
Every day, my father has all the Arabic and English newspapers delivered, or picked up for him. I can only presume that he would also request the four Malayalam papers if he spoke the language. The doorbell sounds and my father will yell for someone to answer. He knows it’s the guy delivering the newspapers. If he’s overdue on paying for his subscription, he’ll hand me or one of my siblings the exact amount owed in bills and coins. We will fetch the newspapers and deliver them to his table where he is likely eating his breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs with tomatoes. His eyes are fixed on the television screen from which the sound of a British presenter on Sky News or the BBC announces the morning headlines.
This is an obsession with the news. World news, continental news, local news. I don’t think I’ve ever really read a newspaper from cover to cover. I doubt I’ve even ever skimmed a newspaper cover to cover. My father does this on a daily basis. I’ve never asked him why (this is when Jen asks: Why don’t you ask him now?).
I assume it’s a habit, something which began long ago, before the internet, before television, and has evolved to inhabit contemporary forms of communication. He won’t listen to the radio anymore, but he will scroll through twitter. I know this because ever since he got a smartphone (which is not that long ago), he is one of my most active contacts.
Last week there were flash floods in Bahrain. I think I read somewhere that we received over 80% of our total yearly rainfall in a couple of hours. My father sent us at least five videos documenting the torrential downpour. That’s breaking news.
My father’s favorite reading chair is the toilet seat. When his breakfast is finished he will pick up his stack and go to the bathroom. He will spend what seems like hours in there, meticulously going through every edition, pausing to read something here, skipping a column there, until he is done. I think this ritual drives my mother crazy. But she’s worked her way around it. She knows to use the bathroom before he makes his pilgrimage.
When I was six, we lived in an apartment behind my aunt’s beauty salon called Monalisa, named after the famous renaissance beauty, but spelled without a space and pronounced as Monaleeza. It was the end of the summer, and my final days of freedom playing video games on a tiny television screen in the back corner of the dining room. I remember piles of newspapers stacked up beside my father’s armchair in our living room. This was the first time I recall seeing British newspapers at home. My father, I’m sure, had found a way to get them delivered to Bahrain some years earlier, a practice which continued for some time after. On every front page was the face of a beautiful blonde woman.
I don’t remember the words, only her face. Her short hair and bright smile seemed to shine through the surface of the page. In other photographs she appeared sad, shy, or troubled. The series of emotions was endless. I felt as though I knew her. I never asked who she was.
A few days later as I sat in the living room with my father, eyes fixed on the television screen. I saw and heard Elton John playing at a grand piano, dressed in black, singing about a candle in the wind and an English rose. My father explained to me that he was singing for Diana, she was “England’s rose”.
He pointed to the stack of newspapers and her photograph. She had died in a car accident in Paris. I don’t recall asking any further questions. I remember my father telling me that Elton John changed the lyrics of the song for her.
It was only years later when I found out that the original, dedicated to Norma Jean Baker (aka Marylin Monroe), was probably thought to be inappropriate for the Princess of Wales. I think that was my first ever experience with death. And, as Elton sings in the original Candle in the Wind:
And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did