A Bahraini Invests in the World

On one of my last days in London I called on Mohammed Mandi Al-Tajir, who is not only Sheikh Rashid’s principal adviser but also the U.A.E.’s Ambassador to Great Brit­ain and France. A Bahraini, he had begun his public career helping reorganize the Dubai customs office. He also went into private business—beginning in the gold trade and the idea to sell gold for cash. Today, according to London newspapers, he is one of the world’s wealthiest men.

His holdings included farms in France (“I love land”), London’s Park Tower Hotel, real estate in Paris, shares in African mines, an oil well in Texas (“400 barrels a day”), Wall Street stocks (“you should move things every day, buy and sell even if the profit is low, it’s the turnover that counts”), a new bank in the Cayman Islands, collections of pearls and Persian carpets (“I could stare at one for hours, they are so beautiful”). Of his six children, two sons attend Harrow; his daughter is at school in Surrey.

What Does It All Add Up To?

We strolled together over Dropmore, a 300-year-old estate he had just added to his collection of English country houses. There were great trees, a blue sky; far off, a jet climbed from Heathrow. For a time we walked in silence, the only sound the crunch of the gravel paths beneath our feet.

It had been 24 years since the Ambassador first came to London as a young student. Coal still heated most houses, and he remembered how when he came back to his lodgings “my shirt would always be sooty.” He came to love the city: its handsome buildings, its institutions, its public services, above all, the character of its people. It is, he said, the “capi­tal of the world.” Now a part of it is his.

Mr. Al-Tajir’s career reminded me that in personal affairs, as in history, change is a constant. The ignorant sometimes learn; the poor become rich; the powerless, influential. It is a test of life, as old Shakhbut’s fate indi­cates, to come to terms with change; neither to hide from it, nor to waste too much time in protest.

As for the future, few undertake to make predictions when they concern the Arabian Peninsula or the international oil business. But the motives of the Arabs are easy to dis­cern. As one Arab minister said: “Nobody cared about us before the oil came, nobody will care about us when it is gone.”

For possible fines or legal fees

“Everybody want poi, but most too lazy to tend it. Soon no more taro, no more poi.”

Most east enders do prefer other pur­suits—like fighting further development, which they feel endangers their traditional lands and life-style. Many know what over­building has done to Honolulu; others see without leaving home the sky rises that now shadow Maui’s once unblemished beaches.

Recognizing the need for more sophisti­cated weapons than talk, prayer, and dem­onstrations, leaders of the movement are fast learning how the law can be used for as well as against them. Already their educated efforts have paid off with one stunning vic­tory—defeat of a large project planned for the Pukoo area.

Antidevelopment sentiment is fueled in part by a statewide drive among native Ha­waiians to secure lands they feel are rightful­ly theirs by virtue of their ancestry.

Yet, historically, landownership among these islands was limited to a privileged few. For almost a thousand years, local alii­chiefs—controlled all property under a strict, often cruel feudal system. Kameha­meha I put an end to their power when he annexed the islands and became king in 1810. The vast holdings of the alii passed to the monarchy, which during its century-long reign doled out large parcels to those who won royal favor.

Like American Charles R. Bishop. In 1875 he was granted half of what would be­come Molokai Ranch. His wife, Bernice Pauahi, last descendant of Kamehameha I, acquired the rest through inheritance. The complete 70,000-acre package sold in 1898 for $251,000, the price of a condominium apartment there today.

Among the leftovers of the alii period is a remarkably well-preserved chain of off­shore fishponds looping along the south coast. Esidoro and Sifriana Pascua, an elderly Filipino couple, keep this ancient form of aquaculture alive—but they may give up soon. The pond they tend is being smothered by mangroves; rent for it has almost doubled in the past several years; their catch has dwindled to an occasional Samoan crab.

“Baby mullets still swim up channel from sea; for 30 years we put in pond to grow. Baby barracuda get in too and grow.” Wad­ing around to net mature food fish, Sifriana has suffered three serious barracuda bites—a painful memory that’s taken the edge off her enthusiasm for the fishpond business and investigating the bankruptcy laws.

“Once so many mullet they come when I whistle. A partner want to put in tilapia. We say no, a no-good fish, eat other fishes, taste muddy. Partner no good either; he dump in tilapia when we not here. To get rid, must poison whole pond, wait two years, start all over. Someone else maybe, not us.”

These days Esidoro spends less time at the pond, more at “school,” as Filipinos call their weekend social center, a back-street yard in Kualapuu’s plantation community. There’s a lot to learn there—if you can find the place. Nobody’s going to volunteer the information.

Main attraction: Illegal chicken fights and games of chance that police tolerate as long as they’re small scale and locally run. A patron named Joe approves the arrange­ment. “But just in case, the house takes a small cut. For possible fines or legal fees.”