"We meet"

Two-beat heart

Dr..

Parvin Habib

November 22, 2022

When I was collecting the material for my book “Women’s Poetry in a Thousand Years,” which was published this year by the Arabic Language Center in Abu Dhabi, I came across the saying of that Arab woman when I was asked which of her sons is dearest to her heart, and she said: “They are like a vicious circle that does not know where its two ends are.” I remembered this. To say that I see with great joy the meeting of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, with his brother, His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, at the Al Marmoum rest house in Dubai.

For me, they are two halves of a heart completed in one image.

My memory went back to more than two decades ago, and I was in Cairo happy that my night on “Nizar Qabbani”, which I called “a poet in the heart of his time”, won the Golden Palm Award in the television production competition in 1999, at that time when the director of Dubai TV offered me the job In the Emirates, I did not know that the trial year extends over an area of ​​more than 20 years, and that I would become a beat in the Emirati heart, just as I was and still am a beat in the Bahraini heart.

Manama and Dubai are not two rivals in my heart, but rather a Siamese twin that is difficult to separate.

I do not feel the nostalgia of alienation in Dubai, but the advantage of addition and diversity.

I am indebted to three places for what I have reached: Bahrain in my literary formation, Cairo in my academic formation, and Dubai in my media formation. Bahrain TV gave me the opportunity to start, and Dubai Channel undertook to pave the long road for me from a broadcaster of major news broadcasts to a preparer and presenter of many cultural and social programmes. Therefore, I was always convinced that Bahrain, my hometown, and Dubai, the hometown of my soul, are two wings on which I can fly towards achieving what I have always dreamed of, and thank God it never failed me.

I remember when I was invited to participate in conferences, forums, and evenings outside my two countries. I was not surprised, nor were the participants surprised, when I was invited once on behalf of the UAE and another on behalf of Bahrain. This happened to me many times, the last of which was at the ancient Al-Merbad festival in Basra in 2018, when I was among the Emirati delegation, headed by the poet. The late Habib Al-Sayegh, and when one of the Iraqi writers asked me: Are you Emirati?

Rather, how proud Bahrain's leaders and intellectuals made me feel when I represented the UAE in an event!

Every meeting between Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid and King Hamad bin Isa fills me with pride, so I recall the saying of Al-Farzadaq proudly: “Those are my fathers, and they surprised me with the same.” These meetings were described by Sheikh Mohammed one day as “fifty years of personal, diplomatic, and family relationship, age and ten that do not increase.” Years are nothing but value.

The cultural and social heritage and the common history between the two countries is a solid ground that opens up to prospects for cooperation in many areas, some of which I can enumerate and not enumerate.

In his last meeting, Sheikh Muhammad summed it up in the best way, with a sentence that carries many meanings: “Our relations are ancient, our brotherhood is firm, and our future is joint and promising, God willing.”

I was always convinced that Bahrain, my birthplace, and Dubai, my soul, were two wings on which I could fly towards achieving what I always dreamed of, and thank God it never let me down.

@DrParweenHabib1 

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