This is an edited extract of a chapter from Writing Revolution, a collection of personal essays from people affected by the Arab Spring. Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
At 1:30 in the afternoon the funeral of 22-year-old engineer Ali Ahmad al-Mumin took place [on February 17, 2011]. He had died after a shotgun round struck him in the hip, severing an artery. The efforts of Dr Sadiq Abdullah could not save him; 30 bags of blood failed to restore his pulse.
At around 5:30 that morning Ali had made his last entry on his Facebook page: "My blood for my country."
Short hours later his words became reality, a truth that stunned his father, mother and six siblings when they received the news of his martyrdom.
Ali was in the final year of his engineering degree at the University of Bahrain. He had been with one of his brothers in Pearl square, sleeping peacefully when the security forces attacked. Ali had made it out alive to make his final Facebook entry, then returned to the roundabout with his brother Hussein, where he was hit with baton rounds and internationally outlawed shotgun shells. He died from his wounds and took his hopes and dreams with him.
I knew nothing about him. On Thursday evening I opened his Facebook page and my senses were penetrated by his glowing image. I sat frozen before the picture: from its depths something was calling me to write about him. I made an absurd attempt to add him as a friend, then even more absurdly I waited for him to accept my request, reloading the page and telling myself "perhaps he might" or perhaps some supernatural force might do it on his behalf. I needed to speak to him: "I want to write about that special light you have, the light that drew me to you. Tell me something of your life story, something I can open my book with."
I hunted on the internet and found him on YouTube, alive and full of motion, introducing a voluntary workshop for the residents of Sitra (an island in the Central Governorate of Bahrain just east of Bahrain Island in the Persian Gulf), where he came from. Listening to the questions raised in the workshop I realised they were my questions as well: How are we different? How am I different from the people with whom I share my country, my village, my family and my faith? I got a sense of the broad and welcoming diversity he believed in.
On Friday afternoon I went to attend his funeral on Sitra – the Sitra that was famed for its poverty, its history of political resistance, its courage and its kindness. I watched the awful procession bearing his funeral throne, the Bahrain flag wrapped about his tender young body and the young men clustered about his coffin waving more national flags in the air. They adored the flag these young men; they waved it aloft, walked behind it, liberated squares with it and then they died without it.
At the request of his grief-stricken mother the procession halted and the following words were sung: "Mother, remember me by the young men marching […] by the empty wedding throne. My wedding henna is the blood of the wounded. Who snuffed out the candle of my youth? My henna is my blood, the coffin a house of dust."
It was a painful moment, and I lived it like all the other moments, sent messages on Twitter like I always did. That inner voice was drawing me closer to these young men and I became increasingly certain that it was my special duty to write about Ali Ahmad al-Mumin.
While we were experiencing the pain of these moments, and on the same day that the funerals of four other victims of Thursday's violence were being held, our hearts still bruised and tender, another procession was setting out not far from where we stood, a triumphal march organised by regime loyalists at al-Fatih mosque.
In the afternoon, my friend Abdel Wahhab and I left my house, in the Jabalat Habashi district, near Sanabis and not far from Pearl Square. It was the day of the memorial service for the first martyr, Ali Mushaima and we moved off in the direction of Jadhafas cemetery. On Twitter I wrote: "Heading for the march from Jadhafas cemetery. The street's crowded and we haven't seen the cemetery yet."
One of the marchers informed us that they were going to Pearl Square. We drove off to the square. Suddenly we heard the sound of gunshots and tear gas being fired. We went closer; the scene grew more confused; cars driving in the wrong direction. Abdel Wahhab got out of the car, approached a group of young men and started photographing the wounded as I drove on, unable to pull over in the midst of such chaos. I sent a series of tweets: "Heavy fire and ambulances carrying the injured, all heading for Salmaniya Hospital, which is already full to capacity. Seriously injured man taken away on a pickup."
"Car belonging to a member of parliament driving in front of me."
"Journalist friend runs forward and says they're using live rounds."
"Young man next to me weeping hysterically. Seems his friend has been badly hurt."
"Stopped at an intersection in al-Naim. More than 8 ambulances have passed by."
It transpired that the mourners had marched towards the roundabout, which was surrounded by the army and security troops. The young men, their bodies wrapped in Bahrain flags approached the armoured vehicles and the security forces and came to a halt some 100 metres away from them, shouting, "In peace! In peace!" For a few minutes … nothing … then gunfire again filled the air. The scene was captured on film and viewed by the entire world: images of victims falling to the ground and the hail of live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas that left the whole place and the people in it unable to breathe.
We made our way to the hospital. There were now 96 injured cases in the building, some with wounds from live rounds. According to medical sources at the scene, six were taken in for immediate surgical intervention. The most serious case was that of Abdel Rida Bouhamid (38 years old), who had been shot in the head and was now clinically dead. X-rays confirmed that a live round had penetrated his skull.
We stayed in the hospital until late into the night, where we got to know a group of British correspondents. We showed them some of the pictures and video clips we had taken. We viewed the X-rays of the martyr Abdel Rida. We all saw them with our own eyes. The doctor who talked us through them turned out to be an old acquaintance of mine from primary school. We came from the same village, had not seen each other since leaving school and now we met again over the fatal bullet lodged in Abdel Rida Bouhamid's head.