“A Day in the Life”
It was the largest wad of hashish I had ever seen.
A sticky mound equal in size to the pock-marked head of the dock urchin from whom it was gifted. And all because I tossed him a pack of gum when I clambered down the gangway. Bahrain and I were going to get along.
That was decided even before hearing the mesmerizing echoes of a Liverpool beat.
#
It was the late 70s and the Middle East was taking a short break from shitting the collective bed. The Arab-Israeli Wars were over while Iraq and Iran’s had yet to start. Port calls in the region were jovial, if not a little apathetic, matching the general mood aboard the ship.
We were five months into what has billed as a three month cruise but both the duty and seas were light. After a few gunboat diplomacy stops with no liberty, I was eager to get on land and tear up the town with a little help from my friends. Our opportunity arrived the second day in Bahrain. Mackie J (“Jojo”), B.B. Hammer (“Hams”), Dan (“Dan”), and I cleaned up and headed out to explore the back allies of Manama.
Strutting down the liberty boat gangway I saw pockmarks hawking his wares. To block his advance and feel a little better about blowing him off, I tossed him a wink and a pack of Big Red. We had just turned the first corner coming out of the docks when I received a tug on my shirt. The dock rat didn’t say a thing as he pulled out the black mound. It took quite an effort to peel it from his fingers and as it sat in my hand I knew that my fingers were going to be tacky for weeks. Hams started coughing, his body anticipating the reaction it would have to firing the mass.
The hash fairy told us to “come, come” and led us through the back allies. We didn’t question where he was leading us. His gift made him our best friend in the country and you don’t question best friends. That said, each corner turned increased the difficultly of homeward navigation. But all our troubles seemed so far away as we focused on the mango-sized hunk of matter I was holding out like a compass.
We arrived at a tiny stall that smelled of cat and piss; presumably from the nearby pools of cat piss. Here Rusty, as I had taken to calling him, and his family sold the same garbage as the surrounding stores. Cheap trinkets they hoped someone would overpay for so that they could buy more cheap trinkets to hawk. Rusty showed us one piece of trash after another. He noticed our eyes as we examined the nesting dolls lining the floor. He pulled up a few samples and showed us with flair how one doll contained a similar, yet smaller, doll.
The dolls were sold to sailors and tourists from around the world that either didn’t know or didn’t care that they weren’t unique to Bahrain. We fell under the latter. We couldn’t possibly care where they came from. We just needed a receptacle less conspicuous than my open hand. We dumped the smaller nested dolls out on the counter for the kid to resell and molded our treasure into the outer layer of the doll that was now essentially a cookie jar. A cookie jar filled with hash. Knowing full well the contents of our Russian/Bahraini hash jar could give us amnesia, we named her Anastasia (“Annie”).
We said goodbye to the hash-gifting, nesting doll merchant and moved out of the alley and into the market proper. It was mid-morning and the market hadn’t yet fallen into the noontime lull. Hams held on to Sweet Annie as I worked on peeling sticky hash remnants off my fingers. Dan and JoJo walked ahead looking for an enclosed hookah lounge.
We wandered the streets while “businessmen” shouted phrases in broken English. We didn’t stop anywhere. Because first, we were on a mission; and second, we could never tell if the smell was coming from the store, the owner, or the market in general. If we kept moving, the odors failed to fully invade our senses. It was bad enough in some places that we didn’t smell it as much as we could taste it.
Dan soon discovered what we were looking for down a side street where all of the establishments had long, dark curtains covering the windows and thresholds. A collection of hookah lounges. We stepped inside one at random.
It contained the sad collection you would expect to find in a hookah den at that time of the day. Older, jaundiced men with long, white beards sitting on cushions and so involved in what they were smoking that they never glanced our way. Annie, with her illicit secret and Russian dress, really classed up the joint.
We rented a tall, four-man hookah that smelled worse than the streets we took to get there. We climbed in the back with our head in the clouds and tore into our cookie jar like the unsupervised children we were. We aimed to show the locals the collective lung capacity of the mightiest navy on the planet. However, it soon became apparent, albeit a little too late, that this was not the grass we all tried out behind our high school gymnasiums. A couple of rounds and I had forgotten my name and asked to be referred to as La Princesa, which was absurd as I had never taken Spanish.
Minutes turned hours and the den filled as the day wore on. The proprietor brought several rounds of tea, lest we dry out, as we did our best to empty Annie. But empty the lass we could not. Rusty had given us enough for the whole ship, if not a good portion of the fleet.
By our calculations we tripped of out the curtain covered threshold and into the dusty street about a week later and with still 2/3 of our babushka. Dan tossed us into a brief panic announcing that the sun had disappeared. He then spent the next several minutes explaining that it was normal and that it would be back in a few hours. Jojo cried, not believing that the sun could simply rise back up.
While trying to calm Jojo, a goat walked passed us bleating and we all stopped talking and looked on in awe. The bleating goat looked remarkably like Captain Hearst. Hams swore up and down that it was Captain Hearst. And we believed. Never mind that the good ol’ Captain had left the Navy two years prior and had never set foot on our current vessel; we knew it was him from the steely gaze and commanding presence. We made solemn oaths to follow him anywhere.
In a single formation fit for the sergeant’s band, we drifted through the now dark alleys of Manama, this time led by our brave goat captain. We knew not where we were heading. Nor did we care. Hearst bleated out orders and we followed them to the letter.
I can’t say for sure how long we were walking or if we were still within the city limits, but eventually Captain Hearst started looking less like himself and more like the shawarmas we had smelled since we arrived in the Gulf. We always were fickle in our allegiance and we proved it again when we tossed our oaths and resolved to eat our leader.
We broke formation and started walking faster to catch up to Hearst. But he was crafty and began trotting. He led us through even more dark, back allies until he arrived at what looked to be a support group meeting. Behind a large, one level building was a fenced off dirt patch in which stood a dozen goats, all standing quietly in a circle looking at each other. Hearst worked his way through the wooden fence, took his place in the group, and began opening remarks. The others chanted stern rebuttals. The commotion lead to a large man swinging open the back door and eying us with goat stealing suspicion. He noticed that we weren’t from around those parts and waved us into the building. As we walked through the doorway I stole one more glance at Hearst who was still debating the others in the circle. As intrigued as I was, I was unable to make out the conversation’s finer points.
Inside was a single large room with low tables placed at random. The tables were full of locals seated on the floor enjoying good food and company. The scent of the most delectable roasted meats hung in the air. The smell of the room, in combination with the fact that the only thing in our systems was resin and tea, made us salivate. We fell to the floor at the first open table, sitting Annie on top.
A round of shawarmas appeared without us ordering. It was expected. You came here and you sat down. You must be in want of shawarma. Indeed, we were in want. More than anything at that moment. While we all enjoyed the meal, the atmosphere was somewhat damped by Jojo’s tears. Great heaping sobs in between equally great bites. His mouth stuffed with goat, he muttered apologizes to the shawarma again and again for eating the poor captain. He was certain that the offense would land him considerable time in the brig.
Halfway through a second round of shawarma, the room fell silent. The music that I hadn’t even noticed until it was gone was cut off and the winding string of lights that held single bulbs above the seating area was dimmed. The man who brought our dinner shuffled to the corner of the room and kicked a metal can that was resting against a raised wooden platform. Only a portion of the platform was exposed, peeking out from behind a red velvet curtain. From the rusted can came a single floor spotlight that illuminated the dust and smoke hanging in the air. The man pulled back the curtain to reveal The Beatles.
I dropped my pita and stared in disbelief. Hams and Dan looked at each other and then around the room to see if anyone else noticed who was on the stage. Even Jojo took a moment to stop crying and looked on. It was as if we had been transported to the Ed Sullivan Show. John, Paul, and George were suited up and holding their guitars (Paul holding a lefty bass of course) while Ringo sat in the back behind his simple kit. Without the benefit of an introduction, which would have been superfluous for The Beatles anyway, they jumped right into “All My Loving.” I stood up and looked around for Ed Sullivan, as I had seen this before about 15 years ago.
As I stood, I noticed that I was near eye level with The Beatles, even though they had the benefit of being on a raised platform. They were a lot shorter than I imagined, except for Ringo of course, whose height could not be determined from his seated position. It was then that I noticed the Asian features under the mop tops. As much as I thought they were The Beatles, circa ’64, and as much as my ears were confirming my first impression, I came to the slow realization that it was in fact a tribute band. A tribute band comprised of four petite Filipinos.
But a tribute band doesn’t do them justice. If anything they were the tribute band. Through Filipino Paul’s “Till There Was You,” the rest of the Ed Sullivan set, and the progression of hits that followed the recording (not record release) timeline, those guys hit every note, nailed every mannerism, and embodied the souls of the rock gods they were imitating. It was awe inspiring. I could do nothing but sit at the table and stare up at the tiny men on the tiny stage tucked away in a corner of Bahrain.
At the end of the set, the four of us jumped to our feet and began yelling and clapping our approval. The locals looked from us to the band and then back to their food and drink, all without so much as a nod of appreciation to the incredible performance they had just witnessed. I jumped over the table, nearly knocking over Annie, to catch the band as they were climbing down the stage. I told them how amazing the performance was, how I seriously thought they were The Beatles for longer than I should have, and on and on. I gushed about as much as I would have if it was the real band. They looked back at me with eyebrows raised in confusion and said something I couldn’t understand. Then they bowed slightly and walked away. They couldn’t speak of word of English.
They knew every word from every Beatles track, even the deep cuts, and could sing it pitch perfect with spot on Liverpool accents, but they had no idea what they were singing. Absolutely unbelievable. I walked back to my friends, sat down, and fell into laughter. There was nothing else I could do or say.
We stumbled out a different door than the one we entered so we had no way of knowing whether Jojo had actually eaten the Captain. We picked a random direction and started walking the now deserted streets. We were approached by what looked like a taxi and whether or not it actually was, we piled in. Without us telling him who we were or where we were from, he drove straight to the dock. What I was sure would take an hour was only a minute. It turned out that in our stupor we hadn’t wondered as far as we imagined. If we had climbed up to the roof of any one of the nearby buildings, we would have seen the glow from the ships in port.
The duty officer on deck met us as we tripped up the gangway. He took a step back when our smell caught up with us and asked if we had a good night. Jojo, always the honest sailor, confessed straight away to cannibalizing the captain, while Dan, who had snapped to attention to request permission to come aboard, doubled over and puked off the side of the gangway. The duty officer looked us over as he mentally calculated the amount of paperwork it would take to write us up. He sighed, shook his head, and then granted us permission with an order to get Dan to his rack immediately.
#
Back in my bunk, as I snuggled up with Annie, my mind was still trying to come to grips with what I had seen. There was a while when I really thought it was The Beatles and that’s not something you just shake off. I traced the random set of events that led us to a restaurant with no name to watch a band with no name put on the best live show I had ever seen. A band that I’ll never get to see perform again.
To this day I can’t stop thinking about that band. I’ve seen Rain on tour four times, the Bootleg Beatles twice, and a smattering of other tribute bands. I’ve attended Beatles look alike competitions and even once sat on the judges’ panel. And yet nobody can hold a silver hammer to the nameless Filipino band I once saw in Bahrain.
Then again, maybe I’m picturing the scene through kaleidoscope eyes. After all, it was the largest wad of hashish I had ever seen.