The curse of Bahrain

Every time I go to Bahrain, I got an embarrassing position or a difficulty. I have visited Bahrain three times and each time I face a problem. I start thinking may be there is some kind of curse or bad luck in my visits to Bahrain.

My first visit to Bahrain was in Sep 2006 with my friend Abdulmalik. When we reach Dammam we started looking for a car rental shop. We cannot go with our car because my freind's car was registered under his father's name. Our condition was to rent a car and return it to the shop Friday morning, but unfortunately no shop open at that time. We keep looking for very long time and at the end we found one shop that has a branch opens 24|7. We got a car from it after we loose around 3 hours. In my second visit in the summer of 2007, I had a traffic violation and I have to pay it before I can get the traffic permit to cross king Fahad causeway. The problem was not because of the violation, but because I don't have any account in Al-Rajhi nor Al-Riyad bank to pay the violation amount. In addition, the time was 4:00 pm and the banks close at 4:30 !! I tried as fast as I can to find a bank banch and I did it. The employees in the brach were very cooperative and they helped me to pay it.

The reason I'm writing this article is because I faced a very strange position in my third visit last weekend. I tried to prove the curse is not true, but unfortunately this was not the case !!

I rented a car for the same reason in my first visit (my car was registered under my father's name). I prepared every single required document. I made sure that I have no traffic violations, my driver license still valid, and I have the authorization letter from the car rental shop. When I reached the administration of traffic in the causeway, I gave them all my papers. The guy checked every document, and he made sure I have no violation, license still not expired, and the authorization letter is available. I was starring at him and I am pretty sure that there will be a problem somewhere. He looked at me and said "The company has two traffic violations !", I said "Whaaat ? but I have nothing to do with the company !", he said "You cannot take the car outside the kingdom unless the company cleared its record", I told him "My friend, is there any problem in my documents !?", he replied "Call the company, and tell them to pay the amount, otherwise I cannot help you". I called the company and we sort it out immediately.

After my third visit, I proved that the curse is not a myth or something that does not exist at all. No it is exist, but it is something related to psychology sciences any I'm sure everybody has one (or more) :)