Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City-State

By Gareth Doherty

This innovative multidisciplinary study considers the concept of green from multiple perspectives—aesthetic, architectural, environmental, political, and social—in the Kingdom of Bahrain, where green has a long and deep history of appearing cooling, productive, and prosperous—a radical contrast to the hot and hostile desert. Although green is often celebrated in cities as a counter to gray urban environments, green has not always been good for cities. Similarly, manifestation of the color green in arid urban environments is often in direct conflict with the practice of green from an environmental point of view. This paradox is at the heart of the book. In arid environments such as Bahrain, the contradiction becomes extreme and even unsustainable.

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Gareth Doherty explores the landscapes of Bahrain, where green represents a plethora of implicit human values and exists in dialectical tension with other culturally and environmentally significant colors and hues. Explicit in his book is the argument that concepts of color and object are mutually defining and thus a discussion about green becomes a discussion about the creation of space and place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9780520960626

Gareth Doherty

Gareth Doherty is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Doherty’s books include Roberto Burle Marx Lectures: Landscape as Art and Urbanism. He is co-editor of Is Landscape…? Essays on the Identity of Landscape with Charles Waldheim and, with Mohsen Mostafavi, Ecological Urbanism. Doherty is a founding editor of the New Geographies journal and editor-in-chief of New Geographies 3: Urbanisms of Color.

Book preview

Paradoxes of Green

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Richard and Harriett Gold Endowment Fund in Arts and Humanities of the University of California Press Foundation.

Paradoxes of Green

LANDSCAPES OF A CITY-STATE

Gareth Doherty

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

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University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2017 by The Regents of the University of California

Sections of the text contain some data or analytical points published in earlier forms including, There’s More to Green than Meets the Eye: Green Urbanism in Bahrain, Ecological Urbanism, Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty, eds. (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2010, 2016), 178–187; In the west you have landscape, here we have . . . Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Vol. 34 (3), 2014, 201–206; Bahrain’s Polyvocality and Landscape as a Medium, The Right to Landscape: Contesting Landscape and Human Rights, Shelley Egoz, Jala Makhzoumi, Gloria Pungetti, eds., (Abingdon, Oxon: Ashgate Publishing, 2011), 185–196; Changing Hues of Green in Bahrain, Society and Change in the Contemporary Gulf, A.K. Ramakrishnan and M.H. Ilias, editors, (New Delhi: New Century Publications, 2010); If Its Not Green It Will Become Invisible: A Sociological Account of Green in Bahrain, Al Manakh 2, Todd Reisz, ed., 2010, 342–345, and How Green is Landscape Urbanism? Topos (71), Munich, 2010, 32–35.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Doherty, Gareth, author.

Title: Paradoxes of green : landscapes of a city-state / Gareth Doherty.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016030087 (print) | LCCN 2016031250 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520285019 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 0520285018 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520285026 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 0520285026 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520960626 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Urban landscape architecture—Bahrain. | Green—Social aspects—Bahrain. | Colors—Social aspects—Bahrain. | Greenbelts—Bahrain.

Classification: LCC SB472.7 .D64 2017 (print) | LCC SB472.7 (ebook) | DDC 712/.5095365—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030087

Manufactured in the United States of America

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For Miss Magee

Thalāthat ashyāʿ yudhhibn al-ḥuzn:

al-māʿ wa-l-khuḍra wa-l-wajh al-ḥasan

Three things take away sadness:

water, greenery, and a beautiful face

Contents

Notes on Transliteration and Translation

Preface and Acknowledgments

Figures

Introduction: Two Seas, Many Greens

1. Green Scenery

2. The Blueness of Green

3. How Green Can Become Red

4. The Memory of Date Palm Green

5. The Struggle for the Manama Greenbelt

6. The Promise of Beige

7. Brightening Green

8. The Whiteness of Green

Notes

Glossary

List of Named Participants

Bibliography

Index

Notes on Transliteration and Translation

Transliterations of Modern Standard Arabic and Bahraini dialect are modified from the conventions of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES). Specifically, IJMES conventions were followed for technical terms and expressions and vocabulary in Arabic, but proper and place names conform with their general attestation in English spelling in a Bahrain-related context. For example, rather than use the IJMES spelling shaykh, I use sheikh, which is standard in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf. Many place and institutional names in Bahrain have generally accepted English spellings, which I use, that do not conform to a standard and have many varieties, for example, Riffa, rather than al-Rifaʿ. Personal names like Alireza, Isa, and Latif are generally accepted spellings of these names in English. With the exception of a few public figures, all names in this book have been changed.

Preface and Acknowledgments

My first encounter with Bahrain was when I responded to an advertisement in Landscape Design, the journal of the Landscape Institute in London, which called for speakers on landscape architecture at a conference in Manama. It was 2003, and I had just returned to London from a semester teaching in Australia; the advertisement was by then a few months old. Although I replied immediately, the Bahrain Society of Engineers had already found a speaker for the conference, but invited me to teach a three-day course on landscape architecture the following year. My visit was to follow in May 2004, and one of the workshop participants, a prince from the royal family, first introduced me to Bahrain’s greenery on a nighttime drive around the palm groves on the west coast of the island. Thus started a curiosity about Bahrain that has stayed with me ever since. I found the multitude of green spaces in an incredibly arid landscape intriguing, and even more intriguing was the absence of an adequate translation of the word landscape into Arabic. I realized that rather than my teaching Bahrain about landscape, Bahrain would teach me.

Shortly after my introduction to Bahrain, I began doctoral studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and expanded on this initial encounter through classes in Arabic, Islam, Middle East ethnography, and political economy, and in due course my dissertation. First of all, I thank my adviser, Hashim Sarkis, for encouraging, facilitating, and guiding this research. My doctoral committee members, Steven Caton, Niall Kirkwood, and Charles Waldheim, have each been immensely encouraging and helpful throughout the process of researching, writing, and revising.

I also acknowledge my doctoral colleagues and friends, Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy, Antonio Petrov, Stephen Ramos, and Neyran Turan, for their intellectual stimulation. In the summer of 2006 we began an intense series of discussions on geography and design. We shared an adviser, Hashim Sarkis, and a frustration with scale. We asked why is it that design disciplines—architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and urban planning—all have a particular scalar focus? Our common interests led to the founding of the New Geographies journal. This book began in parallel with these discussions and uses ethnography of a color in a city-state as a way to overcome limitations of scale and better engage not just with the land but with the people who inhabit the land, which together comprise a landscape. In doing so, my goal is to challenge design disciplines to address color and engage with our various audiences (human and nonhuman). In dong so, we may find more ways for anthropologists and designers to collaborate.

The year I spent in Bahrain brought me into contact with countless Bahraini voices. Those who helped me in so many ways, directly and indirectly, are far too numerous to mention here, but are all personally remembered.

Thanks to the various ministries in Manama, the capital of Bahrain. At the Ministry of Municipalities and Agriculture Affairs, Sheikh Hamad Mohamed al-Khalifa and his team were gracious and welcoming. Dr. Maher Abouseif and Ahmed al-Jowder introduced me to lemon tea over many conversations at the ministry. Dr. Falah al-Khubaisy showed great kindness and invited me back to Bahrain on subsequent visits. Dominic McPolin, my compatriot, was also very generous with his time.

Ali Akbar Bushiri selflessly spent endless hours discussing minutiae of life in Bahrain, historical and contemporary. Akbar’s wife, Jenny, patiently sat through our discussions. I was very fortunate in that my time in Bahrain overlapped for a couple of weeks with Nelida Fuccaro, an astute historian of Manama’s urban form, from whom I learned a lot.

Sheikha Mai al-Khalifa invited me to give a lecture at the Bahrain National Museum during my fieldwork. This opportunity was instrumental in introducing me to Jalal Mageed and Eugene McMahon, and in turn Dr. Akbar Jaffari.

Abdul Hadi al-Mukhareq introduced me to many people who in turn helped with my work.

Samer al-Gilani and staff at the Bayt al-Qurʾan in Manama provided helpful assistance in searching the various books of the hadith.

James Onley introduced me to the Bahrain walkers, especially Charles Price, Alan and Elspeth Wright, Anne al-Jalahma, Farida Khunji, Jens and Lone Ejstrup Reinholdt, and Nina and Ulrik Clausen, who in their various conversations on Friday walks were more helpful than they probably imagine.

John A. Davies, a gardener sent by God, and his assistant Renita provided tea and biscuits and great conversation, at John’s office or at the British Club. I regret that I met Camille Zakharia only as I was leaving Bahrain: there was so much to talk about.

Anny the housekeeper, Nader Ardalan, Mustapha Ben Hamouche, Ahmed Dailami, Rami Elsamahy, Yasser Elshestawy, Kelly Hutzell, Boris Brorman Jensen, Ahmed Kanna, Abdullah Kareem, George Katodrytis, Tim Kennedy, Emmanuel Lamort, Amer Moustafa, Harvey Paige, Frank F. Sabouri, Marco Sacchi, and Ahlam Zainal all provided valuable help and advice during my fieldwork and writing. Jessica Barnes, Hamed Bukhamseen, Ali Akbar Bushiri, Mohamad Chakaki, Nelida Fuccaro, Thomas Fibiger, Jock Heron, Li Hou, Kathryn Moore, Ali Karimi, Sawsan Karimi, Mariano Gomez Luque, Todd Reisz, Charles A. Riley, Jasmine Samara, and Bernardo Zaca all read drafts of the chapters and provided much-appreciated comments.

At Harvard University, the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship allowed me to spend the 2007–2008 academic year in Bahrain and the Gulf. The Rice Scholarship for Irish Students at Harvard University Graduate School of Design supported my doctoral studies. I thank my former teachers and now colleagues at the GSD including Anita Berrizbeitia, Gary Hilderbrand, Alex Krieger, Mohsen Mostafavi, Patricia Roberts, and John R. Stilgoe. Special thanks to Susan Nigra Snyder and George E. Thomas for their encouragement—demanding regular updates—in getting this manuscript to completion. Ali Asani, William Granara, Nicolas Roth, and Himmet Taskomur—my first Arabic teacher—answered my questions about sometimes small but nevertheless important details. Heartfelt thanks to my students, especially of the design anthropology course, for challenging me.

Jae Rossman, the Faber Birren Collection of Books on Color, Yale University Library, New Haven; and Neil Parkinson, archives and collections manager, Colour Reference Library, Royal College of Art, London, provided help with literature searches.

I thank H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi and Dr. Y. Adabi for permission to reproduce the map of the Green Sea, and the following for their dedicated assistance in obtaining images used in the book: Scott Walker, Jonathan Rosenwasser, and David Weimer of the Harvard Map Collection; Micah Hoggatt, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Lisa DeCesare, Harvard University Herbaria; Nell K. Carlson of Andover-Harvard Theological Library; Adnan Alarrayed and Philippa Clayre of J. Walter Thompson; and Rui Pires, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo.

Suryani Oka Dewa Ayu’s anthropological eye and acute attention to detail has been invaluable as I finalized the manuscript. Jian He, Felipe Vera, Janet Wysocki, and Hannes Zander all helped at various stages of the work. I thank also Barbara Elfman, former program administrator of the GSD’s Advanced Studies Program, whose support was instrumental.

Robert Daurio developed the cover design together with the University of California Press.

Jane Acheson and Melissa Vaughn were instrumental in editing my words, and I am very grateful for their careful advice. Fares Alsuwaidi meticulously guided the Arabic transliterations.

At the University of California Press, I am indebted to Reed Malcom, whose determination saw the project through from proposal to printed work. I thank Stacy Eisenstark and Zuha Khan for their coordination, and Elizabeth Berg and Francisco Reinking for their edits. Thanks too to Carolyn Deuschle Wheeler and Tobiah Waldron for proofreading and indexing respectively, as well as the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University for supporting the final edits and index.

Moisés Lino e Silva inspired and challenged me throughout the process of writing this book from being part of my initial fieldwork in Bahrain through the completed manuscript.

And, I thank my family in Ireland who supported me throughout and in particular my mother, Miss Magee, who lived to see the draft manuscript, and to whom the book is dedicated.

Figure 1. Sinvs Persicvs, Arab Mare, Alachdar, id est viride (that is Green). (The Hebrew script reads as the Arabic word Alachdar.) Created in 1681, printed for Johannis Davidis Zunneri after the death of Samuel Bochart (1599–1667), cartographer. Geographiae Sacra, 1681. AH 3716.5, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Figure 2. Detail from a version of the above map. Hubert, R. (c. 1651), cartographer. A description of the earth into which the inhabitants of Babel dispersed after the destruction of the tower, dated 1651. H. H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al-Qasimi, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Figure 3. Satellite image of the Arabian peninsula, March 2000. Bahrain is the small island in the center of the image, adjacent to the larger peninsula of Qatar. Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE.

Figure 4. Portuguese map of Bahrain showing an abundance of date palms. Livro 15, Colecção de São Vicente, liv. 15, PT/TT/CSV/15. Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Portugal.

Figure 5. Map of Bahrain, 1963. Note areas of greenery on the north and west coasts. Drawn from aerial photographs 1952–1953. Reviewed and reprinted by Fairey Surveys Administration, and reprinted in Historic Maps of Bahrain, Academy Editions, London. Published by the Public Works Department of Bahrain, Government of the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Figure 6. Satellite image of the north part of Bahrain, showing Manama on the top right and Budaiya on the top left. Pockets of greenbelt can be seen on the middle of top right. New reclamation projects line the north coast. Google Earth Image © 2016 DigitalGlobe.

Figure 7. Manama as seen from Amwaj Island. Note the high-rise buildings designed to look like sails. Photograph by the author.

Figure 8. Textures and hues of the Bahrain Financial Harbour. Photograph by the author.

Figure 9. Government Avenue in the center of Manama as seen through the green tinted glass of the National Bank of Bahrain. Photograph by the author.

Figure 10. Bab al-Bahrain roundabout and fountain as seen through green tinted glass. Photograph by the author.

Figure 11. Green carpet of house in Gufool, Manama. Photograph by the author.

Figure 12. Pearl divers bringing waterskins filled with freshwater from underwater springs. Saudi Aramco, Steineke Collection.

Figure 13. Water channel, 1963, from Glob and the Garden of Eden. Torkil Funder, Moesgård Museum.

Figure 14. ʿAshuraʾ procession through Manama. Photograph by the author.

Figure 15. Red paving bricks, City Center Mall, Bahrain. Photograph by Camille Zakharia.

Figure 16. Pollinating a date palm, 1963, from Glob and the Garden of Eden. Torkil Funder, Moesgård Museum.

Figure 17. Sheihk Ibrahim’s garden near the Portuguese Fort, 1963. Torkil Funder, Moesgård Museum.

Figure 18. Date palm groves being replaced with villas with green painted roofs, 2006. Photograph by M. Hussaini.

Figure 19. Villas in the greenbelt, 2008. Photograph by the author.

Figure 20. It’s like Scotland, minus the weather. Advertisement for Riffa Views by J. Walter Thompson (JWT), Bahrain, 2006.

Figure 21. The Royal Golf Club at Riffa Views, Bahrain. Photograph by the author.

Figure 22. Jangily, a fine film of green on the desert after the winter rains. Photograph by the author.

Figure 23. Kaff Maryam. Library of the Grey Herbarium, Harvard University.

Figure 24. Dust storm over Bahrain, the Persian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia, March 17, 2008. (Bahrain in bottom right.) NASA image, courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response team.

Figure 25. Inside the dust storm, Karbabad, Bahrain. March 16, 2008. Photograph by the author.

Figure 26. Preparation of land for new development, Nabeh Saleh, Bahrain, 2010. Photograph by the author.

Introduction

TWO SEAS, MANY GREENS

On looking out to sea on the morning of a clear sky and a fresh nor’wester, it would seem as if nature, at all times lavish of effect, had here, however, exhausted every tint of living green in her paint box.

—E.L. Durand, Notes on the Islands of Bahrain and Antiquities

The presence of green in cities is often not very green from an environmental point of view. In fact, the provision of greenery in urban areas, with few exceptions, bears significant environmental costs in terms of the resources required to maintain it. To have and to be green is often presented as a moral imperative, yet the provision of urban greenery can be morally questionable, especially in arid environments such as Bahrain. Thus the main paradox of this book.

Urban green regularly takes the form of landscape or landscape architecture, a particularly refined or imagined form of landscape.¹ Landscape alludes to many typologies: gardens, parks, cemeteries, and so on, expanding in scale to the object spread out beneath an airplane window and beyond.² This understanding of landscape might include desert, cities, and green space. When I began my fieldwork, I was interested in the hard and soft infrastructures that sustained varied landscapes at a range of scales—and in their relationships with the land, one another, and people: the urbanism of landscape. I chose Bahrain because in an island just ten miles wide and thirty miles long, and a nation- as well as city-state, I suspected that the relationships of hard and soft infrastructures and their constituents could more easily be traced here than in a city with a large footprint and a proximate hinterland.³

Landscape, in Bahrain, as I came to understand, is a word mostly associated with the contrast of constructed green to an indigenous arid environment. Perhaps this is because the word’s closest Arabic equivalent is manẓar ṭabīʿī, which translates literally as natural scenery, but has the connotation of beautiful scenery. During my year of fieldwork, I noticed different understandings of the word among my Bahraini interlocutors than my British Isles and North American training had led me to expect. Often people I talked with referred to al-khuḍra, or greenery, more often than not describing the luscious, tropical-style, carefully tended gardens full of foliage that compete with one another for the Bahrain Gardening Club prize. I was interested not just in these verdant, curated landscapes of the elites but in the ordinary landscapes where everyday life is lived, as well as in the larger matrix of infrastructures that holds them all together. In an attempt to better communicate with my interlocutors in Bahrain and engage in a conversation on the urbanism of landscape, I began to focus my fieldwork on concepts of green in an arid urban environment. In doing so, I adopted my interlocutors’ category for landscape, taking into account green’s spatially and culturally varied referents.

During my fieldwork, I walked through Bahrain almost every day, recording my encounters with green through many different means. Walking brought me in touch with the greenery but also with people I might otherwise not have met. I encountered native Bahrainis and expatriates, manual laborers and professionals, and asked them all about green. When I met green, I would talk with people about its meanings and significances, taking notes on paper (first as scratch notes, later written up in fieldnotes) or as headnotes in the back of my mind.⁴ I made sketches and took photographs. I even tried recording the various shades of green I encountered using watercolors, until I realized that the light was a critical element which I could not easily capture with paint.

Since I was primarily interested in green, I first tried to abstract the color from the object, akin to blurring my vision, to remove the form of the object and focus purely on the hue of the green. I meant to dissociate color from the object and redescribe objects from the perspective of their color, leading to a dynamic spatial reorganization and hopefully revealing latent patterns. I imagined an exhibition, for example, in which I would display a catalog of shades of green, each hue accompanied by a summary of the object, organized by color rather than by the objects themselves. Although I still see merit in this experiment, the power of the objects that happened to be green always insisted on overcoming any attempts at pure abstraction. For this reason, the chapters in this book, while arranged by color, are also associated with a particular object or set of relationships.

Often associated with the presence of freshwater, green and greenery might seem completely out of place in Bahrain’s arid climate, soaring temperatures, and sandy desert. This book explores some of the concepts of green I encountered during a year of ethnographic fieldwork informed by walking. Bahrain has numerous constituencies that expect greenery, and some that do not. Greenery is at the heart of political struggles over the land of the small city-state. Green is central to the second sea that gives Bahrain its name. These are good