By five in the evening on Tuesday, protesters filled the center of Manama, the capital of Bahrain, with cries of “take down the regime,” and Pearl Roundabout no longer functioned as the city’s commuter crossroads, but as a circle of protest. People in the crowd called for equality in government, a reaction to the mostly Sunni regime’s position of privilege with respect to the Shiite majority population, and talked about higher-paying jobs and better government positions for Shiites. Many new protesters came out Tuesday as a response to the killing of a Shiite protester who was shot on Monday.
From what I’d heard about Monday’s chaos, I expected to see more young men in their twenties running from tear gas, but the scene at today’s event involved a passionate eight-year-old diving in and out of the crowd, looking for the next big chant or camera, and abaya-covered women raising their fists and cell phones in the air. (Meanwhile, I shot pictures, above.) Though the youth had the most emphatic presence—they scrawled graffiti on the leg of the Pearl Roundabout’s statue and amplified their voices with bullhorns—by sunset the middle-aged to aging Bahrainis had organized the evening prayer, and both young and old bent down together on the wet grass in what was probably the quietest moment of the day.
According to some protesters who put up tents to stay for the night, they, like the Egyptians, will not leave the roundabout until their demands are met. Tomorrow there will be a funeral for a protester who was shot during Tuesday’s demonstrations. The final scene of the night for me was a group of men gathering together to fire up a red paper lantern and watch it flow in the air, as Bahrainis chanted “Bahrain, Bahrain.”
