Our topics range from the highbrow to the lowlife this week, with an exhortation to read more books from across the Arab world, a child’s misunderstanding of a word in a cartoon, and an encounter with a prostitute. A new blogger has just arrived in Bahrain, and another blogger has just returned from a holiday in Iran – where he experienced rather more than he had bargained on during a taxi ride… Widening horizons We start this week with Layal, who recently read some books published in Yemen, and wants to encourage others to read more widely from around the Arab world: For more of Layal's thoughts see here. Keep on talking A number of bloggers have posted interesting conversations this week. We start with a conversation between a young Yagoob and his father Salman, just after Yagoob has watched a cartoon in which the main character, Sinan, has been told to take some rest after exerting himself. However, the word used to indicate ‘some’ rest or literally ‘a measure of’ is the same word used for ‘an instalment’ – and young Yagoob has got confused: Our second conversation comes from one of the bloggers from the group blog Word on the street, who describes a ‘red-light’ night on the town with his colleague. After they have entered a bar for a drink, and his colleague has overcome his worry about being seen by someone he knows, our blogger decides to call over an attractive and scantily-clad prostitute to sit with them: For the rest of the conversation see here… Ali has a more general point to make about conversations, phone conversations in particular: And the result of all that: -the loss of your time even if it was not valuable -your feeling of astonishment that the person talking to you didn’t pick up on all the negative signs you gave and which clearly insisted on your desire to end the conversation -your feeling of guilt at lying in the end to extract yourself from the vortex of the conversation… Glad to have moved to Bahrain… Sous is a Swedish woman who recently moved from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, and is happy to be here: Came here yesterday and I must say it feels pretty fine even though I am still tired. … I am so pleased I am not in Saudi (no offence Saudis) but I might still pop over there sometime to run some errands. What I really like about Bahrain is the mix of people and that the society is alive. People dress how they want and all people I have ever met here so far (from my visits from before) have all been friendly. I know it’s a country with all kinds of people rude, nice, friendly and whatever but I just feel it’s a “real and normal” country unlike Saudi. Just to see people smile here makes my heart happy. Women smiling and looking at my little daughter today, who excitedly ran through the Geant Mall (I don’t know the name of the mall), well it is just so nice to see their faces and smiles. Talk about enjoying the little things in life.. …and glad to be home in Bahrain! We finish this week with a post by Concerned Citizen X, recently returned from a holiday in Iran, who entertains us with an account of an uncomfortable journey he undertook in a shared taxi – that he calls ‘My Date with a Stick Shift‘: So we got a cab, me and an acquaintance sat in the front. Yes, the both of us sat on one seat, we had to squeeze in though and there in lay the problem. The other four sat in the back. NOW, 99.99999 % of all cars in IRAN are manual, so the driver has one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the Stick shift, forcefully guiding the stick from one gear to the next. Unfortunately, since I was sitting on the inside, gears one and two were, well let’s just say they really got acquainted to my thigh and left cheek, and I'm not talking about my face here. As I felt the driver change into third gear, yes I say felt, not saw but felt, because now the stick shift was touching the under parts of my left thigh. He then looked at me, and with an embarrassed grin asks if I would give him permission to shift into fourth gear. I got the message and had to take it like a mannnnnnn, fourth gear was right under my bottom and no matter how much I squeezed and squirmed, twisted and turned, I just could not shift it, the goods I mean, away from the inevitable, so I gave in and took it like a man.