MY job tends to take me to a lot of official and formal gatherings, which get so tedious sometimes that I can barely keep my eyes open. If I never had to hear another speech again, I'd die a happy man, but as much as I'm sick of long-winded monologues, they aren't what bother me the most about such events? It's conventional for organizers of such functions in the Gulf, including Bahrain, to arrange different types of seating for different people. At the front you get the luxury sofa sets for guests who seating control consider the most important. These are usually followed by sofas of slightly inferior quality or perhaps leather boardroom-type seats for other noted attendees. Finally, you have the really cheap hard plastic or wooden chairs where everyone else sits.

I like to call it the 'hierarchy of chairs', where your status is easily discernible simply on the basis of which seat you occupy. Rarely are class distinctions so clearly visible and anyone who's been to a graduation ceremony, conference opening or even certain social gatherings will know exactly what I'm referring to. This phenomenon is not limited to Arabs either, since members of several expatriate communities also seem to have taken a liking to it. But the funniest part of it all is that everyone seems to instinctively know their places, almost like a kindergarten classroom. I wonder what goes through their minds as they hurry contentedly to take their respective places at the start of the event?

"Hey, I know those sofas up front aren't for me but I'm a second tier VIP, so I'll take my place in the second row." Oh poor baby, are you too delicate for plastic? My rear is just as good as yours. Annoyingly, the people who sit in the front are very often amateur politicians (MPs and municipal councilors), who don't seem to realize what bad politics it is to separate yourself from the common man in such an elitist way. Sure, it may get their faces on television, but they also end up looking pompous to the public. Unless the practice is so ingrained in custom that nobody notices, in which case it's even worse than I thought?

The politicos seem to forget that they are civil servants at the end of the day, the key word being 'servants'. Wish them luck, or at least a very naive constituency, at the next elections (they're going to need it). In my capacity as a journalist I often get offered the 'privilege', for lack of a better term, of being seated at or near the front but I tend to decline. I'd rather sit at the back with the rabble. It's easier to sneak out unnoticed and you're less likely to bump into people you don't like.

tariqk1976@hotmail.com 

tkhonji@yahoo.com

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