Editorial Comment 11/5: Willingness vs. willfulness

In 2003, I found myself back in uniform at the beginning of another war.  Part of that time was spent in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, in comparatively safe, even comfortable circumstances. It was, moreover, a sufficiently urban setting that some peculiarly Western institutions found homes there. There were two meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous weekly, both bracketing the weekend with its holy days, one hosted by a hospital, the other by a church not so distant from the hospital. These were remarkable for several reasons, not least because of their emphasis on spiritual connectivity with intimations of Christian origins, in a decidedly Moslem environment; but also because of the content, being all about a behavior expressly forbidden to the faithful - consumption of alcohol.  Getting to the meetings was no mean feat in the absence of a public transport system, but somehow, each week, 30 to 40 attendees would show up. Several subpopulations comprised the larger group: “guest workers” (generally in construction or household service jobs, from India and Pakistan); expatriates (embassy and consulate staffs, bankers, oil workers; European, American, Australian); the occasional U.S. service member; and very rarely, a Bahraini citizen. 

The meetings were conducted in English, as the closest to a lingua franca; but throughout the meeting, there would be the susurration, the soft wavelike sounds of whispered translations going on amongst those seated near the rear.  The content was pedestrian: the day-to-day activities and frustrations of people far from their original homes, dealing with sometimes hostile circumstances, all testimonies given in the context of urgent and heartfelt needs to drink. It came to me over time that many of the attendees were working six and commonly seven-day weeks, 10 or more hours per day, and were somehow finding their way across the hot arid island to sit in attendance upon an hour of other people’s woes.  Worse, to do so in the context of a Tower of Babel, never quite feeling confident that the message heard was the message being transmitted.  The whole was presided over – at the larger of the two meetings - by a tall, very authoritarian individual, someone we would call a “Big Book-thumper” in this country.  In line with his doctrinaire qualities, this meeting secretary imposed a harsh structure on the meeting agenda: who spoke, how long they would be permitted to speak, and whether certain content was acceptable. And yet, as I say, this was the larger of the two meetings, apparently at least partly owing to his presence. On the rare occasions that I would feel tempted to speak, I would be saved from action by the realization that the way I spoke, the way I looked were not qualities with which most of the attendees could identify. And thus, that my job was to simply add additional mass to the meeting population, and to listen, and to learn. 

That became a role that I was subsequently glad to have rehearsed, as I travelled through other institutional settings.  Not all that I think requires verbal expression.

- Editor-in-Chief: William Haning, MD, DFAPA, DFASAM