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Rhetorical Analysis: My Parents’ Bahrain by Maryam Al-Khawaja

Yahia Kilany

Department of Rhetoric and Composition, The American University in Cairo

Core 1010: Writing Seminar.

Prof. Hossam Attiah

March 20, 2023

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Rhetorical Analysis: My Parents’ Bahrain by Mariam Al-Khawaja

Bahrain has been the subject of governmental corruption, cultural exploitation, racial

discrimination, and sectarianism. The government has been particularly hostile towards activism

and opposition. Mariam Al-Khawaja was driven to write the article “My Parents’ Bahrain”

(2013) as a way to express her frustration with such circumstances surrounding her home

country. The writer shows the dissonance between what Bahrain was like in the past and what it

is like in the present, highlighting the deterioration that the country endured on multiple fronts.

The article shows how powerful Al-Khawaja is as a writer; as she demonstrated a good

command of language that supported her goals and a natural progression of ideas. The article's

value is heightened by the balance that the writer achieved by talking about her own emotions

and trying to make the reader empathize with he and using logical reasoning to some lesser

extent.

The writer uses emotions when speaking about her memories of Bahrain. Most of these

memories are tied to her parents which gives a nostalgic quality to the article that most readers

could relate to in one way or another. The sentimentality that is tied to memories, such as

Mariam’s parents going to Ain Athari and her grandfather’s fishing equipment, gave great value

to the article and opened an opportunity for the reader to relate to these experiences, especially

since they were mostly cheerful and nostalgic. However, Khawaja continued to contrast these

positive thoughts by mentioning the current degraded states of these memories, for example, the

monopolization of the fishing industry and the human rights violation. This contrast of emotions

leads to a powerful response from the reader as it allows him to easily see the issue the article
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seeks to discuss. I believe Khawaja recognizes that this method of emotional communication,

where she alternates between old memories and compares them to the depressing present, would

only shock the readers and cause them to carry emotional baggage, so she subtly inserted the

emotion of hope into her piece. Hope makes itself especially prominent in the last paragraph but

there are hints of it throughout the entire article, which then incentivizes the reader to fight for

this cause; now that he understands the issue and the emotional baggage that comes with it and

knows that there is still hope and that the damage could still be reversed given that you fight for

it.

The writer relies on external sources and her experience to provide credibility to her

article. The writer included several news articles as pieces of evidence to provide information, in

addition to, proof of what she says. These articles are intended to exist as proof of credibility to

the author’s vision. By inspecting the author’s background and seeing ties to Bahrain and

Bahraini activism, we see that she does not stand on particularly solid ground as she was out of

Bahrain for most of her life. Mariam Khawaja was born in Syria to parents that were very active

in their activism against the Bahraini government and, as such, were exiled to Denmark, but was

raised in an environment that conserved the Bahraini identity the author then moved to Bahrain

in 2001. Some would argue that the author would not be as credible as she was out of Bahrain for

a long period. However, I would say that her exile gave her a much broader look into the politics

and communities of the world thus allowing her to spot issues that those living in Bahrain may

not even be aware of due to their limited knowledge of how other countries may operate thus

granting her credibility when writing about Bahraini issues.

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The article’s logical side is overthrown by the emotions in it. The logical part of the

article is shown through the facts that are stated in the article and the writers’ analysis of it, such

as the example of the demolition of the Pearl monument and changing it into a public park,

which the writer analyzed as a way to neutralize and erase Shia history from the country. The

writer also uses logic to support her hope for the country's independence; in the last paragraph,

she explains the current position of the Bahraini people and how they could change and how the

revolutionists are starting to mobilize, and how such an opportunity could be exploited by the

union of the Bahraini people and their protest against the current regime. It is clear that logic was

used as a tool to support the excessive emotions in the article.

The article is quite emotional, containing both pleasant and negative experiences. It

makes numerous references to hope in an effort to dispel any negative implications that might

result from the negative emotions. In addition, the author also justified her strong emotions by

using logic to restrain them.

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References

Al-Khawaja M., (2013,Aug12),My Parents’ Bahrain. Jadaliyya - ‫جدلية‬.

https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29292