The main road from Manama loops south past the oasis of Riffa into the southern desert of Bahrain. It is a scrubby expanse broken by Jebel Dukhan, the smoky mountain that studs the island’s navel, and the tracks of oil and gas pipelines, tawny with rust, that hiss quietly to themselves in the silence.
This is the site of Oil Well Number One, an unremarkable spigot about eight feet high and the scene, in 1931, of the first oil strike in the Gulf.
