Commentary: I tried to send mail to Bahrain this week. Here's what happened.

On Monday, March 1st, Israel Post announced the launch of a direct postal route, for the first time in history, between Israel and the Kingdom of Bahrain. The announcement followed January 20th's equally historic launch of a direct postal route between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Both came on the heels of the Abraham Accords, signed by Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in August 2020.

When the Israel-UAE postal route was launched, Israel was under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 infection rates were setting new records daily, schools and stores were closed, and leaving the house beyond a radius of one kilometer was permitted only in special cases. Nevertheless, on the same day the Israel-UAE postal route debuted, I was able to reach a post office in walking distance from my neighborhood and send four pieces of mail to a contact in Dubai.

Would I be able to replicate that success this time around with mail to Bahrain?

The good news was that by March 1st, many of the lockdown restrictions Israel was under for a full month from January 8th to February 7th had been lifted. Infection rates were back under control, schools and stores had mostly reopened, and people could freely travel around the country again. The bad news was that I had received my second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, February 28th, the day before the postal agreement between Israel and Bahrain entered into effect, and had spent the whole of Sunday night curled up in bed shivering and sweating under the covers like a sick camper in the woods after eating poison berries -- such that by morning I was so weak and dehydrated that leaving the house to go anywhere was out of the question.

There went day one.

חנות מזכרות ארמנית, ירושלים
צילום: אמיר אפסאי
Sevan Souvenir, Jerusalem
Photo: Amir Afsai (9 March 2021)

The next day, Tuesday, March 2nd, despite feeling badly hungover and having hardly eaten anything for the last thirty-six hours, I had recovered enough of my strength to return to work. Was it enough to survive a visit to the post office later in the afternoon? By the time I made up my mind that it was, Israel Post's website wouldn't allow me to make an appointment anywhere in Jerusalem. In a way, though, it was a relief: deep down a part of me was eager to go straight home from work and crawl back into bed.

I did, however, make one stop before leaving the Old City. With stores having reopened, there were now more options as far as where to buy postcards -- which I decided were all I would send this time. I popped into an Armenian souvenir shop whose owner I knew well for a look at his postcard collection. While turning the postcard rack, I heard a familiar tune coming from a flatscreen TV mounted to the wall behind me. It was the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata which, coincidentally, had just been featured in my latest stamp review. The owner, it turned out, who was learning to play Moonlight Sonata on the piano, had been struggling with the third movement and was watching a tutorial video to help him through some of its difficult passages.

There went day two.

סניף דואר ראשי, ירושלים
צילום: אמיר אפסאי
Main Post Office, Jerusalem
Photo: Amir Afsai (3 March 2021)

The next day was Wednesday, March 3rd. I made my appointment early in the day for 16:55 at the main post office and used my breaks between classes at school to prepare four postcards for delivery, affixing ₪7 worth of postage using Octavian's stamps to three postcards and leaving the fourth unstamped so it could be metermarked. One question was still unresolved: Where would I send my postcards? Unlike the Emirates, which I had visited and had an actual contact in, Bahrain was fully uncharted territory. Of the few options that came to mind, a synagogue in the Bahraini capital of Manama seemed the best option. It wasn't clear if the synagogue was in use or not, but it had a mailing address and with any luck the postcards would arrive before Passover -- which would give them a decent chance of being retrieved shortly after delivery, as opposed to languishing in a mailbox for months until the next major holiday.

גלויות מירושלים אל מנמה, בחריין
Postcards from Jerusalem to Manama, Bahrain
3 March 2021

While waiting for my number to appear on the display at the post office, I dropped ₪2.50 into the stamp vending machine hoping it would dispense a COVID-19 stamp, but all I got was "Emergency, Search and Rescue." Again, as happened on my last two visits, there was a sudden eruption of shouting, but this time it originated with two postal clerks arguing over whose turn it was to get some chore done.

Upon seeing my number on the display, I approached the lady at my assigned window and explained to her that I had four postcards to mail to Bahrain, three of which needed to be hand-canceled and the fourth meter-stamped. "To where?" she asked. "To Bahrain? Where are you from?" After some tinkering with her computer, she reported, "We don't have Bahrain in the system" and called the shift manager over to assist her. The manager corroborated the clerk's findings, whereupon I told them about the announcement on Israel Post's website. They read the announcement and tried placing a call on the phone, but a recording put them on hold and a minute later the call was disconnected. If they couldn't print a meter stamp for me, I explained, I still wished to have the postcards hand-canceled. They mumbled something incoherent and instructed me to resume waiting until they called me back. After waiting in excess of half an hour, I approached the clerk, who in the meantime had clearly forgotten all about me. She commended me for my patience and led me to an adjacent hall. There she proceeded to hand-cancel my postcards with an oval handstamp whose inkpad was nearly dry. I took a photo of the postcards and handed them over to begin their historic journey.

הודעת דואר ישראל
Israel Post announcement