Can Bahrain’s division between Sunnis and Shias be healed?

For the first time since her childhood, Mariam recently went back to the shrine of Nabi Saleh, a tiny island off the shore of Bahrain’s capital, Manama. She reverentially held green drapes over the tomb of the 14th-century holy man whose name was given to the island. She stopped near the spring where her family used to barbecue a sacrificial goat. She remembered tasting the sweet dates from the orchards and looked at the waves lapping the island where she once swam. So much had gone. The sea is sullied with sewage. The spring is a dry hole. A car park has replaced most of the orchard. And Sunni families, like hers, gave up visiting the shrine decades ago. “Why did we stop?” she asked the custodian of the shrine, a Shia. “We were together. It was such a beautiful age.”