For years, people crossed Al Fateh Highway on foot here, climbing the old footbridge stair by stair while traffic rushed beneath them. It was a simple structure that did its job well. Then the city outgrew it. The footbridge was lifted and set down a short distance away, and in its place a new form rose: a sweeping U-shaped flyover that curves through the air like a single confident brushstroke.
I sat down to draw it on the second of October with a fountain pen, water-soluble ink, and a water brush. The pen gave me the bones: the ribbon of the deck, the tapered piers flaring up to meet it, the rhythm of the railings, the cars slipping underneath. Then the water brush loosened the ink into soft blue washes, the way the morning haze loosens the edges of the city. One bottle of ink was enough. The flyover didn’t need color to show its strength; light and shadow were enough.
What struck me most was the frame. Standing beneath the curve, I could see the Juffair skyline held inside the arc of concrete, towers lined up like an audience watching the road. Old Bahrain and new Bahrain share that view: the place where pedestrians once crossed, and the infrastructure that now carries thousands of journeys a day toward a growing district.
Progress is often measured in kilometers of road and tonnes of concrete. But a sketch measures it differently. It records a moment when something new has just arrived and the memory of what it replaced is still fresh. One day this flyover will feel ordinary, like the footbridge once did. This page remembers when it was new.
— Allan Donque, Al Fateh Highway, 02.10.2026
Fountain pen, water-soluble ink, and water brush on watercolor paper