For Many, It’s Life as Usual in Gulf Cities : Daily scene: Arabs and expatriates alike are aware of the crisis. It’s just that they have more pressing things to worry about--like T-shirts, cucumbers and beer.

MANAMA, Bahrain — Page 5 of Sunday’s Gulf Daily News carried a pleasant photo of Samira Mohammed Abbas and her children, along with their story: “It’s cucumber with everything for the Abbas family, thanks to a freak batch of seeds which turned out melon-sized giants.”

Abbas was quoted extensively on the wonders of her garden but said not a word about the war clouds over the Persian Gulf.

After nearly four weeks, the crisis and its effect on daily life remain Topic No. 1 in the streets, offices and restaurants of Manama and other gulf cities. Radio sales are up, shortwaves tuned to the British Broadcasting Corp. and the Voice of America. Everybody has--or wants--the latest news.

But there is work to do and few signs of panic since the first days of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Abbas tends her vegetables and others pull their office shifts in a climate that shifts from tedium to tension to excitement, depending on the latest report.

At Henry’s Bar and the Rugby Club last week, expatriate singles were whooping it up as usual. In twos and threes, Gulf Air flight attendants, most of them Irish, pushed into the after-work throngs of British businessmen. Pakistani bartenders were pulling down draft beers five at a time long after midnight.

Talking war? No, talking shop, weekend plans, singles gossip. “That’s him, the tall one in the blue pullover,” one woman shouted over the rock beat of Henry’s loudspeakers, nudging her friend. “He has a lovely black BMW.”

Saturday night at the Rugby Club, the party-goers gave at least a nod to the Kuwait confrontation. The managers were dealing out the last of their crisis T-shirts, the traditional souvenir for expatriates caught in an uncomfortable part of the world. A popular model featured oncoming Iraqi armor over the legend, “T’anks for the Memories.”

Two American Navy officers showed up loaded with Bahraini dinars. “We’re asking for 200 (T-shirts),” one said. “But hey, if they had them, we could sell 5,000.”

“We’re trying to come up with new ideas all the time,” said the T-shirt entrepreneur, a British stockbroker. “For those of us still here,” he added, a dig tinged with disappointment with the expatriates who left the country after the Aug. 2 invasion.

The line at the Rugby Club Saturday night was that the expat community had shrunken around a core of Irishmen, who were too poor to afford passage home. “And some Brits, who are too dumb,” a bystander added.

But their numbers in Manama were made up by an influx of Kuwaitis, an estimated 5,000, many returning from European vacations and getting as close to their occupied homeland as possible.

In the big hotels, normally short of travelers at this time of year, the hottest month in the always-steamy gulf, Kuwaiti families are marking time. Their children, with no place to play, chase each other through the corridors and up and down the elevators, some in jeans and T-shirts, others, even the smallest, in long white gowns, dishdashas , and white headdresses. By evening, they are exhausted and the youngest burst easily into tears.

Kuwaiti men, also in dishdashas , sit in the lobby reading the local newspapers, running worry beads through their fingers. In the evening, they move to the hotel bars and talk over a round of drinks, as far away as possible from the amplified pop of the Filipino lounge bands.

The school year in Kuwait was to begin in mid-September, and refugee leaders say they are discussing possibilities with Bahraini authorities and private schools to provide classes here. If not, their children’s education will become a casualty of the crisis.

Taxi drivers, as anywhere, provide a running commentary on developments. After a minute of polite silence on embarking, the driver asks: “So what do you think will happen? Will there be war?” And then he proceeds to answer his own question, glancing over his shoulder as he barrels along the seashore highway.

If the prospect of conflict does not provide enough apprehension, a ride in a gulf taxi will. The cabbie prudently straps himself in and lays a heavy foot on the accelerator.

One grizzled, gray-bearded old man, in dishdasha , made a 15-mile drive in about 20 minutes, in traffic, a cigarette in his left hand, the wheel in his right hand, jerking through roundabouts and saying ugly things about Saddam Hussein.

In Dubai, where foreigners outnumber the watani unitals-- the local citizens--by 3 to 1, many of the cabbies are Syrians or Pathans from Pakistan. “Never ride with a Pathan,” said college-educated Syrian driver. “Their cabs are filthy and they are too.” The Pathans speak only a bit of broken English but probably have a few thoughts about uppity Syrians.

There’s a crisis in the gulf, but life goes on.