MANAMA // "Business is slow, too slow," says a retailer at Manama's Seef Mall as an empty children's train is driven round the premises to the accompaniment of nursery-rhyme jingles.
Bahrain's malls, normally bustling with activity from shoppers, arcade players and cinema-goers, have fallen eerily silent.
Since a three-month state of emergency was called last month, police and military roadblocks, as well as curfews, have meant limited movement across the kingdom. As a result, most shopkeepers have had a sharp drop in customers.
Many malls have been forced to consider cutting rent for tenants to ease the financial burden of paying their lease as revenues slip.
Al Ali Mall, one of five major centres in Manama, has been the first to cut rents. All of its 160 tenants have been given a discount for two months - until the martial law is lifted.
"We have given concessions to all tenants," said Hana al Ali, a board member at the shopping centre, without giving a value to how much the leases have been cut.
"We have done so because these are our long-term partners and their success reflects us and vice versa," she said, although she admitted that the move would "hit this year's financial statement a lot".
The government last week put forward a directive to cut or freeze some government fees for traders and small and medium-sized enterprises, the local media reported.
Bahrain's central bank has also offered a lifeline to small businesses in the kingdom that have been hit by a drop in trade because of the protests of the past few weeks.
"Unfortunately it's a snowball effect," said Ilse Viljoen, the marketing manager at Bahrain Mall. "Our footfall has definitely been affected and … we are suffering because the tenants are suffering."
Rents vary depending on the size and purpose of the lease, but are usually between 12 dinars (Dh116) and 30 dinars per square metre a month.
While Al Ali Mall has a board able to put forward and implement decisions on rent prices, other malls, such as Dana Mall in the Seef district of Manama, must consult the owners of the building, which in Dana's case is a local family business.
"We are tenants as well so it is not in our hands," said Samir Zahar, the marketing manager at Dana Mall, who has received numerous requests from tenants about reducing or postponing rent payments.
"We don't have a clear picture yet but there are requests pending to management and we will wait and see."
Dana Mall's Lulu hypermarket and the cinema are in normal times the "bread and butter" of the business, accounting for thousands of visitors daily, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, Mr Zahar added.
But blockades on the King Fahd Causeway, the main intersection between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, has reduced Saudi customers to a trickle.
"The Qataris, the Kuwaitis, the Saudis, the Brits - everyone is at home," said a retailer at Seef Mall, who asked not to be identified.
Abdul Rahman, of the state-owned Seef Mall's leasing department, said it was only a matter of time until all malls had to cut rents.
"A lot of the customers share the same idea and the message has been passed to management," he said. "I hope a decision will be made next week."
Officials at Bahrain City Centre, which is owned by the Al Futtaim family and is the biggest mall in the capital, could not be reached for comment.
Retail and wholesale trade contribute about 7.1 per cent of Bahrain's GDP, data from the Economic Development Board shows, but this is still small compared with the 25 per cent the financial sector accounts for.