|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Growing Up in Kuwait
| Article
# : |
19324 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1991 |
3,057 Words |
| Author
: |
Heather B. Hayes
Heather B. Hayes is a freelance writer living in the
Washington, D.C., area. |
More than fifty years ago, oil was discovered in the tiny emirate of Kuwait, and almost overnight Kuwait's people went from being traders and pearl divers to sharing in the world's highest per capita income. With its newfound wealth, Kuwait became the Middle East's most progressive nation, offering free medical care, education, and other benefits. Old Kuwait, a city of traditional mud houses, became New Kuwait, with modern skyscrapers and super highways. People prospered; house servants and drivers became the norm.
Through it all, Kuwaitis say, the people remained simple and family-oriented. For this reason, life in Kuwait before the invasion was a comfortable, easy, quiet paradise.
In the following profiles, three Kuwaitis--a college professor, a female college student, and a member of the ruling Al-Sabah family--talk about what it was like growing up in their unique society, and discuss the chances that life in Kuwait will ever be the same.
When Iraqi troops drove into Kuwait City last August, Mohammed Al-Jaleel, a professor of international finance at Kuwait University, was among those trapped under brutal rule. For seventy days he remained in his home defying an Iraqi order to continue teaching. At night, he had recurrent dreams. "It was weird," he recalls. "I was living in fear that soldiers would suddenly burst into my home and drag me away, but all I dreamed of at night was my childhood. Over and over, I dreamed of a peaceful time, of good times when I played with my brother. Isn't that weird?" He managed to escape Kuwait by bribing an Iraqi soldier on the Saudi Arabian border. But the dreams of childhood continued.
Al-Jaleel grew up near the docks on the Persian Gulf, where his father worked as a foreman for a merchant company loading and unloading ships. "I loved living by the sea, going out to see where the boats lived," he says. "Once, I remember, I had the chicken pox, so my father took me way out into the Gulf, because back then people thought that being exposed to clean sea air and salt water might help to heal the disease. So he took me way out into the water."
His earliest childhood memories are of living in an extended family in a traditional mud house in Old Kuwait, in the forties before mass oil production turned the country into one of the world's richest nations. By the late 1950s, however, the government was implementing plans for the construction of a New
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
