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My trip to Kuwait started on August 2nd, 1990 with the Iraqi invasion of the oil rich emirate when I had heard about the nation for the first time. At 16 years old, I had heard and studied about the nations of Europe and Far East Asia, but my knowledge of the Middle East was virtually non-existent save a few stories about The "Holy" Lands of Palestine/Israel and tales about the Pharaohs of Egypt. But Kuwait? Nope, it didn't register. So I relied upon my trusted President George Bush Sr. to fill me in on the details with his regular updates on the situation. As I was to learn, Kuwait was a tiny but important sovereign nation whose freedom and independence were savagely stolen away by a neighboring dictator and it was America's responsibility to rally the entire planet to roll back this injustice. While there happened to be some oil in Kuwait, it was largely inconsequential and the real issue at hand was the need to restore freedom and liberty to America's good friends the Kuwaitis, who strangely were never "free" nor "liberated" in a secular-democratic American sense of the word in the first place.
Saudi highway, going to Kuwait. Quote: "Repent to Allah!" Istaghafir Allah, read from right to left. But what did I know? Not much, so I accepted the patriotic flag waving at face value and figured I should trust my national leaders since they actually knew what was in my nation's best interest, and at the moment it was apparent that amassing hundreds of thousands of troops around Iraq to prepare for war would be the answer. By the end of November 1990, the United States and Britain had secured a UN mandate to use force against Iraq should they not withdraw their forces from Kuwait on or before January 15th, 1991, and with the passage of that date, The Oil War of 1991 had begun (also known as The Gulf War). A five-week long aerial bombing campaign was conducted against Iraq and Kuwait which weakened Saddam's forces so much that the ensuing ground campaign to free Kuwait from the clutches of the "Butcher of Baghdad" took only 100 hours, ending with the liberation of Kuwait City on February 26, 1991.
Town of Iskaan Ar-Raqi to the right, and Kuwait straight ahead! The Coalition Forces of liberty and justice had triumphed over evil and oppression, and the original unelected and undemocratic Kuwaiti government was restored to its former glory. A victory for freedom loving democratic peoples everywhere.
Fast forward to 2002. Eleven years later America still had its military stationed in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, 19 Middle Easterners had recently slain 3000 people in the United States on September 11th, 180 people had just been murdered by a terrorist bombing in Bali, Indonesia and 700 people taken hostage in a theater hijacking in Moscow. By October, The Washington DC area was being terrorized by a psychotic Muslim sniper and on the 7th and 8th two American military personnel had been shot dead and two others wounded in Kuwait by apparently disgruntled Arabs unhappy with the American military presence in the region. And on the 9th a certain 28 year-old American rented a car from his compound in northern Saudi Arabia and decided to drive up to Kuwait to see what all the fuss was about. "Clearly there must be something truly interesting up there," he thought to himself as he plotted out the details of his travel itinerary on a scratch piece of paper the evening before.
The 9th was a warm, bright sunny October day throughout the Persian/Arab Gulf. It started with me getting out of bed and packing a few things into an oversized backpack and heading out the door with a coworker of mine who drove me out to a car rental place here in King Khalid Military City, the only car rental company that would let me take one of their cars out of the country - for an extra fee of course. The business was run by some shyster Egyptian who rented me a 2000 Nissan Sunny (Sentra) in English for 80 Saudi Riyals a day ($21.33) but quoted a Saudi 60 Saudi Riyals (US$16) in Arabic for the same exact car who had walked in while I was filling out my paperwork on the other side of the room. "Apparently I'm getting the special American price for this car," I thought as continued to fill out the paperwork and pretend I didn't understand basic Arabic. "It's only about $5," I told myself. Besides, what goes around comes around: when I return to America, I'll simply be sure to treat Egyptians with the same respect I received while in the Middle East. That's only fair.
After filling out all the required paperwork, I put a deposit down on the car, grabbed the keys, bid farewell to my coworker, and threw my backpack and camera into the back seat of the Nissan and got into the vehicle and thought, "$21 a day for the car, 12 cents per mile, and zero for car insurance since this good Muslim Egyptian didn't offer it (technically insurance is against the will of Allah, and many companies in Saudi Arabia refuse to deal in it), so this three day rental shouldn't be that pricy. Kuwait City should be no more than a three and a half hour drive away from here. I should be there by 1:30pm if all goes according to plan." Ahhh. . . if all goes according to plan. . .
Emergency phone located beside the highway in the middle of the Saudi desert. Within two hours I was up at the Saudi-Kuwaiti border after correcting for a wrong turn I had made back in the small city of Hafar al-Batin an hour north of KKMC which led me out on a dead-end road in the desert just on the outskirts of town. I figured my transit into Kuwait would be a rather uninteresting affair: drive up to the border, purchase an obligatory 3-day car insurance policy (unlike Saudi Arabia, the Kuwaitis are in full support of insurance), and then drive up to my hotel in Kuwait City and secure a Kuwaiti visitor's visa there since my company hadn't arranged one while they had my VISA in Riyadh earlier in the week arranging my Saudi exit-entrance VISA. It all seems straight forward enough. I drove up toward the border area which consisted of two separate drive-up booths on the Saudi side and three on the Kuwait side, although I wasn't going to know this in its entirety until quite sometime after.
The following are several voice notes I left for myself during and after the experience:
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My hotel is in the back right: The Carlton Tower Hotel
I stayed on the 8th floor. Not terribly exciting in itself, but you can see the number 8 in Arabic. |
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Voice memo #4 Here I am. I'm finally in Kuwait and I'm driving down a nice two-lane highway lit in the center divider by streetlights, very much unlike Saudi Arabia. It's currently 9:30pm. I've just left the border. Got to the border around 2:30? (12 noon!) I can't remember. The problem was that I didn't have my visa. I didn't have my customs form. I didn't have my car insurance form. I didn't have every form that any human being that needs to get into this country needs to have. So finally when I thought my problems were gone, I got to the passport control area and this time they said I needed a visa. Well, I said I didn't have a visa. Like I said earlier, apparently you're supposed to contact the hotel and they're supposed to send you one. Well, I'm sitting here and I've already spent like $15 for my insurance, rented the car, made the hotel reservations, so I wasn't gonna turn around and go back to Saudi Arabia without first getting into Kuwait. Did I leave a message before about this already? About getting in and all the people showed up?
Cats at my hotel, which are more like rats here in the Middle East. Totally unwanted and unkempt. Yeah, so, I'm there and they stick me in this side room after I explained them my problem that I didn't have a visa and they tell me, "Come to the back room." So I come to the back room and they contact the hotel and the hotel has to arrange the visa. Yadda yadda yadda and it takes like an hour and a half. So they say, "We'll call back later and figure out what's going on." So they call back and say, "OK, you need the visa at the border and we can't let you into the country without your visa from the hotel. So the hotel calls and says, "We have your visa but we're not gonna drive down and give it to you because it's like an hour and half away by car." So I say, "OK, what can I do?" And they say, "Well not much." By this time I've kind of befriended the guys who work at the passport control place. I'm American. They wanna talk with me. Talk about September 11th. Politics, government and the rest of this which is right up my alley. Islam and all this other stuff. So I hang up the phone with the one guy at the hotel and he says, "I'll call you back in 15 minutes and we'll see what I can do." So I tell the guys in the office, "I can have the guy drive down from the hotel to the border if I pay him because I said, 'I can pay you for the gasoline or whatever the trouble is, I just need to go to Kuwait because I'm already halfway here and I don't wanna turn around and go back especially since I've been exited out of Saudi Arabia. I mean, I'm kind of screwed at the moment.'" So I talk to the guys in the border office in Kuwait and I say, "I got off the phone with the hotel guy and I said I can pay him," and suddenly they were all up in arms! They said, "No, don't give him any money! Don't pay him! Don't do anything! This is his job. He has to do this. Don't pay him. We'll make sure you get your visa!" So they call the hotel guy back and say, "Basically, you have to drive down to the border right now and drop off this visa." And like I said, this is like 150km (100miles) outside of town. The hotel guy says, "OK, we'll get you your visa. We'll drive down. It takes an hour and a half to drive down," and this was sometime around. . . I don't know, 4:30 or 5 p.m. So I figure, "OK, 6 o'clock or 6:30 they're gonna come down with the visa. The sun's going down, it'll be a bit dark, but I'll manage and I'll get there, but it's gonna be a bit late but I'll leave the border around 6:30pm."
Trash eating kitties. So I shoot the shit with the guys in the Kuwaiti border department for a couple hours. They don't speak much English at all and I don't speak much Arabic, but we were communicating. We're there chitchatting and this guy with a fat beard walks in a long head wrap and he's a big supporter of Bin Laden and I was like, "Peace be upon you, brother!" After the introduction I found out that he doesn't really like Americans, so we didn't engage in too much small talk. Then there were some other guys who liked Americans and it's the same spiel I always hear here, "Yeah, we love America but we hate your government blah blah blah because America supports Israel yadda yadda yadda." You've heard it once, and you've heard it a million times. So I was Mr. Nice Guy, "Yeah, Israel's a big problem with America," just trying to get on their good side. 6:30 rolls around and I don't have my visa. The hotel dude hasn't shown up. 7 o'clock rolls around and the guys in the office are like, "Well, we're gonna eat dinner soon, so why don't you just stick around for dinner and we'll invite you." So I say, "OK!" because I was kinda hungry and I hadn't eaten since breakfast. Fortunately though I had a huge breakfast so it worked out well for me. 7:30 rolls around and still the visa guy is gone. 8 o'clock rolls around and the visa guy is gone. 8:30 rolls around and the visa guy isn't here yet and finally he shows up and says, "Oh, I've got your visa," and the border guys take care of the visa issue for me, but before I could leave the office guys said, "No! You have to stay for dinner!" So I stayed for dinner and Jarrah was kind of my little friend because he spoke the most English in the office and he was translating some stuff for me from Arabic into English and from English into Arabic. He and I were kind of chums. After that we went outside and walked over to a little dakkah (elevated-like wooden patio area, free standing beside a neighboring building) and sat and shot the shit in English and Arabic with some of the Kuwaiti guys sitting there. Told 'em I was a teacher, that I worked at KKMC, worked for the Saudi Arabians, and one of 'em said to me, "Every time you speak Arabic to these guys, they don't expect and American to speak a foreign language." And I was like, I mean, I really don't speak Arabic well at all, but they seem to think that if you can shoot out a few words you're fluent. Lemme see if I have to shift gears in the car here. . . just a second. . . So while we were sitting there, one of the guys at dinner was like, "So, you're a teacher?" I say, "Yeah, I'm a teacher." He said, "And that's all?" And I said, "Yep, that's all. I'm just a teacher." And he said, "Are you sure?" And I said, "Yep, I'm quite sure." Then he said, "Maybe you are, CIA?" I was like, "Everyone here thinks I'm CIA! Even in Saudi Arabia!" But I just tell people, "Look, I'm just an English teacher. I'm not an overpaid CIA agent. I would love to be an overpaid employee of the American government, but I'm not. I'm just a simple guy from the United States who likes to travel," and they all think I'm CIA. It must be my receding hairline and sunglasses. Or maybe my decent sense of fashion? ;-}
Liberation Tower, Kuwait City So finally we eat dinner and sit down on the floor. We were sitting in big circles and there were three dining areas with different groups of people. We're having the food and there's rice with a big animal carcass in the middle. Soup and drink and all this sort of other stuff, and they were impressed that I could eat with my hands. They thought that was a good thing since most Americans would eat with a fork and spoon. So they were pretty impressed with that, I guess. Also by the fact that I was speaking Arabic to some people. I was sitting across from Jarrah during dinner and he said something kind of funny: "You know, Daniel, for the local culture, once you eat with people at the same table they can't kill you. You are like a brother now!" I was like, "Great! It's good to know that you could have killed me before dinner but now that you can't, I feel MUCH better!" I thought it was kind of humorous. From across the room though, the Bin Laden supporter just sort of leered at me from afar, both in the passport office as well as at dinner and he didn't say much to me. Then there was one Kuwaiti guy who looked like Ariel Sharon (the hated prime minister of Israel) and they made a big joke about him because he was a bit fat and dopy looking just like the Israeli leader. His face was spot-on with Ariel Sharon though and they said he was the big local joke. Then we finally wrapped things up, and as per Arab tradition, as soon as dinner is over everyone goes home and that was it. We finished dinner and I was the last one to finish eating dinner ("Finish eating EVERYTHING on your plate before you get up from dinner!" I always hear in my head, although Arabs never finish eating everything placed before them because if they did the women and imported servant-laborers would have nothing to eat after you!) Then we all went into the communal bathroom afterwards and I washed my hands and mouth which is typical here after dinner, and at 9:30 I said good-bye to Jarrah at which time he gave me his phone number and told me to call him from Kuwait City Thursday afternoon so he could give me a tour around town. And the rest is history. Currently, I'm following the hotel guy from the Tower Carlton Hotel and he's about 200 ft. ahead of me on the highway in a minivan and he's leading me straight up to the hotel. It's not been a boring day, I'll tell you that much! Oh yeah, when we were at the border patrol area, Jarrah took me out back and showed me Iraq, which is only like 3 miles away from the post. Apparently a lot of Iraqi refugees straggle across the border on a constant basis fleeing Saddam's little piece o' Paradise. Anyways, I was supposed to be in the hotel like 7 or 8 hours ago, so I'm a little behind schedule now. I was originally going to go to Failakah Island in the morning off the coast of Kuwait City where those American soldiers were shot two days ago, but since I won't have any extra time because of today's drama - not to mention the fact that I don't need any run-ins with terrorists - I'm thinking that I'm gonna skip that. I still need to be back in Saudi Arabia by sundown on Friday, so I'll probably leave Kuwait City by 2 o'clock in the afternoon on that day. That's my plan and I'm a'stickin' to it! As more drama develops, I'll let you know! Ciao! |
MAP OF KUWAIT
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And without further ado, Kuwait! The above map shows my journey from Saudi Arabia in the lower left up to Kuwait City north-east toward the upper right. The distance scale in the lower left is 40km or 25 miles, so as you can see, Kuwait is quite a small country. As you can see, Kuwait is basically a one-city country, with Kuwait City being its capital. The blue lines are major highways, and the straight red lines within Kuwait are oil pipelines. This is what 148 Americans died fighting for back in 1991. This is what keeps the American military in the Middle East today. This is what drives the Middle Easterners to despise the United States, and this is what is driving George Bush Jr. to lead a new military campaign against Iraq - a nation which threatens the industrialized world's addiction those red lines. |
Above: a panorama of Kuwait City from a little fishing dock set in the Gulf.
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So I ended up checking into my hotel Wednesday night sometime around 11 p.m. and was happy to have been given the direct escort because I would probably have never been able to find the hotel on my own since it was tucked away in some bizarre little cluster of hotels in a not-so-apparent location. After receiving my room key I walked up stairs, threw down all my things and decided to go for a little walk around the neighborhood but was greeted by lots of empty commercial district streets and decided to return to my room and hit the sack in order to get an early start the following morning. |
Scale line = approximately 800m / 800 yards
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Thursday, 10 October 2002 There were several touristy items scratched on this morning's agenda that I wanted to get knocked off and they were:
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1. Shamiya Gate 2. Jahra Gate 3. Liberation Tower 4. National Assembly Complex 5. Kuwait National Museum |
6. Seif Palace and Cabinet Council 7. Sharq Mall 8. Dasman Gate 9. Kuwait Towers (* My hotel!) |
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So I hopped in my little Nissan Sunny and was on my way! |
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Above: Kuwait City hotel district, but the Meridian was not where I stayed.
Above: my tower of terror, the Carlton Tower Hotel. And "just" $95 a night.
Below: some random modern building. Interesting architecture!
Above: two little love birds outside my hotel room window. Coo coo coo. . .
Above: the Jahra Gate off in the distance at the bottom.
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I had wanted to start my morning's sightseeing adventures with a stop at the Shamiya Gate just to the east of Jahra gate, but when I drove out there I was somewhat disappointed to see that not only was the gate a sad, pathetic little crumbling pile of baldy restored stones, it was also located on an island oasis in the middle of a massive highway intersection that that it would be fully impossible to get out and photograph it. Sure, it might not have been much to look at, but it still has its historical significance and was worth of a picture nevertheless. I just couldn't summon the skillful wherewithal to drive past the island at 60 miles per hour (100kph) and properly aim my camera out the window and snap an unblurred and mal-directed shot. As such, I just shrugged my shoulders and drove on to its next of kin about a kilometer away (half a mile) to the west where I was able to park my car on a nearby street and make my way over to the wall itself. Not so unlike the Shamiya Gate, the Jahra Gate too was located on a grassy little oasis of an island surround by traffic on all sides, but this time it was just a large round-about and I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to reach it. To get out to the island I had to play chicken with 5 lanes of Arab traffic and it was a rather hair raising experience. After dodging in and out of traffic I was finally able to get into the mini-park surrounding the old gate and I was surprised to see that I was the only person there. Apparently these gates and surrounding green areas have been produced for visual consumption only from within the confines of a passing car, and not for people to actually visit them in person! In this way, I felt like Kuwait City was a bit like Los Angeles, a place where people don't walk. They just drive. As sourced in my Lonely Planet: Middle East 3rd Edition guide
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Above and below: Al-Jahra Gate
Below: Al-Jahra Gate and surrounding buildings.
Suicidal Arab bird! AAAACK!!!
Osama bird Ladin?!
Above and below: Al-Maqsab Gate and accompanying cute little flowers.
Above: The Roman Catholic Church of Kuwait City
Below: The Evangelical Church of Kuwait City, side by side
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Unlike Saudi Arabia, Christian churches are not illegal in Kuwait. Before arriving in Kuwait I was unaware that there were any churches in the country since I had just assumed they'd be absent as in Saudi Arabia, but as I pulled up to the Al-Maqsab Gate just beside the coastal Arabian Gulf Street, I was pleased to see these two churches sitting side by side right across the street. "What a nice place to have a church!" I thought. Old Al-Maqsab Gate and flowers on one side of the street, the Arabian/Persian Gulf on the other, and the Al-Jahra Gate just 500 meters/yards to the east. Since it had been quite some time since seeing a church, I figured I'd pull into the parking lot and give it a gander, I guess expecting to find Europeans or Americans buzzing about within. |
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Instead of being greeted by signs in English advertising country style barbeques or weekend Bible readings, I was interested to see a giant poster covered in a barrage of Hindi squiggles. "Cool, I've never seen an Indian church before," I thought. "This ought to be fun!" Well, as I walked through a gate in the compound walls toward the center courtyard and meandered up the walkway between both churches toward the front doors of the Catholic house of God, I was given the most unfriendly of looks by the small numbers of Indians scurrying here and there. I mean, seriously, it was as if they were staring at me with laser beams and x-rays. Being a Westerner, I figured they would have assumed me to be a Christian and hence been a little friendly to me. Alas, no. So much for Christian brotherly love and hospitality. Hell, I probably would have been treated better by Bin Ladin and the Taliban! Oh well. White folks apparently aren't welcome at this Church. I suppose this particular church isn't the only one in the world whose congregation would rather certain races/ethnicities not attend. That's life, eh?
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Above: the mother of Jesus Christ. A woman who knew love. If only some of her followers would take note. |
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DEAD CAT ALERT! BEWARE! SKIP IF QUEASY! |
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One other thing that rubbed me wrong with these two little anti-me churches was the parade of dead kitties littering the sidewalk along the western wall of the compound. This picture shows but one. Sure, animals die. It's all part of the cycle of life. And sure, animals sometimes die in cities. But to not clean them up before their skeletons start biodegrading into the concrete beneath them? That just seems a bit gross. In a perfect world there would be a robotic animal control cleaning up all the city's carcasses and disposing of their unpleasant remains without the use of human hands, but we don't yet live in that world and someone's gotta take care of the mess. Then again, if you leave an animal to be picked apart by scavengers, insects, and bazillion degree weather and humidity it'll disappear sooner or later. Later most likely. In any case, the whole area was starting to give me the creeps so I jumped in my little Nissan rent-a-wreck and high-tailed it out of there. No need to stick around that unwanting feline purgatory any longer than necessary. Next stop: Liberation Tower |
Yes folks, the UFO has landed.
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Above: Liberation Tower, built to commemorate the American-led departure of Saddam Hussein back in 1991. Apparently it is currently one of the world's tallest towers and is about the same height from base to tip as the former World Trade Center highrises, which I was constantly reminded of by the locals - although, being a tower disqualifies it from being considered one of the world's tallest buildings. Personally, I found the incessant and proud comparisons of this building to the World Trade Center by locals to be a bit distasteful: are Middle Eastern buildings only capable of being among the world's tallest only after crazed Arab terrorists knock down their taller American counterparts? Yours is gone. Ours isn't. In any case, the tower is apparently owned by the Royal family of Kuwait and is closed to the public except during Liberation Commemoration Week which is in February. |
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Above and below: in the Liberation Tower parking lot, a cool little lime green Euro car made by the Swatch wristwatch company (now owned by DaimlerChrysler). Beep beep!!! |
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Above: Arabian Gulf Street runs along the entire length of the city's northern-western waterfront and is quite attractive. Many of the city's points of interest are located along this 25km/15mi long stretch of well manicured roadway. |
Above and below: The National Assembly Building
Above: The National Assembly as seen from my hotel window.
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As sourced in my Lonely Planet: Middle East book, here's a brief rundown of the Kuwaiti government's history. My comments are in [ ].
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Above: "The National Assembly" as written in Arabic. Majlis al-Ummah
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Contrary to the popular belief, Arabic is not a difficult language to read. Certainly no more difficult than cursive English script. You just have to learn the shapes of the cursive letters since there are no "block" letters in Arabic. Once you do that, the rest is a breeze. Unlike English, however, Arabs consider their script to be an artistic one since it is allegedly the language in which God revealed his message to their Prophet Mohammed, and as such is beautified and presented with all sorts of phonetic symbols and non-phonetic squigglies. When reading artistic Arabic, you just have to cut through the fat, find the meat, and you're good to go. The name The National Assembly - Majlis al-Ummah can also be written plainly as seen above. |
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Once you've eliminated the artistic elements such as short vowels, consonant doublings signs, consonant reassertion symbols and the unphonetic eye-candies (which are not normally written in every day Arabic), then you can easily read each of the letters, from right to left. mjls al umah, which is how it would appear in Arabic script. |
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Above: the goal in beautified Arabic is to make it appear as if written in one elongated block, and to not have things sticking up and below the main line, so the little squiggles and vowels are added to give the whole line a symmetrical appearance. If English were written according to the same phonetic rules and with the same artistic means, the word The National Assembly would be written as it is above. Webpages on the Arabic language can be found at: |
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Above: me standing on a nice little patch of grass with the Gulf off in the background sweating like a hog and roasting in the 80% humidity and 100F/38C weather. |
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Above: The sad Kuwait National Museum
Unfortunately I was there at 2 p.m. and the museum was closed. |
Cool merchant ship located outside the National Museum.
Above and below: Othman Mosque, near The National Assembly
Middle Eastern towers: old and new.
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The Persian Gulf, also known as The Arabian Gulf to the Arabs. Just below the surface lies the industrialized world's deadly black addiction. |
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Above and below: barbed wire fencing off a non-descript commercial storage zone along the coast. Beside the rusted barbs stood a sign in solitude depicting an anguished mother and her hopeless son, which read: PALESTINE - Help them by calling and giving. These sort of signs for charity campaigns are everywhere throughout the Middle East and keep the plight of the Palestinians at the forefront of every Arab's mind. Unstated but coded in the posters is the message, "Israel and its only supporter America do this to Muslims and we must fight their aggression at all costs." |
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Above and 4 pictures below: Dhow Harbor Just a little docking point for a nice collection of old wooden ships and older men wrinkled by the the ever present sun and tending to bobbing buoys, tangled ropes, and an occasional near empty fishing net. |
Scroll to the right --->
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Above and below: The Cabinet Council, Seif Palace and The Ministry of Foreign Affairs - court of the ruling Al-Sabah family of Kuwait. Not such shabby digs, eh? |
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The Palace is the official seat of the emir and is not open to the public. The oldest parts of the building date to the turn of the 20th Century. |
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Grand Mosque This huge, modern mosque opposite Sief Palace was opened in 1986. It cost 13 million Kuwaiti Dinar [US$40,000,000] to build and the government says that it can accommodate more than 5,500 worshippers. The central dome is 26m [80ft] in diameter and 43m [140ft] high. |
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Above and 3 pictures below: I'm not really sure what these pictures are of other than what seems to be listed on the two maps of Kuwait City I had with me, which didn't seem to be too informative. I was looking for the Dasman Gate along Al-Soor Street which apparently nolonger exists and was supposed to be near the Dasman Palace which I couldn't find. I was able to find Dasman Square - a grass covered round-about in the middle of a giant ring of traffic - but I couldn't seem to find anything else. I ended up just parking my car and looking at some of the interesting ruins of various unnamed buildings located along a 100m stretch of roadway splintering off the Dasman Square round-about. (square round-about?!) I assume the buildings were damaged during the Iraqi occupation? Or maybe they're just old, run down and weathered, like what one sees in various places throughout the Middle East? |
Above: American SUV & Kuwaiti ruins.
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Above: A war poster showing the emir of Kuwait and his troops presumably during desert storm. The words read: Qurt ain-kum yaa ahil al-kuwait which literally translates to sleep eyes-your oh people the Kuwait which can be interpreted as It's OK for you all to rest again as you are safe from the Iraqis, oh people of Kuwait. |
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Yum yum yum! Chili's restaurant in Kuwait! I walked past it on my way over to the Kuwait Towers, but sadly like everything else in the Arab world during the afternoon, it was closed. I could really have gone for a nice juice pepper corn veggie burger with hot mustard sauce or a fat platter of nachos!!! Like the rest of the country, it probably opens at 4:30 or 5 p.m. Cultural sidenote: since Arabic doesn't have the English sound ch, Chili's is called shee-leez in Arabic. |
Above and the plethora of images below: Kuwait Towers
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Interestingly, the one image that I remember of Kuwait from the whole Gulf War episode of 1991 was that of the Kuwait Towers, which for some reason I thought were in the middle of town and surrounded by a field of dirt. These towers were the one tourist site that I absolutely had to see while in town. You know how it is. . . you see something in a book or on TV when your young and then you get excited to finally see it in person as an adult. These towers, while not necessarily inherently exciting in and of themselves, were the sign to me on my little trip that I was, in fact, in Kuwait and far far far away from home. The following is a little blurb from my Lonely Planet: Middle East book:
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View from within the upper sphere. Ritzy, eh!
Moi! Or as they say in Arabic: Ana!
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Printed on the windows are the various points of interest as seen from atop Kuwait City. To the north and east are the Gulf. To the west and south are the city and Kuwait City's coastline. |
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Located 25km/15mi off the coast of Kuwait City, Failaka Island is apparently the site of Kuwait's main archaeological site as it was the location of the Bronze Age Dilmun civilization centered on the neighboring island-nation of Bahrain. The Greeks showed up in the 4th Century B.C. and established the garrison town of Ikaros. There is still a temple located on the island from those days. These days, however, the island is still littered with mines from the Iraqi occupation and just two days prior to my arrival, two American military service men were killed in an ambush by Bin Laden sympathizers so I figured it might be best if I just stayed away for the weekend. So the above sign is as close as I would get to the island. |
Arabian Gulf Street
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Le Cafe and Le Total Destruction. The follwing are pictures of the damage inflicted upon the towers during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which are hung on the walls of the observation sphere. Despite the Iraqi destruction and despite the American led liberation of the country in 1991, recent polls show that large numbers of Kuwaitis hate the USA. Go figure. |
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You know a dictator has no conscience when he'll stoop so low as to vandalize your bathroom sink! |
The Kuwaiti flag.
Kuwait, written in Arabic. Litterally: k w y t
Webpages on the Arabic language can be found at:
Above: Kuwait City by night, as seen from the Kuwait Towers.
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Above: the youth district of Salmiya. Young Kuwaitis cruising and walking about everywhere with KFC, Baskin Robbins, Starbucks and a slew of other Western companies peppered in for good measure. It was nice to see men and women out having a good time together in public unlike Saudi Arabia where unwed/unrelated men and women are forbidden from socializing together. As I walked I found it so interesting that the Arabs could hate the United States so much yet still dress up in blue jeans and t-shirts and cram into every American restaurant and coffee shop they could fit into. Go figure. |
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By around 4 p.m. I had had a rather long day of walking and driving around the city and decided to return to the hotel for a brief nap since I still had the evening ahead of me. As per the offer made by my new border patrol chum Jarrah from the night before, we arranged a time to meet Thursday after sundown and he would give me a quick little tour of the city. I thought Jarrah had said 6:30pm and Jarrah thought I had said 6 p.m. so when he had sent his personal driver over to pick me up at 6, I wasn't in my room since I had briefly slipped out to a neighboring Internet café. Upon returning to the hotel, the concierge said to me, "Mr. Daniel, your driver was here to pick you up but you weren't here." Me: "My driver? What driver? I don't have a driver. Sure, I'm supposed to meet someone at 6:30 p.m. that I met yesterday down at the border, but he didn't say anything about sending a driver. Hmmm. . ." So I rang up Jarrah and as it turned out he and I were both unclear as to the meeting time and we simply rearranged for 7:30. This time Jarrah showed up in person and driving a brand spanking new BMW 7-series sedan. "I see government jobs pay a little bit more in Kuwait than they do in the United States!" I thought to myself. Apparently, Jarrah's family is rather well off but he works two or three days a week down at the border to keep himself occupied. It would seem that life as a citizen of an oil wealthy micro-state isn't too terribly demanding. I was quite impressed though that Jarrah would take up extra work at all since down in Saudi Arabia labor is generally viewed as totally abhorrent by the natives and something to be avoided at all costs, especially if you have the means to do so. In any case, I jumped in Jarrah's ritzy vehicle and we sped off down Arabian Gulf Street out toward the Kuwaiti Towers so that I could get some nice evening shots of the city, and then from there we headed south to Salmiya District about 8km/5mi south of the towers along the coast. Jarrah wanted to show me some of the city's night life so that I could see that Kuwait was a much more liberal and progressive country than my current location of residence Saudi Arabia. |
A shopping mall in Salmiya
Young men and women walking around the mall. Some in traditional dress, some not.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, women in Kuwait are allowed to drive. GASP!
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Just like young people anywhere in the world, many Kuwaiti youth enjoy hanging out with their friends in the mall. Only, these malls display cars for sale which most teenagers around the rest of the planet can't quite afford. Ahhh. . . the benefits of being born atop oil in the Industrial Age. |
A shopping center and accompanying quaint little cafe.
View from the Sharq Mall Harbour, a mall built out in the Gulf.
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After meandering around Salmiya for about two hours going in and out of mall after mall and sitting for a nice cup of coffee at a Starbucks, we left the shopping district and drove back up north into downtown Kuwait City along Arabian Gulf Street and hooked a left along the coast just past the Kuwait Towers and arrived at Sooq Sharq, or East Market, a large mall built upon a man-made island out in the waters of the Gulf. |
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Above: still frames from a little movie I took while walking around the Sharq Mall. If the file weren't so big (25mb)and my Internet connection in Saudi Arabia so slow, I would put it online for your viewing pleasure! :-) I tell ya, I must have looked like a country bumpkin wandering around the mall with a camera, as if I had never seen anything so crazy and modern in all my life. I guess that having lived in Saudi Arabia for over a year and a half now, I have kind of grown accustomed to "Gulf Arab" referring to "Saudi Arab" and so most of my experiences in this region stem from that Saudi experience. As you may know, virtually EVERYTHING is illegal in Saudi Arabia and so when I come across a slightly more open/free society, I guess I just get all giddy! One aspect of Kuwait that pleased me was that I didn't have people with daggers or police badges chasing me away at the first sight of my camera, which has actually happened in Saudi Arabia. Also, I was shocked when Jarrah told me I could film inside the mall freely and when I did so I wasn't stopped by the authorities. I mean, that just is NOT possible in Saudi Arabia. One example of this is the totally ambivalent Kuwaiti security guard walking right in front of me in the upper left hand picture of the above collage. (Behind him is a large, illuminated water clock, nearly identical to the much older one located in the Kaufhaus des Westens mega mall located in Berlin, Germany.) Anyhoo. . . the videodepicts Jarrah and me strolling through the mall chit chatting about this and that and having a nice time with him as my tourguide. We ended up walking around Sharq Mall for quite some time and also sat to eat dinner around 10 p.m. - a very normal dinner time for Arabs. While in the mall I was elated to find a large multiplex cinema showing a slew of newly released American films - cinemas also being illegal in Saudi Arabia. "I tell ya, this country has everything, Jarrah!" "Yes, Daniel, it does." Sure, you still can't get a legal glass of beer or wine in Kuwait, but that's a minor detraction. Over all I was very impressed and Jarrah had shown me an excellent time for which I was very greatful. We ended up staying out until around midnight then he dropped me off at my hotel at which time I turned in since I wanted to wake up somewhat early the next day in order to poke around here and there before packing my bags and departing the hotel at 11:30 a.m. to head back to Saudi Arabia. |
Above: Sharq Mall Harbour
Below: yours truly
A corniche (promenade) along the gulf coast beside the mall.
Above: a humorous but serious streetsign turning into the mall parking lot.
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After poking around the Sharq Mall Friday morning getting a few daytime pictures I jumped in my car and decided to make my way slowly out of Kuwait City and back in the direction of Saudi Arabia. Along the way though there were two stops I wanted to make: 1. the Red Fort in the small town of Al-Jahra just west of Kuwait, and 2. the Exhibition of Kuwaiti Sailing Ships. From what my little Lonely Planet book said, Al-Jahra was the site of the infamous Gulf War "turkey shoot" where the Allied forces destroyed a stalled Iraqi convoy as it attempted to retreat out of Kuwait. As for the Red Fort, it played a key role in a 1920 invasion of Saudi Arabian forces from the south. Just to the north of all that was supposed to be the Exhibition of Kuwait Sailing Ships in Doha Harbour, a collection of carefully renovated sailing vessels ranging in size from small shallow water fishing boats to a large ocean going dhow. Well. . . according to the large unfolding map I had stashed on the front seat of my Nissan Sunny the trip out to Doha Harbour would be a simple drive. I'd just drive a couple miles west along Gamal Abdul Nasser Street right near my hotel then hook a right on the Shuwaikh Ras Ashairij Bridge connecting me directly to the Doha Peninsula. And voila, there I'd be. So I'm driving down the Gamal Abdul Nasser Street and pass the area where there should have been a giant sign saying, "Shuwaikh Ras Ashairij Bridge" but I didn't see it anywhere. I saw a sign for the Shuwaikh Port from which this bridge was supposed to extend, but no signs for the bridge were to be found. After looping around several times on the highway I decided to make a turn onto one of the side streets that seemed as good as any which would lead to this convenient harbor crossing bridge. I ended up driving along this curvy pot-holed road snaking through some semi-forgotten industrial zone eventually reaching the end of the harbor where I was greeted by nothing but a chain link fence and the waters of the Gulf sparkling off in the distance before me. "This certainly doesn't look like any trans-harbor bridge that I've ever seen. Maybe I'm in the wrong place." I turned the car around and headed back to the main entry point of the Shuwaikh Harbour and rolled up beside a small security guard booth staffed by two Kuwaiti soldiers with machine guns slung over the shoulders and two tiny cups of Arab tea wafting steam before them on the little tea table before them. |
Above: burning dinosaurs. The not-so-sexy side of the Carbon Age.
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[Rolling down the window, and trying to speak Arabic]: "Excuse me, but, where is the Shuwaikh Ras Ashairij Bridge?" "The what bridge?" "The Shuwaikh Ras Ashairij Bridge." [Looking at me like I'm retarded]: "What?!?" "You know, the giant trans-harbour bridge leading to Doha Harbour." Then I proceeded to show them my map. "Oh, that bridge." "Yeah. That bridge." "Well, it was never built." "So why is it on my map then?" "I don't know." "Uh huh. . . alrighty then, do you know how to get to Doha Harbour from here without driving across the non-existent Shuwaikh Ras Ashairij Bridge?" "Sure, just take Gamal Abdul Nasser Street all the way out to Doha Sulaibikhat then hook a right at the little intersection with Abu Dhabi Street then just go straight ahead until you arrive at the harbor some 5km/3mi away." "OK, shookran!" (Thanks!) And I was off, bridge or no bridge. Eventually I arrived in the vicinity of Doha Harbour but was a little puzzled upon reaching the end of the line where the expected ships were supposed to be. There was nothing but a giant polluting power station, lots of barbed wire, and yet another security guard booth. Yet again I was greeted by Kuwaiti men with machine guns and yet again I rolled down my window and attempted to speak Arabic with the natives in pursuit of my touristic goals. "Excuse me, but. . . isn't there supposed to be a big exhibition of Kuwaiti sailing ships out here somewhere?" "No." "But my book here says there is." "Hmmm. . . Oh yeah, there used to be a bunch of boats out here but it's been relocated out by Entertainment City, just about 2 km/1mi from here. It's out there now." "Alright, thanks!" So up went my window and off went Daniel down the street in persuit of his little ships. |
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I eventually arrived at Entertainment City but for some reason I guess it would be a collection of movie studios and cinema multiplexes. Instead it was just a giant parking lot with an empty, childless fun park off in the distance with bad Arabic covers of It's a Small World After All playing on hidden speakers bored into rocks and building walls. Off above the shrub line lining the parking lot were the giant red and white smokestacks belching out ton after ton of pollution and I thought, "How creepy. The little kiddies come here to be entertained and play all day long, but really all they do is race around breathing in all this toxic gas. No wonder no one's here." One thing is for sure: I couldn't find my little sea faring vessels anywhere and had to give up looking for them. Perhaps they had been moved into Kuwait City in Dhow Harbor where I had seen some ships the day before? Strange though that my book should be so terribly incorrect. So I turned the car around and headed back toward the highway and along my way I saw a sign for Camp Doha. |
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"This ought to be interesting," I thought to myself. "One of the American military bases in Kuwait that serves as a focal point for the disaffected and those who support Bin Ladin against the United States." Just the day before there had been some sort of mini-ambush of a sport utility vehicle out this way being driven by two American military personnel in addition to the attack on Failakah Island, but unlike that first attack, this most recent one didn't leave anyone dead. Just shot up. "At least I'm not driving a big American Suburban truck with US flags all over it. This little Nissan of mine with Saudi plate should keep me out of the scope of any would-be snipers." I ended up driving down this long narrow road with lots of speed bumps on it lined with row after row of barbed wire fence and really didn't see much except the front gate where various American military personnel were doing vehicle checks before they were allowed into the compound. "How fascinating. My military in a foreign country whose people really don't want us here anymore even though they asked us to liberate them from a massive Iraqi invasion just a decade before. Strange how things turn." I pondered the meaning of being an American civilian driving along the parameter of an American military base far far from home - if there even is a meaning at all to it - and then turned around and left the base behind, feeling kind of as though I shouldn't have been there. The return trip to the highway was a straight shot and not hard to find at all. Along my way I had thought about stopping in Al-Jahra to look for the Red Fort, but since Friday Noon Prayer had begun - the main congregational prayer for the week, the one where they always talk crap about Israel and the United States - I figured that I'd just skedaddle my little bottom out of there and head back to Saudi Arabia. My time in Kuwait had come and gone, all been very interesting, but it really was about time I make the trek back home. Home. Saudi Arabia. Hmmm. . . |
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The trip back to KKMC was a straight shot and I had nary a problem at the border unlike the drama I had to go through to get into Kuwait just two days prior. I drove past several Bedouin camp outs along the highway, sailed across the border, and sped past a little dust devil (below) and was back home in my villa before Mid-Afternoon Prayer. Yet another exciting journey around a Middle Eastern country complete. |
Megalinks Homesite / Saudi Arabia
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This is a non-profit educational website. All supplementary imagery is used purely for educational purposes. Maps were published by GEOprojects (UK) Ltd. Should the publisher object to the use of these maps, please contact me at the above address. All other information and images: copyright 2002, danielschereck.com |
