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kuwait diary

On August 2, 1990, the phone rang at around 7 AM and woke me from my sleep on my sister's sofa. It was Lalla, asking me if I'd heard the news-Iraq had invaded Kuwait. What we talked about after she told me that, I can't remember, but it didn't sink in immediately that we weren't going home in September, that we no longer had homes or jobs. I'm ashamed to admit it, but the first thing I thought was, "my stuff." After the call, I sat on the living room floor playing game after game of Solitaire, and maybe a few games of Gin with Kara. I just didn't know what to do. Suddenly, I had to plan my life from that moment forward.

 


salmiya pyramid mosque

November 25, 1991
Abu Dhabi

I got my visa into Kuwait today and plan to go over the UAE's National Day which will be celebrated over December 1 and 2 (it is the 20th this year). I'll have three and a half working days and may need to stay over. But I'm hopeful about getting my gratuity and seeing an end to it all, though it won't really be over until I have my things back from Baghdad [such naive hopes!] and am settled back in the States permanently [also naive, I'm afraid]. As long as I'm here I'll compare Abu Dhabi to Kuwait and the former always loses that competition [it doesn't now]. I feel STRANGE about going back to Kuwait: I want to see it but I can't bear that I'll probably be seeing it for the last time. Feelings of loss are bobbing up again and a feeling of being cheated. I even feel cheated out of participating in Kuwait's reconstruction although I could have gone there. But I felt and feel that I have nothing there but memories and that maybe these events gave me the shove (very violent shove) I needed to get out. I don't want my good memories turned to bitter ones [as I think happened with some who did go back]. It seems like the time to make the break. Yet here I am-still in the Middle East, and hating it this time and longing to be home somewhere. So I've got to get this business finished and move on.


kuwait university, shuweikh campus
It'll be strange seeing Kuwait again. I can visualize places as freshly as if I'd been there yesterday (though some place names started to escape me, even early on). I must prepare myself to see some dreadful changes and sad sights. What will I say to Hasan? Should I ask him what it was like? Maybe he has memories too horrible to recall, or maybe he's tired of talking about it, remembering. I doubt Laila will be tired of it. I'll tell her I saw her on American TV if I see her. Will the red neon Kuwait Airport sign be on, ushering me onto the broad, curving sweep of road leading into the city-the first sight I had of Kuwait when I first arrived in 1983. It's a thrill to remember that, just as it's a thrill mixed with anguish to remember noting going to sleep again to the sound of an AC, in the Holiday Inn in Abu Dhabi when I first arrived back. I was thinking, "I'm back: and why?"


all photos on these Kuwait pages were taken on this final trip to kuwait in december 1991, one week after the last of the well fires was extinguished.


Šjanice adams
kuwait diary
abu dhabi diary
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