liberation day

"how strange to see...those goofy cheerful paintings of huge sea waves and palm branches"

February 26, 1991

First pictures from Kuwait this morning. I woke up from dreams of Kuwait, a wrecked but liberated Kuwait, to turn on the TV first thing, still scratchy-eyed, and see Bob McKeowen of CBS news filming live from the Fahaheel expressway and interviewing jubilent Kuwaitis who had finally come out, free, to welcome the Allies.

My dreams had been: one, of a view from the bedroom window of my Sha'ab flat down onto the street below, shiny black and slick with oil; the other, of a strange wrecked Kuwait, with stormy seas, as though the seas had torn up the coastline.

Funny: the rain over Baghdad is turning that city black and oily as it washes down some of the tons of ozone-destroying oily smoke from the estimated 500 well fires set by Saddam. Also, a night view of someplace in Kuwait, someplace familiar-maybe Salmiya-taken by news crews as they entered last night presumably, showed the sidewalk looking black and oily. Were my dreams premonitions? Throughout the war I dreamed of violence and the night of Kuwait's liberation I dreamed that it is free.

How strange to see the familiar sights of Kuwait on American TV. I saw the waterfront by the American Embassy, that pier I passed every day going to work. Later, an interview with the Kuwait Towers in the background. And of course on the expressway bridges, those goofy cheerful paintings of huge sea waves and palm branches.

Tonight I heard the Kuwait National Anthem on TV here in America. I never thought that would happen-never foresaw that. And some Kuwaitis sang "Watani Kuwait dadadadada, Majdi!"
Al humdulailah!

A while ago, before the start of the ground war, I had an unusual dream. Kathleen and I were running from Iraqi soldiers and ran up the stairs of a building similar to my apartment building in Sha'ab. On the roof, the Iraqis trapped us and we knew we were doomed. A soldier put a gun to my head and shot. I felt the bullet go under my skull and into my brain, as if in slow motion. I felt it, although it didn't hurt. And then, in the dream, I began to die. I faded out.

I don't know what woke me up, but I've never had a dream before in which I actually died.

Šjanice adams
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