Interview with Fareed Abdal

- Good, excellent. Okay, today is November 5, 2017. We are at the College of Architecture, Kuwait University, with engineer Fareed Abdal. Will you give me your full name and date and place of birth first?

- Okay, okay, my name is Fareed Muhammad Ameen Ali Abdal, born September 11, 1957. I was born in my grandfather's house in Basra, because my mother went there and officially I was born in Kuwait.

- Mmm--

- What else?

- Aaa, will you tell us about your first memory?

- The first memory?

- The first memory.

- My first memory was our house in Dasma, when we were children, aaa playing with... my brother, Mufeed and I as kids, playing with my cousins, Yousef and Ali. Our houses, my father's and uncle's, were close to one another and I remember playing together. We had birdcages with chickens and pigeons and we had a Mahri boy who was raised with us. I recall when the new Kuwait emerged, with its cement houses, we used to play with water hoses, in a basin we had, our elder aunt went out, in her scarf, shouting, "They are pouring the water, they are wasting..." She was scared because we were kids and didn't know the value of water. As for our generation in the past, we witnessed the beginnings of technology, the black and white TV, electricity and water etc-- At home-- I remember my elder aunt, Ameena, when she came out, in her scarf, shouting and looking at us while we were laughing, shouting, holding the water hose and jumping around. She kept screaming and saying, "They are..." She was scared. Of course I also remember a nice and amazing era, the end of an era in my uncle's house, next door, uncle Mustafa's. It had a buckthorn tree and they had a huge pot in the yard. They brought locusts, in huge burlap sacks and poured them onto the boiling water. The locusts jumped off and we, the small kids, ran around, in our dishdashas, catching them.

- Mmm.

- I'm talking here about my memories of when I was 7 or 6 years old. I remember my grandfather's house in Basra, full of grape and banana trees and a lot of sheds. I recall going there, back then, during the weekends, our generation of young Kuwaitis, going there. There were no chalets, people went to Basra and came back with ru...rusks, buffalo cream, pickles and... that was the weekend picnic.

- Mmm.

- I remember the beautiful sc-- scenery with thousands and thousands of palm and orange trees, scorpions and turtles in Abu Al-Khaseeb. I remember the... we used to rent something called a river boat.

- Mmm. - At the time Iraq had a lot of statues, on the boulevard, aaa... Kuwait was beautiful with its streets and cars, Fahed Al-Salem street-- we went to Al Jameel shops, on Fahed Al-Salem street with my mother. The Kuwaitis looked their best on Fahed Al-Salem street. It's a big deal. This is basically some of the old memories.

- Will you tell me about your family, when you were young? Your brothers and sisters, for example, have you got brothers? Your mother and father?

- Aaa...

- What did they do?

- My father was a merchant, working in general trade and contracting. He dealt in lands and was among the major contractors of the Ministry of Public Works. He traded in gravel and in real estate. We had a lot of land lots and my father sold and bought them. He also built houses, many different buildings and was also involved in other businesses and trades. He traded in engine oils as a trader, an agent and so on. My mother was from Basra, she studied at a French convent school then they sent her to a British convent school, aaa... my father met her through his contracting business because her father was a contractor....

- Mmm.

- He was a businessman in sanitary ware and water lines. When they brought her to Kuwait she spoke English and French and she put on the 'aba and veil [He laughs]. She adapted well and became a Kuwaiti with a Basrawi accent [He laughs]. Sometimes we made jokes about that but that was a long time ago. Aaa-- we used to live, the whole family of Al Abdal, in the Farai and Jena'at neighborhoods, next to the Sheiks neighborhood, The Kuwait Stock Exchange Market area had a lot of Kuwaiti houses and among them were those of my grandfather and my uncle Husain... my elder uncles lived in Al-Swaber for a while, till the discovery of oil and the beginning of land acquisition. With the areas planning and the acquisition of our family property... almost all the Kuwaiti families moved north, following the directions of the streets, to areas similar to their original ones, so the people of the middle areas, most of them, moved first to Mansouriya and Dasma, Abdullah Al-Salem appeared later on. The people of Jebla moved to Shuwaikh and Shamiya and the people of Sharq moved to Benaid Al-Qar and East of Dasma, so basically we moved in a straight line. Our house was in the W area in Dasma and our neighbors were the Shawafs, the Jandals, the Mazeedis and groups of the same families. A group of families, the Ayoub Jena'at, Ahmed was with us. Then there were other movements within Kuwait and other stages. I don't know what to tell you about... I have another childhood, which was so special. My father decided to live in Salmiya so he w went and bought a lot of land, while trading in land, he wanted to build two huge villas in Salmiya, after Dasma. We had a chalet and huge lots of land in Mahbula and Abu Hlaifa, so we went there to spend the summer then go back but after that stay we didn't come back so we became hadar (city people) who turned to Badu or hadar who lived among village people and Badu. In 1963 we went to school, a joint school that had both elementary and intermediate students together. We used to go to school with a driver and the students used to shout, "The hadar have arrived, the hadar have arrived." Funtas and Mahbula were unbelievably beautiful. My father used to say that they reminded him of old Kuwait and Failaka. They were full of farms and we were... Of course in Kuwait urban development was quickly taking over. My father used to go to the city and come back every day while the roads were not paved yet. We liked being over there. We were the only hadar among a few families, Sheikh Saleh Al Sabah was a high ranking military man there, Sheikh Jaber Al Abdullah with aunt Huda Al Naqeeb were living across from us, he was the governor of Ahmadi, Sheikh Muhammed and some other small families aaaa, the Khuzams were in Iqaila so a few hadar were there. A group of the Al Humadhi family came to stay there for a while then went back, I mean they didn't stay for so long, they didn't go to school with us. The hadar at school were a few and the rest were village people and badu. The people of Funtas and Abu Hulaifa were called village people while those more to the west and far from the sea were called badu. Those who have recently settled in already existing and known areas, like Aaihad Al Awazem and Iqaila, were so called villages, so they were villages but in a more nomad style. Those by the sea, no, they went fishing and had Hudhoor (fishing cages) and grew crops, it was a beautiful thing. I have a very beautiful memory about the early people of Funtas, before their children grew up, the students who were with us at school used to join the army or the police and the first group of them were fishermen, working in farms owned by Kuwaitis or had their own small farms. They used to bring the fish and tie them to the base of the school wall, our school, in Funtas, was right by the sea. The teachers used to buy hamour, alive and tied like sheep in the market... in the water, so they bought the fish, tied like sheep, it was a sight I'll never forget. Aaa there were farms all around the school and we used to hear the machines ticking in the morning, and the buckthorn trees were so many. There was a beautiful farm that belonged to Shaikhan Al Farsi, a famous family in Kuwait, the farm had beautiful buckthorn trees and as children the naughty ones used to go and bring... they collected the fruits, from under the trees, and bring them to school. We, the students, went in hustle and bustle, shouting, "They've brought buckthorn fruits from the Shaikhan farm, ooooh." Those were happy kids and the fish was under the-- a wonderful scenery and spring was very beautiful with heavy rains that turned into floods and the desert turned green, very green. My father used to laugh and say, "This greenery you are pleased with is nothing like it used to be, it was even greener with big bushes, should you hit an oerfota shrub with a stick, liz lizards, many small creatures ran out of it and birds flew away." We were excited as kids. While living there it was common, while sitting in the big yard-- our house was the Ahmadi style, huge and like the bungalows of Ahmadi, we used to watch TV and a scorpion would come running on the carpets and we used to laugh. Or the houseboy would catch a snake while watering the plants. There was a female hedgehog and its babies living under the corner of our house. We saw it every day, going out and coming back with its babies. I'm talking about 1963, 1964, such things are not seen now, never seen. Then we grew up a little bit and moved to middle school and my father bought some horses because we had another farm, they were 6, they were 4 and became 6 Arabian horses. We used to ride them and jump, among the farms, with our friends. Al Dabbous family had horses, our family and the family of Hashim Al Rifai had horses. Then there was Marwan Al Isa, who had a farm. We formed groups that went out, running among the farms and in the desert on the spring days. Sometimes, in summer, we took our horses into the sea, we took their saddles off and took them into the sea to swim with them and dive under them. Schools of fish chased the horses dung while the horses swam enjoying the cool water.

- Mmm...

- Those were scenes that... I'm wondering where those scenes have gone, our children don't get to see them any more... aaa fishing, catching, mischief in the sea, fishing traps and stuff. My father used to say: "This sort of luxury is not available in the city." Indeed it wasn't available in the city. My father also used to say: "The people of Kuwait go to the chalets or abroad to see such things but you lived between two real villages that have not vanished yet." Then land acquisition started and roads emerged. In Funtas some of the houses were of mud and others were of mixed cement... - Mmm...

- It was surrounded by farms and had common schools for boys and girls by the sea, aaaa but it had farms all around and village houses and a mosque. My father said it had been like Failaka or... That gave me a kind of spiritual nourishment, even with the aesthetic ideas about the desert and now when I want to paint or draw I have such rich memories. For example I went out with my friends, Marwan, Hashim Al Rifai aaa Jasem Al Dabbous and a group of our friends. We went to see the numerous bushes of the desert and stuff. We used to say, "Step on it, step on it." We passed by a bush and saw a lizard coming out of it running or... we remember the shepherds, there were many shepherds. At the time they were Hadhramis and Yemenis not Bengalis, aaa... they had certain nice manners in the desert, how they sat, covering themselves in Beshts or any cover and making ovens from rocks. I have very sweet memories about the desert of Kuwait and the sea of Kuwait, the village and desert environment which cars haven't touched and urbanization hasn't reached and... We also went, with my father, south or north to see the desert, which was still virgin and he used to say, "No, it was even better." Indeed when the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research closed down some areas and the desert reserve was established, thanks to the efforts of our friends in the research institute doctor Sameera Omar and the groups that followed them, the desert turned beautiful indeed...

- Mmm...

- But being untrodden by cars or... Scenes we've seen in the reserves, they remind me much, they remind me of what my father said and the paintings of the artist Ayoob Husain, the reserve actually began to create the scenery painted by my father's generation and Ayoob Husain and my father said to me, "No, that's not the real desert you enjoy and are pleased with." Such things never leave my memory, the times when we and our friends went to swim in the sea, with the horses, dive under them and see the fish among the aaa etc. My father went fishing sometimes and we had German Shepherds, given to us by uncle Zakaria Al Ansari, those with pale limbs, they followed us, they ran out of the house and followed us to the sea, while we were on the boat and you could see two dogs... venturing into the sea and we hauled them onto the boat, my father said, "will you look at this, look at this."

- [She laughs]

- So it was a sweet memory, and... That was the childhood, between Dasma, in town, while we were kids, the young Kuwaiti generation first witnessing the paved roads, cars and electricity till we moved and went to a village. We used to visit our family in town and when they came to visit us they considered themselves going on a picnic. Some of them said to their mother, brothers or father, "Please, please, let us go to our uncle's house for the week." They meant the weekend, and we were the the the hadar cousins who turned to badu, teaching them about the desert and the sea. [He laughs]

- What were your hobbies? I mean you mentioned fishing and horses...

- Yeah, yeah, I was one of the young people who loved sports and art at the same time.

- Mmm...

- At school our days of education were beautiful, our education, education methodology, was very rich despite, you see, despite being in Funtas, let alone the city. I went to Alfurat kindergarten, in Dasma, and those were very beautiful days too. I remember the flower gardens and the plants gardens. We played music at school, we recited poetry, once a week, at school... we read poetry; I mean recited poetry, performing poetry, speeches and so on. We had classes for arts and agriculture, we had acting classes. Some of the things we saw in our time are now illicit and forbidden, those are wow things [He laughs]

15:30

- Mmm..

- Right? Our people were also religious and had good manners at the time and didn't pay attention to all that but now I disapprove of the things that are happening a lot. In the sixties we were not like that, in the seventies either. I I I played music, I did artwork, I was known for drawing well, that's something, I wasn't, I was the active little boy who did everything. In addition, at sc schools there was something funny, if you were not a sportsperson, they called you a bookworm and bothered you. So luckily I was a sportsperson, I played a lot of sports for the sc school, but aaa because my father had two farms and we had horses I used to go out three or four times, two days a week, when I was 11 or 12, to the desert with the horses. On the weekends I used to meet my friends from the city but other than that I had two days with my cousins and some of my friends, from the area, the Dabbous, they rarely went out because they were a little bit farther. My limits were the end of Manqaf and the beginning of Funtas, I don't do, I don't go beyond, so we sometimes used to overlap but in the weekends we met as a group. I used to ride horses a lot. And and in the summer, if we didn't travel, the sea. I mean, that was in the mornings, noons or evenings. Should the water be low we used to catch crabs and look for things at night but if the water was high we swam. At night we gathered sometimes having dinner with our friends, on vacations, by the sea while the moon was shining, we talked, sang, chatted and laughed and went mischievous. The boys threw watermelons at each other and so on, and played etc. W w we looked at the calendar for the days with high tides and the low tides times. We waited for those times and we knew how many fish traps were there, those fish traps were everywhere, some of them belonged to Sheikhs and some to... I remember one of the owners, may God rest his soul, he was the Minister of Education for a while, he had a fish trap. We, the little devils, used to go and look into those traps. We once saw giant tortoises, caught in one of the traps, they weren't edible, we also saw huge stingrays, we were young, we're talking about before teenagers. Later on, at the highschool stage, things were different but the memories were amazing for us as kids. Now I say to every... of course to our kids that the generation of our fathers, who lived more in the nature and the nature of Kuwait was virgin and well preserved and aaa there was a special beauty for the desert and the sea, I don't think this generation of students get to see that unless they go through the trouble of visiting a reserve but such scenes were abundant in the Kuwaiti villages, the desert of Kuwait and the outskirts of the city, you could find many pockets.

- Mmm...

- Now I remember I was once an activist, I recall when Sheikh Jaber, may God rest his soul, issued the greening law, while we were working in the municipality, we held huge celebrations, among ourselves as architects of that generation, that... of course there was the idea of Dr. Sameera Alsayed Omar, whom I mention with all respect and appreciation, with the team from the research institute, who called and called and called for the reserves till it became a reality and now the wetlands in the north still need the same care, those extend from Bubyan to the ports of Sulaibakhat. They are extremely valuable wetlands, with birds, fish nurseries and special flora.

- Mmm..

- They also have special marine life. When we get close to them I feel sad, as I smell the pollution, they haven't got their share of the budget and care. It's ultimately a conflict of budgets, where to spend the money of development but that's extremely valuable land, extremely precious land. I wish, in our lifetime, to concentrate on that very very very important biological resource which cleans the water and soil, should it get sick, it would cause us many diseases and its wellbeing would make us... let alone its beauty, with which we have no touch at all.

- Mmm..

- We consider the south coasts beautiful because they are good for swimming and that's true but it doesn't mean that the north coasts, which are the wetlands, don't have their beauty. I knew when I was in the army, during the military service, that those areas have birds other than the flamingo. I worked for the research institute and saw a lot of flamingos but the further you go north you'd see ducks, crows and creatures you never see near Kuwait City, even mallards are there. A wide variety of birds. Bubyan is a very beautiful mystery but our society doesn't... It's great that no one goes there now because I'm worried they'd harm... they'd mess it up but it needs a lot of care and development. The budget of development is between building modern ports and constructing trenching for the water between the Abdullah bay and... but the place is full of activity and needs a lot of sensitive care.

- Mmm..

- I don't know how we left the period of childhood but it's all about nature and I love nature very much.

- Let's go back to childhood, no problem.

- It's okay.

- [She laughs]

- But in my age my taste for nature is growing with time much more, it was spontaneous when I was younger but it grew more scientific when I'm older.

- Mmm..

- I still love nature but I love it now with more knowledge, in the past I got iii immersed in it and had fun. Back then we turned brown, they called me the Mehri in summer, we turned brown and our hair turned blonde because the sun burned it, our black hair got burned and turned bale and people used to say, "The Mehris are here, the Mehris are here."

- [She laughs]

- I remember when we were kids how much-- but now they are stuck to their mobile phones and the... technology is a wonderful thing but I remember when you asked a student to draw a palm tree, they'd switch the mobile phone on to draw a palm tree--

- Mmm..

- That's something, it's strange, I hope I covered something worthy.

- You mentioned that the high school stage was different.

- Yes.

- Why different?

- When I moved to high school, it was far from the sea and we stayed... we went back to the city a year or two prior to the invasion, I mean my father did, not us. I went back when I grew older and got married but my father spent a long time in the area, we adapted and got to know the families of those areas. Later on when I went to high school, Fahaheel is a town, it's larger than those three villages, Funtas, Abu Hulaifa and Manqaf. Those were agricultural villages, particularly Funtas which was more about agriculture and fishing but Abu Hulaifa and Manqaf were agricultural with no fishing. Fahaheel was a bigger town and more important in scale, with bigger markets, a larger community and a more important historic role, those are its satellites and it represents the real marine and social face of Al Ahmadi port.

- Mmm...

- Al Ahmadi became... mmm my father worked in Al Ahmadi for a while, when he was young, there was a development in the south of Kuwait, huge immigration areas, in search for the oil and hence the oil culture for which Al Ahmadi was the main nurturing element, a huge Kuwaiti community went to live in Al Ahmadi.

- Mmm..

- My aunts too, their husbands worked in Al Ahmadi. My father was one of the founders, at the days of the late Mr. Abdul Rahman Al Ateeqi, and Mr. Haroon. The first group went and stayed in tents. My father said, "There were no buildings or anything. The scorpions went into the tents and we were staying with the English and Indians and so on." Anyway, there was a huge culture emerging in Al Ahmadi but the the people of the areas by the sea, the coast, those old Kuwaiti villages, aaa their social features or color was a mixture of the villagers, the badu and Kuwaiti villagers, the Kuwaiti badu, then other migrations, from around the world, for the oil works, began. There was a combination of a large Indian community, at the KOC, and a large Arab community at the KOC and when you said Al Ahmadi it was another story, we lived in that sector, with the culture of Al Ahmadi, Fahaheel and the coastal villages on the... it was another color.

- Mmm..

- When we went to the city we got in harmony with our old history and with our families and old neighbors but when we went back there was another, another set of ideas. Aaa of course many village families, from those areas, were in the city, the Al Haqqan family, for instance, they were in Sharq and were well known there, they were like us, they went before us to the villages....

- Mmm..

- The Al Dabbous family had roots in the old city too and went to Fahaheel, they are divided between here and there. We arrived there very late, we followed them, some of the Kuwaiti Sheikhs' families went there, I mean some of the Kuwaiti families, some of the Kuwaiti families turned into Ahmadi people, those were Kuwaitis from the city but really became Ahmadi people, people of Al Ahmadi, I mean their life became Al Ahmadi.

- Mmm...

- Full cycle, till the father died and his children eee entered the circle of Al Ahmadi life or the circle of oil, the business of oil or the investments of oil, they became... Al Ahmadi became a culture in itself. I realized that when I grew older but as a child everything was mixed with everything. Fahaheel was different, the school was far from the... the sea and its atmosphere was so strange for us, those who came... hadar who moved to Funtas.

- Mmm--

- The hadar and the village boys went to a bigger school and that bigger school had a community from Shua'iba, another from Ahmadi and a third from... and it became the bigger thing and indeed the kids of the oil sector.

- Mmm...

- Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis went to Fahaheel, this is very funny, I mean there were Kuwaiti kids from the oil sector..

- Yes.

- That was something new for me as a child or a teenager, Kuwaitis from the oil sector, Palestinians and Arabs from the oil sector came to school. We, Kuwaitis from the city were there with our peers from the villages. Furthermore there were students from the refinery sector, Kuwaitis, badu and Arabs too, they came from Mena Saud and all of us met in Fahaheel.

- Mmm--

- It was a strange... strange compo, in addition to the Fahaheel boys, from the old families of Fahaheel, the families of Al Dabbous, Al Me'dhadi and Al Idwani, the Idwanis, groups of many families and those were also Kuwaiti colors because they were truly Kuwaitis but the Kuwaiti villagers were different, we are now more mixed. I used to enjoy a lot the company of our friends from Funtas, they are still dear to us, whenever there was an occasion they had a Samri... a Samri and an Ardha.

- Mmm..

- Upon a graduation or a birth of a child, it was a spontaneous thing and my father used to say, "Enjoy, this is like old Kuwait."

- [She laughs] - Old Kuwait. He used to say, "Son, the house of so and so are having a Samri this afternoon or this evening, the house of Al Hamdan for instance, their son is getting married or graduating." Graduating from a training course in the army or the police, there were no universities yet.

- Mmmm...

- He had a navy and coast guard course and the family was happy and held a party and so on. In addition, every now and then the badu held Ardhas and weddings to which we were invited and had fun, it was a culture with color and mischief, mischief, mischief.

- Mmm..

- School fights were a culture and a sport - [She laughs]

- No, really, that's another culture and my father used to say that it'd been the same in earlier Kuwait, the same and even more. It was a mischief, a funny mischief with aaa, for instance the boys brought spiny tailed lizards and released them in class or hares and released them at school aaa snakes sometimes.

- [She laughs]

- They teased the teachers and the tribal fights were for sport not for real, all parties were related.

- Mmm..

- A family could have fights with another family for two or three semesters and a tribe had its alliances. The headmaster would say, "Don't use this door, use that one." So some entered from one door and the others entered from another.

- Really?

- Yes, we played matches at schools and the winners' bus got damaged.

- Mmm...

- We used to laugh, I mean we could fight, get injured then reconcile. I don't know about our societies today but there wasn't that... that bitter enmity. We really had fights, one school with another, we played with them, they beat us and we beat them and all of a sudden, it's a culture, they fight [He laughs].

- Mmm...

- Right? I remember they once destroyed our bus and broke the windows because we won the game, Al Ma'ari school.

- won at what?

- Football [He laughs]

- Football, yes.

- I remember my friend Waleed Al Haqqan scored a goal, after a draw. He was a young player and his grandfather was working at the oil company. He was very clever and it was a tie then he scored a goal after which we suffered. After the match we went to ride the bus but it was a wreck and the tires were flat. We were among fights, joking, injuries, winning, defeated, ii it was a kind of... sometimes the society gets more violent but I don't know whether we were violent or not.

- [She laughs]

- It's a mixture of violence, mischief and stuff. We reconciled and fought then teased each other, "We defeated you that year and you defeated us this year. Remember when we beat you?" [He laughs] I don't... I don't know how that culture had all that spontaneity and beauty [He laughs]. Yeah, but now tolerance, in the streets, while driving, is not there.

- Mmm...

- Tension and cursing the traffic jams etc... I wonder how we fought at school and now people don't tolerate each other on the streets. There were no grudges, they fought--

- Mmm..

- They fought, teased each other and went home to their families who laughed at them and said, "Okay, now go and reconcile." Then they fought again.

- Do you remember a certain story?

- Yes, no, it was common, over a period of time, to see fights between the Idwanis and the Dabbous so much so that they were told to enter the school from different doors and they were related and...

- Yes, yes.

- Just like the stories of Shakespeare.

- Mmm.. [She laughs]

00:29: 57

- Yes, iii I mean that was a famous one and... But it was funny, our youth, our youth are nice, I mean... But changes of life take place but we need for the spontaneous spirit to stay strong in the society... the spontaneous spirit and communication with nature must be very... The kids of Funtas, some of them didn't have boats at the time so they made something called Tannaka, the people of Kuwait know it.

- Tannaqa?

- Tannak.

- Tannak.

- They brought cans and--

- Yes

- They beat them into a small boat. I remember two kids, may God rest their souls, they didn't tell their mother and father, during the storms season and three boys from middle school school, they rode in a Tannak and a storm blew. They found them dead, in Mena Saud, they drowned. It was a spontaneous life, you know what I mean?

- Mmm..

- It was a spontaneous society, they, they held Samris and held Ardhas. They went to school, had fights and went to the sea. We collected buckthorn fruits and caught birds. We went to school and they beat us at school.

- Mmm...

- At the time, our teachers were virtuous ones, honestly, I remember them, Hamed Murtaja, may God rest his soul and Mr. Almadhoon. A rare type of teachers, they were virtuous teachers and even when they beat you, you felt they did it out of love not out of blame and we didn't get angry with them. They even gave us private lessons, for the low achievers, I wasn't one of those but the teacher used to gather us and say, "I'll be in class at 6 o'clock for anyone who needs help."

- Mmm..

- There were no private lessons at home for money. "Who needs help can come in the morning, before the morning gathering and I'll teach them in class, math for instance." That was a phenomena, and some of their sons worked with me. When I had the advisory office my chief engineer was the son of one of my teachers, it was a polished society, disciplined yet spontaneous and loved nature, etc, etc, etc, etc. The fish market, in Fahaheel, was very beautiful when we were young. [He laughs] With very unusual types of fish. In the desert we learned, my father taught us the names, the names of wild plants and we knew the spring birds. We knew the types of Kuwait's fish. The other day I said to the students, "Do you know what Zaboot is?" They said, "No, we don't know what a Zaboot is. We hear people say (Zaboot of the coast) but we don't know what a Zaboot is." So it seems that they don't know either Zaboot (snail) or Qaboot (a type of Kuwaiti food). [He laughs].

- [She laughs]

- So we had some sort of detachment from... because I think that the aesthetic, cultural and artistic sides, of course those are back now, but they have retreated for a while and when that happens you don't have contact with culture. If you don't have arts, literature, Ardhas and Samris and you have taboos in art and in-- I remember we once talked with the Minister of Information and I said to him, "We must deal with that detachment, it's not reasonable, after 1500 years, to have a society that doesn't know whether art is allowed or not" [He laughs]

- [She laughs]

- We have a universal civilization, it's not a minor civilization, we are considered among the major civilizations. It's a shame for our society to retreat and doubt that its arts and literature are types of forbidden conducts.

- Mmm...

- Al Kindi would laugh at us, should he come back [He laughs].

- You mentioned the high school in Fahaheel.

- Yes.

- And after that?

- Huh, after that, in 1975 I went, on a scholarship, to the United States. I-- I I've been distinguished ever since I was a child.

- Mmm...

- And a golden boy, as they say, in sports and stuff, so I got a scholarship. My mother wanted for me to study medicine, because I had high grades but I didn't see myself as a doctor. I loved math, geometry and forms. My father was a contractor and I remember a very creative architect, who affected me deeply and whom I loved a lot. He migrated to Canada; his name was Shawqi Makram, a Christian Egyptian who worked with my father. I loved his art and saw his drawings, in the office, and saw myself there more. I used to play with Legos a lot, as a child and had a collection of Legos.

- Mmm..

- I drew a lot and loved math and geometry so I... I didn't see myself as a doctor. I used to like-- I was okay in biology and stuff but I couldn't imagine myself in a white coat, walking among people groaning, I didn't see myself there.

- Mmm ..

- When we registered, back then, there was nothing called architecture, it was architecture engineering but I was lucky because when I went to college my advisor told me that there was a difference between the two and told me the difference so I knew that I didn't want to go for architecture engineering, in the 1970s , so I concentrated on architecture and that's what happened. My father used to say something strange, he said, "When you go to America.." I don't know whom he asked, perhaps Shawqi Makram and other architects or Arab engineers, or the Arabs who were before him. My father had a scholarship to Cairo to study law but he stayed in Kuwait, it was the generation of Khalid Khalaf, the lawyer, and that group [phone ringing] who went to Al Mubarakiya. That was the generation of Sheikh Sabah, may God protect him. So when we went, he said, "Go to the universities of the East Coast or the Midwest."

- Mmm..

- When the embassy people came to us, we were well dressed. They took us in a limousine, the 1975 students, for an orientation. They said, "You are ambassadors of the country, be very good, you are the best of our sons and daughters." We were mostly boys with a few girls. "We want you to be so and so." They were very nice, they honored us and invited us to a huge lunch with the ambassador or the consul. Then they said, "Where would you like to go?" We were obedient to our fathers so I said, "I want to go to the East Coast or the Midwest." We had cousins in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Wisconsin so we ended up in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin there were options to go to Minnesota or Wisconsin or University of Illinois but it was a tribal matter; your brothers and cousins are in Wisconsin and stuff and the School of Architecture in Wisconsin was good and strong, nevertheless I applied... I was also accepted to Minnesota as an undergrad in Champaign, Urbana but if you consider the distance, you'd say no. Landscape School was in Madison, Wisconsin, a part of our college, imagine that, was in another city, the landscape department but I was okay, I was okay. That's it, we moved to America.

- Mmm..

- [He laughs] A hadari boy living among the villagers and badu and ends up in the Midwest, America.

- [She laughs]

- Yeah, a nice combination, sometimes I reflect on it, it's...

- How was the transition?

- All of us of course [He laughs] had a cultural shock.

- Mmm...

- When we came back, during the scholarship, we saw many Kuwaitis, from across the spectrum, some families we already knew, from the city, city people too. When you went back you told your family about those with you and they go, "Oh, those are the friends of so and so." Or "We used to know those, we know the uncles of those, those are related to us, and those are so and so. Some of them we don't know." The funny thing was that I met one of our cousins in America. There was a dispute over inheritance and the families grew apart. He died, may God rest his soul, he was a doctor in agricultural sciences and agricultural economy, Dr. Mahdi, we met in America.

- Mmm...

- He was a direct cousin, the son of a great uncle and the grandson of a cousin, we met again and... it's another color of the Kuwaitis, aaa hadar and a variety of badu and so and so. We came with different talents and different skills, some of us studied engineering, some studied architecture and some studied other sciences, meteorology, science, etc. And because we were far away from our country together.

- Mmm...

- We knew the ones gifted in music and the ones with special skills. One of our friends, whom we stayed with, Sami Al Hunayyan , his uncle was the great artist aaa Al Sayyed... Abdul Hameed Al Sayyed, a great Kuwaiti singer, a great artist, Sami used to play the oud very beautifully. We loved music and so we began to hold Samras [He laughs]

- Mmm...

- And Adnaniyat and so on, in our free time, it was funny and beautiful. There was also the skill of cooking among those who knew cooking and whose mothers filled their bags with spices, from Kuwait.

- [She laughs]

- I mean, one of our friends' mothers, may God protect her, sent a bag with him which he threw on us, every now and then, to carry with him, other than the clothes bags. We called it the "balad" (home) It had everything even the Kherrait and the sea stones to rub the feet.

- [She laughs]

- You know, we joked with him saying, "That's like the Pharaohs, when one of them dies, they put everything with them."

- [She laughs]

- [He laughs] "It seems that your mother got you a piece of everything in the bag." Indeed, whenever we needed something from Kuwait he opened that bag. - [She laughs]

- It was such a heavy bag and sometimes Sami got tired of it and said, "Please, carry it with me." It was tied too, funny, she had put even pickles in that bag. [He laughs]

- [She laughs]

- Those were nice days and we knew each other. Take for example Dr. Azeez Al Omar, he's here with us at the university, he was brilliant, a genius, he was extraordinary, all of us were clever but he was extraordinary at math.

- Mmm..

- Beyond, beyond the ordinary. There were talents, this one knows this and that one knows that... One of Al Isaimis was with us, he loved to disassemble everything and reassemble everything, he loved weapons and later on he became an undersecretary [He laughs]

- [She laughs]

- We also had young people who came to America dreaming about fast cars, those who loved mechanics, Ahmed Khalifa was one of the young people who studied mechanical engineering. When we went to his flat we found he got the car engine out, put it on papers and disassembling it and messing with it. So our young people had wonderful and amazing talents. We also had a Saudi friend, Riyadh Abu Hdaiqa, who got a license to fly planes in Oshkosh B'gosh, Wisconsin.

- Mmm....

- A beautiful club, one of my students was planning an airport and I said to him, "Go and see your case study." He was very happy. His father was with us, Nabeel Al Iraifan and now Azeez Al Iraifan is one of our students, Nabeel was a senior and older than us. Time goes by. You could see many people with talents; one taking flying courses and another disassembling cars at home. We also had young people bragging who could cook better than the others. [He laughs] Those were men aaa making Machbous and going on picnics. Some played music, one played the oud and another got a Merwasa and a third one got so and so. Others were good at drawing if you needed anything, huh?

- Mmm...

- I sometimes cut my friends' hair, they stood in line, to save money. I don't know how but it just happened, it was close to architecture, a type of sculpturing.

- [She laughs]

- So [He coughs] nice things. A group of us liked fishing a lot and went to lakes to play and catch fish, they balanced their lifestyle of Kuwait.

- Mmm..

- So you could see colors of our culture resurfacing.

- You studied at the college of architecture or landscape there?

- No, no, architecture.

- Architecture.

- Yeah, yeah.

- For how many years?

- Two years, four undergrad and two more, the system is four and two years.

- Mmm...

- Master, four and two.

- Then you graduated?

- I graduated.

- And came back to Kuwait or?

- I graduated as an undergrad and came back to Kuwait then I went back for my masters.

- Mmm--

- At the same university.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- And you came back to Kuwait for a year?

- Yes, a year and then went back.

- Okay.

- I went to the research institute and they gave me a PhD scholarship, they and the municipality gave me a PhD scholarship, but I didn't see myself turning into an academic quickly and my father encouraged me to get into the market.

- Mmm...

- I worked for the research institute then I became an advisor for the Minister of Municipality, for the planning and architecture affairs, the technical staff of the Minister of Municipality. It was such a move. Sometimes with the Municipal Council and sometimes with the Minister of Municipality, it was such a move and I realized what it meant when I got older and even back then I knew what it meant. So we became the advisory staff of the Minister of Municipality at the time, Mr. Abdul Rahman Al Ghunaim and Mr. Al Rifai after him. Then I worked for 4 or 5, no, huh 6 years, two of which were intermittent, those I spent in the army for the military service.

- Mmm...

- We spent a few months in boot camp then we were assigned to the branches related to our specialization so the corps of engineers, the Construction Management or the corps of engineers of the engineering corps. The civil engineers were assigned to the Engineering Corps and some of us were assigned to military installations. I joined the Engineering Corps. We finished a 2-year course for training as officers and I went back to the municipality. During that period I started a consulting firm, I joined a consulting firm and practiced the job for fifteen years but I wasn't so pleased.

- Mmm-- - The career is beautiful but you get tired of delays, the nature of the... You build houses and buildings but you realize, with the finance available and the capabilities available, that the decision making process is so slow, it's natural for it to be slow, because it's not a single decision making.

- Mmm--

- Our generation, at the time, had few architects so we were not, were not lucky because in the major and key sites there were well-known architects. All of us, including the engineers and architects, all of us ventured into the market.

- Mmm...

- Most of the major Kuwaiti architects haven't become state officials, in major posts, except for Ibrahim Majed Shaheen, who was a minister then went back to the private sector. So what happened? What happened was... we were also few in the society, very few in number; architects, urban designers, landscapers etc... So the decision making process was too slow. It's true that we were fast with the infrastructure; Kuwait established a fast and excellent infrastructure. We had urban planners who helped us devise an initial plan, which was very good but the concept, the explanation of urban development, was too slow, with a lot of disputes because it was a collective decision making process.

- Mmm...

- So we went to the private sector to make buildings but we were upset because things, in general, were not going as we had imagined, as trainees and practitioner, we had that frustration, most of us, the architects who practiced, actually practiced, the job, not like renting their offices and had foreigners working there...

- Mmm...

- No, those who really practiced, who got into operations, made designs, supervised etc. [He coughs] Ghazi, may God rest his soul, Sami Al Bader and Mr. Ahmed Zakaria Al Ansari used to say to me, "it's good if you hang around for even 10 years." So you practice without a guarantee saying, "Why should I care? Let them get me the money." And so on. Actually I worked for just 15 years. My wife was also an architect and she was competent and excellent too, we both aaa, the career is beautiful but practicing it is exhausting and tiresome and even if it got you the money it wasn't, it wasn't enough to work just for money.

00:46:25

- The appreciation and the ability to-- but we did something, every generation after another did something, they made an impact, they did, but a person's imagination is very fast.

- Mmm...

- The imaginative ability is so fast while the collective social reality is much slower than the ability to imagine which frustrates any creative person. We found a gap, even my wife and I, in art, that gave us a creative space, that I don't need to... I mean you travel and they'd change the details of the windows.

- Mmm--

- The owner comes and the contractor lies to them, a huge building, on which you worked hard and toiled for its details and choices, and all of a sudden it turns into an ugly thing because all-- all the thicknesses and facades change and you get upset and they ask why? And you go, "It's not a matter of money, you could've talked to me." And so on, it happened a lot and those were well-educated colleagues, you are not talking about uneducated people. They have the right to freedom but at the same time... then I realized that we wouldn't have an architectural impact unless the matter became integrative.

- Mmm...

- Because architecture doesn't work in a society unless there is respect for art, crafts and... it's a culture, a whole structure, it's not a matter of sending our children to study abroad and become engineers, architects and doctors then everything is nice and dandy, that can't be.

- Mmm...

- You must have a complete and integral structure of... and true and deep respect for the aaa values of work and the... and not to have that struggle in literature, art and taste-- our society didn't have such struggles in the past.

- Mmm...

- But I think... That's something I'm saying for the history, our society after the... now I can reflect, at my age, at 60 I can reflect at... our society thought, when the Arab and Muslim world was defeated, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire that it was a technological defeat and that if we learn the modern sciences and bring weapons and have engineers, nuclear physicists and all of them are left brainers, we're gonna catch up. I think that the greatest shock was that our defeat was cultural, not a technological defeat and that there wasn't and never is a suitable reflection. Very few of our scientists, intellectuals and philosophers may have reflected but the majority of us, they didn't, they don't wanna believe it, they were in denial and thought, "Okay, no problem, we will send our boys and girls to study science and engineering, get acquainted with the modern and advanced weapons. We'll buy planes and tanks and we'll know how to... huh ? We'll join the science and arms races and we'll catch up." No, we don't catch up. Today, in 2017, we know the factors of, I won't say backwardness but rather our disputes.

- Mmm...

- Our tensions are related to the need to deeply reconsider our cultural structure and the... I don't mean it's bad but it needs to be updated by... in a genuine style to create a genuine renaissance not an ostensible one, no, no, no. We can't say, "They defeated us with weapons and they don't have the morals." That's not true, when the first world went for the renaissance and development it shook itself from the roots. In the 15th century we had the upper hand over them and they said, "Why are we backward?" They asked themselves, they asked themselves deep questions, questions to the point, and faced themselves and and made true changes in the way they interpreted life and its meanings, in their beliefs and so on. Those were deep reforms for which they paid high prices. They fought and killed each other; they went for civil wars only to come to the kind of consciousness and beliefs, which they ended up with. It was a human journey, not an exception, while our society is still sitting on the edge saying, "No, no, no, our past is sacred." It's okay, it's sacred and we respect it but not as holy as we currently see, to the degree of immobility and mummification.

- Mmm..

- We need to ask deep questions, yes we can be spontaneous, spontaneity has its beauty, but to be among other nations and be in harmony with the spirit and challenges of the time while being true to yourself and to your society, you need to ask deep questions and need to be honest answering them [He laughs]. Such questions. The matter of architecture, the matter of architecture, architecture is connected to civilization, culture and so on and that's the frustrating side of the career, which made me think about teaching.

- Mmm...

- It was also a try, I didn't even decide to go and teach. I just thought I'd try teaching for a couple of years. I found myself pleased for all the experience of childhood and the migration from the city to the village and from the village to America and the shift from an academic to a professional and from a professional to the private sector, to the army and so on. With all that I thought, in the last decades of my life when I talk with the students, I can share that with them, not only the subject but also the sophistication and the challenges I went through and even the explanations...

- Mmm...

- The explanations of the experience, I I had a type of satisfaction, high satisfaction in teaching and seeing some of our students with their eyes opened up, in a way, after their third year, they have something, a recognition not the knowledge but the recognition of other things... And indeed, over the last ten years I might have been happier than being in the career, in Kuwait, although the career itself is beautiful.

- Mmm...

- I was happy when I was in the municipality.

- Pardon me, which year was that?

- That was in the 1980s because I felt the public service was different from the private one. In the private business you have to pay your rents and your staff's salaries and the bid bond of the bank while you are chasing your payments and so on. You are trying to do something creative and someone comes to spoil it and mess it up for you I mean the hell with the money I'm making, if it's not the way... anyone can build a wall or a building but it's not architecture.

- Mmm...

- That made me, made me upset and even worse, it brought tension between me and my wife, because we were clever, we were the stars of the college, I mean they called us, at the time, we graduated as honor students and so on. But in the municipality no, when we came to the municipality from the research institute, our superiors were Mr. Abdul Rahman and a group that included Dr. Raddad Swaileh, he was there, Nizar Al Anjari, it was a group of Kuwaitis who met during a period of time.

- Mmm...

- Abdul Redha Al Matrook, Nizar Al Anjari, our colleague, Al Qallaf , who still has an office, Ahmed Al Bahr, aa Al Sarraf is still there, Mousa Al Sarraf, Al Sayyigh is still there in traffic planning. We were together in one period of time and in a bigger number. They were before us, the group of Ghazi, who was with Ahmed Zakaria, in the Public Works, huh, there was Mr. Hamed, Abu Hamed Abdullah Qabazard in the Public Works, there was a passing process, we passed to each other and the elder ones, too, Aaa Mr. Hamed Shuaib, may God rest his soul, was in the office, he was a chief engineer but he left the municipality and set up an office and worked for the municipality, from time to time. So in a certain period of time there was a group of Kuwaiti architects and Mr. Ahmed Zakaria, may God rest his soul, was there, he was an advisor in the municipality, we used to meet in his Dewayniya, Ahmed Bu Khamseen and Husain Al Awadhi. Many architects came and became so close to each other during a certain period of time. We haven't built buildings but rather drew the guidelines.

- Mmm...

- We wrote many guidelines about organizing the protection of the environment and many projects have appeared, the national greenery plan of which HH the Emir issued a decree and at the time we rejoiced and celebrated it, it later on gave birth to the Public Authority Of Agriculture.

- Mmm...

- We made a lot of guide... I mean sub interpretations for the Emiri decree, w we made, at the time, a lot of strong and good interpretations of the master planning. There was an administration; there was strong cooperation between our group, in the office of the Minister of Municipality, Abdul Rahman Al Ghunaim and the urban design department, in the organizational sector. As for the urban design, even in Boston and in other countries, should the benefiting real estate people get powerful, they'd dwarf the urban design.

- Mmm..

- If the general manager of the municipality, in any country, or the municipal government, is very powerful, with an actual existence that protects the environmental welfare, citizenship and the beauty of the city and the urban design gets stronger and larger. In our time the urban design was very powerful.

- Mmm...

- Hamed Shuaib nurtured it, before he left, then Abdul Rahman Al Ghunaim came and nurtured it and there was a group of Kuwaiti architects. We were in the office of Mr. Abdul Rahman and we believed in their strength so there was a profound cooperation. We did a lot... the sea front began to be executed, among other things, many environmental criteria were established and many books were written and la-- not laws but rather guidelines were established.

- Mmm--

- Aaa, then a group of us moved to the private sector, most architects don't stay in the government for so long, a few of them do, they mostly turn into practitioners, real estate agents or even tire repair workers, they became developers. We were young and we were together and went through experiments, Ahmed Al Bahar joined the business of Al Bahars. When we see him sometimes he says, "Bye bye architecture, it's become a hobby or nothing." Okay? Nizar, no, Nizar has the Dar office etc. Futooh Al Asfour was there, Mona Buresli was there, those were activists, besides the society and its stories. Those older than us were also there, Ibrahim Majed Al Shaheen, A-- Abu Basil, may God rest his soul, the architect Sami Al Bader, Ghazi, may God rest his soul, was there, Hamed was there, so there was there was a unity and an alignment and we felt we were positively serving by making...

- Mmm...

- The interpretations of the master plan and... but in the actual life cycle what happens? People elect the municipal councils and new people come to the municipality. The municipality now has a big staff of lawyers, in our time there was a crew, before us there were engineers then an architectural face came in, you feel that the mixture of the municipality changes, even its issues change, its look at the country changes, I mean that greenery was not ours, in our time--

- Mmm...

- It was the interpretation of the decree issued by HH the Emir; may God rest his soul, so why are we fighting now over the parks and cling to the parks? Because we knew it was a fight, "Why jump on them and build a wedding hall and turn it into a parking lot and put up a sign that says McDonald's and..." Okay? Aaa, the discussion was hot, back then. "How do you want to make gardens while we have no water?" Man, we want a lung for the society, those cars emit exhaust gases and monoxide... the air conditioners and the machines and you don't want to have... When we went to the municipal council, Ahmed Al Bahar, Nizar Al Anjari, Redha Al Matrook and I, we were shocked hearing this, "What do you want with gardens? Who wants them? We are in a desert, we have gardens and farms" and the Sheikh said... They thought it'd be enough to put some things near the airport. Come on, we must have a park system, we are interpreting the decree, the paradigm shift, I remember, we stuck to the word, we held on to it, in the municipal council, "No, no, he said a paradigm shift." "What's a shift ?" "He said a paradigm shift not a material shift." Okay? The matter has its aesthetics. I remember I was once with Nizar, outside the building and one of the VIPs came to us, an MP or someone with interests in the municipal council and said, "Your people, in there, what's their business with architecture? Tell me, what is architecture, what's the story behind it?" I said, Nizar looked at me and said, "Tell him, tell him." I said to him, "Do you know what the difference between us and them is? They know how to build a hair house but we recite verses of poetry."

- [She laughs]

- He said, "So you are like poets?" I said, "Yes, I've come from a line of poetry as Al Ma'arri said: Beauty shows its glamour in two sides, a line of poetry and a house of hair."

- Mmm...

- I said to him, "We, we recite poetry and they know how to build the hair houses" [He laughs]. And he said, "I know, I know, I know." Nizar said to me, "You devil, where have you got that story from?" They said, "What's the matter with you? Get in, the presentation is happening. You want to beautify the cities and make gardens? Who has the water for that?" No, we have water. We talked to the people of the Ministry of Electricity and they said, "No, we have recycled water and treatment plants. We have water and we dump it into the sea." We went back and said, "They said they had so and so gallons, why do you say there's no water?"

- Mmm...

- Some people say it's a waste of water, like my late aunt Ameena said when we were children.

- Yes, yes.

- It's a different generation who thought it was fresh water, yes, indeed, if it was subsidized, and it's still subsidized, but we had conventions when HH the Emir said it and we discussed the matter with our colleagues, in what are called the Coordination Committees. Do we have water? They said, "Yes, we do, we're disposing of a lot of water from the treatment plants, no one wants to drink it so it goes to the sea." And so we had greenery, I also remember Sara Sayed Omar, not Sameera Sayed Omar, she was in the Ministry of Electricity.

- Mmm...

- We had an agreement to aaa direct the treated water to water the public landscape and stuff. It wasn't in vain but people, at the time, thought we were dreamers and romantic ant that we were making gardens in the desert. We argued, "Our role is to turn the desert green and not to let the desert defeat us, man, we created that desert." We argued, argued strongly. They said, "How?" I replied, "Don't you see the remains of the Sumerians and Babylonians? They had lions and lions mean savanna and grass." We talk about cheetahs and call our children Fahd (cheetah).

01:00:40

- Mmm...

- We also call them Sarhan (wolf), now where are the the lions and wolves? They are gone, because we eroded the land into deserts, deserts haven't come by themselves, we made them. It was a strong argument. People got shocked at that and we said to them, "The poet, Al-Farazdaq talked about a lion drinking from the Euphrates and Hamza Ibn Abdulmuttalib and Al Waleed Ibn Yazeed hunted lions in the Arabian Peninsula." If there was a lion, where did it eat? In those deserts, are they empty now? The desert was like that when we were children but it was greener, so we said, "Our role is not to give up on the desert and-- and say no, it's a reality, our role is to revive it." It was such a strong argument and where is the water from? Water is available, treated water and so on, so we felt, during the days of the municipality, that we did something but when you go to the private sector you see that it's a world with another mechanism where one wants their money and project and they don't care about others, okay? It was a great role that our generation played, then all of us left, most of us left, they moved to the private sector and went into real estate development and... Saud Al Saqer was an architect with us and went to work with Al Nafeesi in real estate and so did others and others. It was a beautiful period too, I I wish now, while we graduate students... I say to our students, "Not all of you are going to be designers, teachers or university professors but joining the social life and social organizations, your effect on the paradigm shift and social quality in life will definitely be more evident." But my strong message, right now, is "Don't be on the defense when it comes to the desert."

- Mmm... - Work on revitalizing the land and work on bringing more vitality to the soil and to the life rather than... A lot of people think our weather is not good. That's one of the marks for me and I answer, "Your mental weather is not good."

- [She laughs]

- Really, I mean, how did our forefathers enjoy? They lived in mud houses without air conditioners and that doesn't mean that there wasn't... they had a rich life. There are many myths in the Kuwaiti society, not old myths but rather recent ones, that our weather is not good, it's not good because we're making it not good, it's the work of our hands, of our psychology with its negativity, of our industry and lack of sensitivity. Our forefathers didn't have all that tar or all that iron or all those cars, which are like furnaces working all the time or a society obsessed with cars and possession of cars. A society too stubborn to ride the public transportation or enjoy a park and when they travel abroad they slaughter others' ducks, huh? We have a lot of ducks in the north but luckily they don't kill them, you know what I mean? There are other programs that need to be installed in our society so it'd be happier, I'm not saying to be better, to be happier, more relaxed and enjoy the life and wouldn't need... Yes, tourism is great but I have some of the most beautiful memories, by God, in Kuwait, my childhood memories, I didn't need to travel for tourism.

- Mmm..

- I mean, our sea was clean; we were children and went fishing with nets. We were kids, just like cats staring at a pigeon from behind... from behind the glass, you know? We were kids and saw the schools of mullet going into the nets and we couldn't catch them, sometimes a rock moved, on the seabed and they'd escape and we were like a cat distressed over a pigeon. Sometimes we cornered a couple of big sea breams, jumping out from the net and we jumped, like someone who lost the ball in a football match, our sea was so clean that we could catch fish and could see the sea breams go into the nets.

- Mmm--

- We could see them.

- Mmm...

- The water of the sea was clean, so clean, when you waded in it you could see everything underneath, let alone that we used to sw swim with our horses and our friends. We sat in a small boat and saw a white shark swimming below, such a huge white shark and we froze and sweated, we were young.

- [She laughs]

- Because the water was crystal clear you could see a shark, a huge one with its young swimming but now-- yes all that is there but all of the society wants to travel abroad, run away, they don't want to taste the beauty of the city, village and the desert etc...Now we fence them off with nets, which is fine but no, you don't even need to go there, you want, in your neighborhood, a small park you take a walk in it, you bike with your kids. Those are available by the parking lots and passages but at the time we spent in the municipality we made a park system and standards.

- Mmm--

- That the master plan of an area should have a certain share of the park system and so on. W w we also, back then in the 1980s made two or three proposals and they approved of them, that Kuwaitis should start using mass transits but we couldn't solve it, on the cultural level, because it wasn't a decision tailored and the political leader would feed it to the people. There must be many social arrangements, through educational programs and information etc. to make the transition but up till now you see six cars in front of a house.

- Mmm...

- Tin sheets, tin sheets, tin sheets, tin sheets, over the... even the Okay for those have not been issued by our group, I mean we objected to that but that is calculated according to the number of cars in front of the house and the percentage is structure within the building because...

- Mmm...

- Our neighborhoods are ugly now because of the spread of what I call car stables, those turned into car stables.

- Mmm... - Those are also interpretations and they need, they need informative and educational plans and you must provide the alternative so for someone to ride a bus they must walk in wooded areas so they won't burn before they get to the bus stop and the distribution of bus stops must be appropriate. It's a reinterpretation of a different master planning. I also believe that when our boys and girls, who graduate, assume those posts, they will catch up with those interpretations and devise them. Ultimately each of us serves their own way, male and female doctors serve their way, so do male and female architects, engineers and environmentalists, we serve.

- Mmm...

- But we didn't have the enough volume I mean our number, as effective practitioners, was too small, some sort of elites, people looked at us and said, "No, those are distinguished people and talk from high above." We had fierce discussions, at the Society of Engineers but what we managed to convince our colleagues of, in the diwaniyya of Ahmed Zakaria Al Ansari, may God rest his soul, was changing the idea not to start the College of Architecture.

- Mmm

- We told them and they said, "No, let them study abroad because they'd harm the profession, education, inside the country, won't be good enough." Our target was not the issue of education or the desire for all our students to become architects, we want a certain volume of the population, a ratio of the population to balance with the other ratios for the service to be adequate and we managed to convince them. - Mmm...

- Among the opposers was Mr. Sami Al Bader, may God rest his soul, he wasn't convinced but we managed to convince him. We said to him, "It's not a matter of having architects and designers, it's a matter of ratio, just like we have pharmacists, doctors, engineers, technicians, mechanics, blah, blah, blah, nurses, doctors and judges. We need a dose of the population to make the balance, to spread their mental, emotional and professional abilities and to intertwine their fabric or threads into the social fabric. Luckily he was convinced, thank God, then we went full force, your father, may God rest his soul, was a minister at the time.

- Mmm...

- We visited him and convinced him, then they changed his mind. We wrote and talked to him again, we said, "Your Excellency, we are counting on you in the philosophy." I remember all that. We succeeded and the seed of the department was planted, at the time I had an office.

- I beg your pardon, which year was that?

- More than fifteen, about fifteen years ago.

- Mmm...

- I've been here for ten years, they have been here years before us, they planted the seed of the department and wanted it to be architecture engineering, under engineering, and we wrote in the papers.

- Mmm...

- I wrote, Husain Al Awadhi wrote, may God rest his soul, he was a young architect and died with cancer and Ahmed Zakaria Al Ansari wrote, "Don't do that to keep us silent and make it an engineering department, we are talking about a College of Architecture, urban planning, landscape etc." That's a very important historical letter, if you want to see it.

- Mmm....

- Ahmed Zakaria wrote me a letter telling me not to forget, we were, they were the generation of my father and Sheikh Sabah. Those were the leading architects, Hamed Shuaib, Ahmed Zakaria, they were the earliest of all, that's a generation who studied at Al Mubarakiya, with my father and Sheikh Jaber and--

- Mmm...

- He became an architect and a sculptor, that was the first generation then came a second and third, we were the fourth generation perhaps. We went to his diwaniyya, as they were our great mentors, the pioneers of the profession, the oldest of all. Sami was younger, Ghazi was younger than Ahmed Zakaria who had two brothers. A wonderful group. Their father taught my father religion and Arabic in Al Mubarakiya, his son became an architect and a sculptor, another son, Abdullah Zakaria is a litterateur and a poet and Ali Zakaria is an ambassador and a music composer, a type of Kuwaitis [He laughs] a type of Kuwaitis very beautiful in their religious and cultural balance, his father was a teacher of religion and Arabic but he didn't have those taboos or cultural and religious complexes it was natural in their family and the Kuwaiti families I'm telling you about.

- Mmm...

- Don't say that the people of Funtas were not religious, they were religious people, they loved to pray and fast in Ramadan but when their son graduated they held Ardha and Samra [He laughs]. Beautiful, it wasn't the same type, and I remember he pressed on us that those colleges must be born.

- Hmmm...

- That man was a visionary, may God rest his soul, and was a first class writer he wrote, recorded and categorized everything, he had wonderful files and it's said that the National Council (for Culture, Arts and Letters) has those files, Zahra Baba has his files. I remember I asked his nephew, Zakaria Al Ansari, he's of our age, I said to him, "I'm asking you to keep the records of uncle Ahmed, don't lose them." He had files with categories and collected newspaper clippings about all the developments of the city.

- Mmm... - Any decision made, effective or not, was written and documented, whether with or against.

- Mmm...

- So he was such a wonderful architectural encyclopedia, Ahmed, may God rest his soul, Mr. Ahmed w w we are talking more now about our profession, you and I, huh? Yes but I also believe that our renaissance and the reviviscence of our society and the region must be a real civilizational project.

- Mmm...

- A deep one that asks and discusses questions that we are too afraid to ask. The tensions in our region, our fears, worries and tensions are all related to reaching out for our genuine identity, the real one not the verbal originality and the words they say, genuine or not genuine. There are profound questions about who we are in 2017. Who we are as individuals, a nation and a civilization, in a new civilizational context within the transition of the world to information and and and, there are essential questions and we have people who are so afraid that they still cling to the past.

- Mmm--

- We also have people who frantically seek imitating the modern but to assert yourself in a civilized and humane manner saying, "I don't want to be a freak, I won't have civilizational regression or foolish civilizational prejudice." That's a matter that needs self-control, refinement, and discipline. God willing we will be with our colleagues, who are like us, and those before us, our teachers, those were beautiful people.

- Mmm...

- Until the very last breath, just like your father, may God rest his soul, they gave steadily, quietly, humanely and rationally. It's not an easy matter or project. Jumping around, fame, shouting and rhetoric are very easy, but to prove aaa prove and I'm particularly sensitive to the phenomenon of regression, I mean I notice what I call civilizational regression. Some people are so proud that they don't know Arabic, they don't want to talk in Arabic, Arabic is hard and not good. Luckily some of them listen to art and sometimes I ask young people, to find out about their taste in Arabian art. I found some of them are quite fine while others are so distant from what is really art or music. It's good that we have, despite our criticism, a cultural project. When I was asked about the, hmm, the Sheikh Jaber cultural project or

- Mmm--

- The movement of culture mm, with its technical mistakes is still a very distinguished landmark. We won a point for culture, and culture here means arts in particular, for that's a crucial issue to deal with. There are two crucial issues, the issue of our detachment from art and the iss issue of our detachment from women and unless we handle those issues well, we will stay in the ditch--

- Mmm--

- For a long time. I mean those are issues which they avoid, and esc.. our society avoids, it escapes, eludes and evades so as not to face, but the matter of humanity, in general, and the women, in particular, and the issue of civilization, in general, and art, in particular, if we don't address them, with profound questions, we will stay inundated, really inundated. I mean, it's not a question of women driving cars or not or go out with an legal guardian or not.

- Mmm...

- It's a matter of humanity, are you, are you accepting the the feminine shadow of you as you are a human shadow or you think is another creature. [He laughs]

01:15:30

- Let's be brave enough to ask profound questions so as to restore our sound and healthy humanity and make our children and society happy and able to live happily and healthily and in utmost pleasure. Some people, in our society, are afraid of pleasure, it's a serious matter, a serious matter. And they consider beau-- beauty a problem.

- Mmm....

- A devil [He laughs]. You know, don't say that we have Sunnas and Shias, badu and hadar, ajams, and low classes, this is trivia issues. America has that, Switzerland has ethnic groups from genetic formations, even Japan, they think, even Japan has natives of Mongolian, Chinese, Korean and many other origins. What are those myths that you are talking about? Be a happier society, enjoy life and...

- Mmm...

- Have fun with nature, enjoy art, enjoy the-- your life cycle and if you are going to go, die like a starling falling off a tree, it dies and that's it, no big deal.

- [She laughs]

- Seriously, go with grace, come with grace and leave with grace.

- Mmm...

- Our people wale a lot if one of them dies. The society publishes a sign, this big, in newspapers.

- Mmm...

- While no one says that someone was blessed with the arrival of a baby girl and that they named her Deema.

- Mmm...

- They fear envy.

- Mmm...

- Really, when we were young that was a prevailing culture. Our brothers, the Arabs of the north, in their magazines, I remember, and in the Arabic magazines, that we received in Kuwait, Akher Sa'a and so on, we read this: Mr. X, an engineer and his wife, the pharmacist, had a baby girl whom they named so and so. That was in Lebanon, Egypt, and sometimes in Kuwait. But later on, no, some negative cultures prevailed. Those were not foreign; I won't say foreign because our people always say it's foreign.

- Mmm...

- Negative ideas, when someone dies, they have a sign that big, okay? But when a baby girl or a baby boy is born healthy and the parents are happy, they might have a small advertisement or none. The concept of envy and of I don't know what... Oh my God.

- [She laughs]

- But we go on, we go on as a group of us stress the beauty of nature, the beauty of life and the blessing of the universe and the blessing of existence and and the sense, in a strong feeling of amazement and wonder. They see the butterflies. I wait for the butterflies season and the season of dragonflies.

- Mmm...

- Our friends, the fishermen, know how to read the sea and know that it's the season of sea bream or croaker. Some people live with that nice mood, so does the Kuwaiti farmer; now is the season of eggplant or so and so, now we put so and so. Some people are obsessed with fear and the culture of fear. I wish... it's easy by the way.

- Mmm--

- Information programs can remove that... not educational but rather informative... As children, at school, I have notebooks, if you see them, you'll be amazed at the songs and chants we sang and I still remember some of them.

- Mmm--

- I mean, what happened to the educational programming? What happened to the informational wave? I'll go back to childhood so you'd see.

- Yes.

- I recall chants in my books, as a child, hand written, "The birds chirp, pleased with the light and say with joy: 'How beautiful the light is.'" And on Thursdays we sat, with our father, to listen to Um Kulthoum.

- Mmm...

- No, aren't we the same country, the same people and the same Kuwaitis? Huh? That was in Funtas, we sat, they put a carpet in the court, on the days with nice weather, when the summer is over, just before winter and there was no rain yet but the weather, at night, was cool. They liked to sit in the open and if it was cold they got inside, on Thursday. Thursday was Um Kulthoum's day. We, the Kuwaitis saw some Kuwaitis, who travelled and bought tickets for her party, sitting in their Iqals and abas and my father used to say, "That's X and that's Z, someone Al Ghanim." They went and bought tickets to see Um Kulthoum.

- Mmm...

- We sat and he said, "Listen to the Arabian band and the Arabian art." And they prayed, okay? They'd pray at the time of prayer and listen to music when it was the time for music; they had fun in many ways. I mean the transition between the strict, the the sacred and the daily living wasn't too sharp.

- Mmm...

- The earthly living and the heavenly living were not that distinctly apart, it was... I like that type of life our society lived, dealing with birth and death was more smooth, dealing with music and fun, much more smooth. When it was the call for prayer they went to pray and when there was an occasion they... Funerals are not the only thing that suit religion while having fun doesn't suit the religion, this is a scary thing.

- Mmm....

- So... it's a matter of balance but I think in the field of information we are falling behind, in the field of information, I don't know why. We must please the whims of-- It's an explanatory thinking because our success is based on the return to the glorious past and to be the conqueror fighters blah, blah, blah, blah, while it's a matter of explanation, explanations of the meaning of your life, your cosmology, your-- your life, your prophecy, the end of your life and civilization and their cycle. All those need to be reconsidered. I mean your foundational and legendary theory, on the ideological and civilizational scale, needs to be reconsidered. The cosmology of the explanations of your life, with its challenges with its good sides, bad sides, and falls, all those need to be reconsidered. Your prophecies, at the end of your civilization and the whole world, need to be deeply reconsidered in conferences, not in writings, in real conferences and not complementary ones.

- Mmm...

- An intervention with deep questions and all that should be announced as-- I think it's a project, a civilizational project. Kuwait has been in the lead, and still is, but it shrank a little bit, I mean take Al-Arabi magazine, for instance, when we went to Morocco the Moroccans were proud of having Al-Arabi magazines and expressed how much they loved us and that they never missed Al-Arabi magazine. It wasn't once or twice; I went to Morocco about three times to meet intellectuals. Everyone did the same thing, you are a Kuwaiti and they wanted to show you how much they liked--

- Mmm--

- The editions of Al-Arabi magazine and Alam Al- Ma'rifah, some of them were obsessed with collecting Kuwaiti plays, in black and white, till the last one. All of them, with no exception, collected the best of our plays. We had but very very few bad ones, or rather not so good ones, but over that period the Kuwaiti theatrical movement was gigantic with its scripts, ideas, its self-criticism and so on. Its criticism was even on a general Arabian level so... I wish we'd launch a renaissance project. A country's size is not measured by its geographic dimensions, I mean our brothers, the Lebanese, are good. I think that we, the Lebanese and the Tunisians have many things in common. The three of us are on im important seas, the three of us are small countries, and the three of us have pol... a relatively advanced social culture that compensates for our small geographic sizes. We are after a leadership and our societies might've formed in their historic context, they are exceptional because they haven't been swept by any circumstances, historic, political, imperial or divisionary blah blah blah blah. There is a special cultural feature in Lebanon, Tunisia and Kuwait. Moreover, on the cultural level, with Jordan, Oman and Morocco, we move in a similar orbit but I'm talking about the geographic size, to have a buzz and to be small and fast moving and have... So our cultural project is very important so as not to... not to be swallowed by a huge number, the huge number is our brothers and cousins but we emerged on unique corners of the seas and cities, from migrations, to confirm another explanation for a different look. We don't mind to go with what's best, considering it's really the best and its cultural project is better and its human project is really really better, not under the influence of muscles and force. Only if its human project is better. Our brothers, the Lebanese, are more relaxed in their explanations of life, within the their republican system, in the Arab world. With their conflicts, pains and stages of growth, their system is the least dictatorial. We are a constitutional emirate with a constitutional Emiri system, a constitutional Emiri royal system. That constitutional Emiri system still remains, with our pains, joys, sadness, defeats and dialogues, the best. Perhaps, you know what I mean? Tunisia went through a turmoil, which the society hasn't accepted. They were governed by a police regime and they exploded, "We, the Tunisians cannot tolerate this." So Kuwait has its very special experience.

- Mmm--

- I tell a lot of our pals that. I say to them, "Since we accept for our system to be a constitutional Emiri one, let's go all the way, in the modern meaning." Many European constitutional emirates and European constitutional kingdoms enjoy stability, development and, you are talking about Sweden, for instance--

- Mmm...

- The Netherlands, Britain and Japan, in the Far East. The form and name of the system are not what matter, there are internal cultural, civilizational and social agreements that make up that mixture and that dialogue. That doesn't mean that the republics are developed, there are horrible and atrocious dictatorships and so on. So I am with the inclination to enhance the human and cultural spirit and the historic lessons, Kuwait propels itself; the constitutional experience is not a joke.

- Mmm..

- Many of our neighbors don't like it and don't prefer it but we went through it, with all its conflicts, pains, ridicules and all its drama. Let all that be but eventually you get a sophisticated diwaniyya [He laughs] you know?

- You mentioned... you went into politics now and the...

- It doesn't matter.

- But do you remember the elections days or?

- Yes.

- Because you were in the council.

- Yes.

- The first council, you mentioned the municipal council--

- Yes, I wasn't in the municipal council, I was at the minister's office but the municipal council was under our supervision. They call it the municipal council or the national council and they changed with the sessions. For me the concept of elections, whether in a co-op society, a municipal council or the national assembly, is that all of those have their electoral mechanisms.

- Mmm...

- Yes.

- You remember how the situation was at the time?

- Look, according to my experience, in that matter, of course this is not a very popular talk, I have my own convictions, at my age, that if our Kuwaiti, or Arab, society is not categorized on production and services basis--

- Mmm...

- The parl parliament experience will have many gaps and defects and we'll go back to the point of voting on the basis of tribal, sectarian and ethnic constituents with limited exceptions, mmm if-- Even in Egypt and the other countries that have elections, for our society the word democracy stirs a fuss. We need, and I keep saying it, to be like the old Kuwaiti society where we were guilds--

- Mmm...

- Traders, workers and guilds. A simple and ordinary society, that's how humanity has been, since the days of Plato. There were craftsmen, traders, middlemen among a variety of parties, who ran the money and made deals among parties, and there were workers, with different levels of skill, some were skilled and some were not and the guilds, the people of industry and industrial craftsmen and those had a wide spectrum in industry.

- Mmm...

- In old Kuwait the Sheikh actually talked to them, like that, he went to talk to the head and leading workers, in their diwaniyyas. They were mere workers but he heard from them what was going on with them, they were simple workers, not expats but Kuwaiti workers, the working class. There were also Kuwaiti craftsmen; goldsmiths, tailors, blacksmiths, boat builders and, huh? And he went to the traders, wholesalers, retailers, high seas merchants, camel traders, land and sea traders. He talked to them in their diwaniyyas and got ideas from then and issued some decrees. Those were not much of diwaniyyas, they overlapped. Till the era of the founder sheikh, Sheikh Mubarak, whose kiosk was in the market. Sometimes he went to the diwaniyyas and sometimes they went to him, at the palace, to settle their issues and he had some judges, like Al Adsani.

- Mmm...

- A couple of well-known families and so on, okay? Then when we turned into a parliamentary society, the concept of productivity and services turned into that of clans and tribes.

- Mmm--

- This is regressive not progressive, we did something progressive but we did something regressive. Take us, for example, some people are worried that we might take sides and to those I say, "Don't take sides on religious or tribal basis, let's take sides economically." That means to say, "I belong to this or that production spectrum." The teachers union...

- Mmm...

- The aviation union, the doctors union etc. All those are professions and professions have interests, different from those of workers, investors, tire repair workers etc. Ultimately we teach the negotiation process, the culture of negotiation not the culture of dispute and fights. Negotiating has its arts and scientific and technical fundamentals. Usually an employer has interests different from those of a worker. A worker wants the highest salary for the minimum hours of work; he wants more comfort while an employer wants more production for less salary.

- Mmm...

- Those are the laws and rules of the human nature, so we will have a negotiation; you did something that affects my interests, you did something... and I'd reach an agreement with you. Those, whom we elect, represent our social spectra, which are related to production and economy, it's just like a bi, bi party, a duo, that's also a play with two actors.

- Mmm...

- No, they will be multi party, with with interpretations, right, left... and spectra but all of them agree that patriotism, loyalty and morals are not, are not disagreed upon. The disagreement is, it's a negotiation and opposition disagreement.

- Mmm--

01:31:18

- The dynamic differences to disassemble and balance our interests and rights, in life. We can fight over those in the councils, whether the municipal council, the national assembly or a society. But for the discussion to target your color, origin, tribe or class. This is a waste of time. It's not necessarily a dual, a right and a left party, no, it's possible, I mean in some developed countries, even the developed constitutional kingdoms, they have such spectra. Even in America, people now are used to two parties but they are not necessarily just two, there are shades between the two, but the main principles are not subject to dispute, there is no dispute over morals, no dispute over loyalty and the country's common interests, there's no argument about those. Our disagreements are about the interpretations of our interests based on taxes and the cost of living.

- Mmm...

- Based on the interest rate and grants. We have taxes on gasoline and the interest rate raises the cost of living and lowers the cost of living. There are economic indicators, when those move, we talk to our constituents and they'd go and fight fiercely in councils, whether the municipality or so or so. That's my experience since I was in the municipality, when we tried to settle disputes. The municipality is more about interests, luckily not about politics, it's a matter of pure interests; someone wants for instance, for his lot of land to be assigned. When we were in the municipality it was fun, we negotiated how to give you what you want but without hurting our environment. How to give you what you want but without an extra negative cost on the society. Some of us were convincing while some were not, but it was easier for us compared to politics. When Redha Al Matrook, Nizar Al Anjari, Ahmed Al Bahar or any one of us was called to give the technical committee or another party a presentation about a technical matter, related to assigning lands and the laws of the municipality and the environment, it was a lot easier to be convincing.

- Mmm...

- We'd say for instance, "Okay, I'll give you so and so but I need you to make more parking areas" or "I'll do so and so but I want you to plant more tr trees." Take the Kout project, in Fahaheel, built by Al Marzooks...

- Mmm--

- They are real estate developers, it's clear and I told a lot of people that the coast line planted was a part of a POT deal they gave themselves, to beautify the coast in return for taking the land for a number of years. That type of dealing is good but in politics there are deals sometimes, not only in Kuwait but all over the world. You don't negotiate to breach the essential political, social and loyalty principles, those are not negotiable. Negotiating deals with how I-- you tolerated the cost of living or this or that, how I can make it up to you with a grant or a certain tax deduction or a certain grant. I mean, politicians have the suitable maneuvers but without going into the nonsense of your ideas are dangerous to the country, like when the Americans had that hor-- fear of communism for example. Communism is not a heaven or hell and neither is capitalism. Systems have their merits and demerits but you must not have the obsession and witch hunt because someone talks within certain concepts and and arm the society with a police force and go witch hunt, like when they burned chemists for witchcraft. We must not go into the culture of intimidation, myths and hocus-pocus, no man. When you know the interests of a person, of a certain guild or certain manufacturers, you hurt them in their trade, with goods you bring.

- Mmm--

- You are wasting them away in the market of Kuwait. Add taxes on the goods and let him manage and apply regulations on exporters. Take the issue of taxes, if those are on cigarettes, for instance, add the taxes, our society tolerates. You can't bring an Egyptian consultant, who's lived for forty years outside Kuwait and ask him to raise the taxes. Raise the taxes on cigarettes, there are checks, checks and balances one can...

- Mmm...

- Our days were somewhat easier, we negotiated over the zoning of land lots and stuff. Of course there are those who hit and play under the table, that's in Chicago, Tokyo or New York, I'm not taking about the... Our societies, should all of them move to... even in the Egyptian elections, it's a hustle and bustle, parties and buzzing slogans, no, that's their economic spectrum, they are after a social interpretation of an economic spectrum and they don't necessarily have to extreme, towards communism, that's over.

- Mmm--

- But ultimately we say that those are services and production muscles, in the society, but you feel they don't get any blood [He laughs] or that I take back what I give them.

- Mmm--

- I must listen to that muscle. I say that this muscle, the services or production muscle, if it is, or even the traders, the traders might be been unjust to, it happens, sometimes the traders are been unjust to, and that doesn't mean... many of us, in the society, say, "No, those are traders." No dear, they aren't... analyze well, understand the economy before understanding politics. Many people, in the society, talk about religion and politics but they don't care about economy.

- Mmm...

- Nor about production or services or industry or agriculture. They jump and take those two issues, religion and politics, and make judgments, which they generalize, on the society, which is not right. In our society, when we were divers and simple our Sheikh talked to the guilds and now, when we are educated, some people speak the language of the special religious interpretations and the personal political interpretations and I'm supposed to take that fusion and make a political judgment, this is a joke, isn't it a joke?

- Mmm--

- [He laughs]

01:37:20

- Okay, I'd like to...

- Have we taken too much time?

- No, we haven't, I'd like to continue.

- Yes.

- Because we haven't got to art yet.

- You are letting me go on.

- Yes, I am and I--

- For history.

- I think today.

- Next is art.

- I think that's enough for today.

- An introduction [He laughs].

- A nice introduction.

- [He laughs] - It's a simple introduction too, right? You told us a lot of important things.

- No, art is, art is a cornerstone.

- Yes, so if we can--

- We will, we will, we will--

- Meet again--

- Art is a cornerstone.

- Yes.

- A cornerstone, a cornerstone.

- We'll consider today an introduction.

- Yes, okay, phase 1, phase 2.

- Phase 1.

- [He laughs].

- Aaa, if you have anything else to.

- No, no, no, no.

- Say, add to the sweet memories.

- No, no, since it's history and you asked, I I reflect a lot, not because I'm nostalgic about the past, but sometimes you want our society... my obsession now is not like that of any young architect, who wants to build, but rather an obsession to create a stranger natural environment.

- Mmm--

- I mean when I was young, my obsession was to build. I was young and learning but not now, the concentration now is more on a more conscious generation, not necessarily in knowledge, for knowledge is available, but rather not conscious about the conservation of nature.

- Mmm...

- So I say, "Okay, the building process is going on, by itself, but aa every day I look around with deeper feelings towards the trees and plants and our nature, so deep." That could be the message, one should promote, during the decades, the whatever years of one's existence. - Mmm...

- That our nature context should be extremely healthy and very strong. To move-- I have some male and female students working on the wetlands of Sulaibakhat, for instance. I once again remembered that those places are, hmm, removed from the social consciousness and memory because they are not coasts for swimming while they are vital and very important coasts.

- Mmm--

- Very, very, very.

- Mmm...

- God willing, we'll do something.

- God willing. Okay, thank you.

- You are welcome.

- We'll meet again, God willing.

- God willing, God willing.

- Okay, thank you.

- The art story.

- No, that needs another session .

- A play.

- [She laughs]

01:40:00

(Some minutes are missing at the beginning of second part of the interview)

- On the western side of the school and a part of it is right by the sea. Our school was very beautiful because its wall was in the sea, I I remember the fishermen, the people of Funtas were village people, or villagers as they were called, some of them caught fish or worked on their own farms or the farms of others. They u used to catch fish and tie the groupers to the school's wall, in the sea, while they were alive and the teachers came to buy the groupers while they were alive in the sea. At at the time Funtas was a village. M my father, may God rest his soul, said, "It looks like old Kuwait, its people are simple and intimate." I still visit them and keep in touch with my childhood friends, aa they were spontaneous and some of the students, of the Funtas school, were badu, from Iqaila and Saihad Al Awazem. Their culture was a little bit different from that of the villagers or the people of Funtas, who were farmers and fishermen, from badu origin too, but they settled and became villagers. Some of them came from the city, with blood and marriage relations with the city people, within the wall. Aaa the school had many non-Kuwaiti teachers, mostly Palestinians , almost all of them were Palestinians, a few Egyptians and maybe two Kuwaitis. I remember one of those, Mulla Naser, of Al Hinaif family in Funtas, a teacher of Arabic and religion. I remember when we went to school, being used to the city, we used to wear shorts and our hair was combed and the other students used to say, "Here comes the hadar, here comes the hadar." Those were our brothers the badu. Of course those were beautiful families with a very sweet spontaneity. Sometimes, in in the afternoons, or the evenings, they held celebrations, Ardhas and Samris. They said, for instance, "Tonight we have a Samri." Or "Tonight we have an Ardha, because so and so graduated in the army." And so on, huh? Those were very beautiful days, Funtas was very green and the hadar-- my father had lots of land there but most of the hadar had lands there, where they went to during the weekends. We used to do just that before but then we moved to live there. There were a lot of trees there, in Funtas, I remember huge numbers of buckthorn trees, huge ones, called the Shaikhan buckthorns, after the family of Shaikhan Al Farsi of the city. The funny thing was that the boys used to collect the fruits from the trees extending over the walls. They came to school with their pockets full, amazing stories. Teaching was nice too, but what I remember is that some of my notebooks are still there because my mother kept them. The curricula were beautiful; I mean we had, in the curriculum at the elementary school, very beautiful chants, about nature, your grandma, the beauty of light and the sea... We didn't have those consumption concepts, as I saw in later books, about the co-op society and stuff. We had a theater, at school, despite being in a village not in the city. We also had a day for the theater and a day for poetry. On that day they brought a table, once a week, on which a child stood and recited the morning poems. We used to hear readings from the Holy Qur'an, in the morning, and after the Qur'an we heard Abdul Wahhab, the music of Abdul Wahhab, really. They were mostly Patriotic songs, son... or chants that glorified our culture, people, nation etc. It was a totally different era. Our teachers were compassionate and kind and at the same time tough, the toughness of fathers. I remember a teacher, whose son became a head engineer with me later on, his name was Mr. Hamed Murtaja and he gave private lessons for free, for an hour before the morning gathering, in math. He refused to give private tuition. He was such a virtuous father, may God rest his soul, he was of a different type. Palestinian teachers, who came after Palestine, after the fall of Palestine, and had such enthusiasm for Arabism and wanted to build a strong Arab nation, they were very faithful despite being tough and loving, at the same time. Even our brothers, the Egyptian teachers, I remember a group of them; they were totally different characters from the teachers of nowadays. The style of schools became more related to consumption, commercial and so on. There are good ones though. Mm... Being close to the sea was beautiful, it was right to the east of the school, it was next to the school wall. To the west there were farms and houses and you could see a lot of buckthorn and salt cedar trees, vegetables and tomatoes, I mean they took us across the road in lines-- We had a farm, inside the school, we planted there. We had two farms inside the school, which I remember very well. One was like a garden, run by an old Palestinian man, may God rest his soul. He was dressed in trousers, a ghetra and an iqal, like the old guards of the markets in Kuwait. I I think his name was Abu Basil, I recall that. That garden was full of flowers with a shed in the middle. It was such a beautiful garden or orchard. The other part was in the north of the school, among the classrooms, we had another farm for vegetables where they taught us, in the science lessons, how to grow vegetables, we grew radish and beans, I fully remember those things. Our teacher was also Egyptian, his name was Hammad, God bless him, he used to take us there to plant. Then he got us carrots, to eat together. He washed them and all of us... we picked the green beans and ate them. We saw their flowers when they bloomed. That, for me, was a very special time, honestly. My father followed up on us, we used to tell him our stories with adaptation with... but he used to say, "son, those are like the people of old Kuwait." I mean, Kuwait had some city people, in town, we were in Dasma, Mansouriya and Abdullah, I mean the new areas but he used to say, "son, those are the people of Kuwait, the old Kuwait." We enjoyed a lot, with friends, I have close friendships with them, till now, I see them at weddings, funerals and on other occasions, like Ramadan. Of course we grew apart, some of us continued in the high school and others I haven't seen since middle school because they joined the army or the police, they went to different places, the colleges of the Applied Education and Business Studies. Not all of us finished high school and not all of us went to America. So and so became this and so and so became that. We hear from each other, we are in touch but it was a special period for us. Our relatives came to visit us as if they were leaving Kuwait; they came over in the weekends, our relatives from the city, huh? They went to Funtas or Mahbula or... In a stage of my life my father... I loved horses and we had another farm where we started raising horses. Those were called draft horses, the badu's horses. Then we got a group of Arabian horses, better ones, we had six Arabian horses. We used to ride in the desert, with our friends, the boys of Al Dabbous and the boys of Al Hamdan came to us with motorbikes. We used to ride horses, swim in the sea and take our horses into the water to swim with them after we took their saddles off. We were... I have very sweet memories about when we finished the exams. We gathered and went, "We finished the exams, tonight we'll have dinner by the sea." The moon was shining and we had dinner and hit each other with watermelons.

- [She laughs]

- We caught and fried mullets, we fried small fish, we were kids, in middle school, but we had those feelings of adventure, fun and strong communication with nature. Even the desert of Funtas, between Funtas and what's now called Reqqah and is now filled with a lot of buildings, it was full of Arfaj shrubs a lot of them. There were so many wild plants, I remember when I went out with my friends, Faisal Al Emairi, or Hashim Al Rifai and Marwan Al Isa, who used to come from the city, we had horses, at homes or in the farms. We gathered, with our friends from Funtas, they went with us; Faisal Al Dabbous and Mishari Al Dabbous, a group, you know? When we went to the desert we saw lizards running among the Arfaj shrubs, we saw spiny-tailed lizards and jerboas jumping around. It was... sometimes we went to the sea and sometimes we went to the farms of Manqaf, it's a countryside.

- Mmm--

- It wasn't full of buildings; there were just houses and villages. I mean Manqaf was a small village and the rest was farms, Abu Hlaifa was a village and the rest is farms and Funtas was a village and the rest was farms. We used to walk among the farms and the beach, the sea. I have very beautiful memories about those times, very beautiful. When we went to America and came back, the urbanization had already begun in Kuwait, a fast acceleration in the population number, a very fast acceleration, wow. Whenever we came back we found houses extending, no, not houses, blocks of flats. Farms began to disappear, the green spots in the desert eroded, they vanished because of cars driving on them, that eroded... I remember we used to see a monitor lizard running. There was a family of hedgehogs, a female hedgehog with its babies underneath the back of our house. You could see scorpions, you could see snakes, those were common back then. I'm talking about the 1960s and the early 1970s but after the mid-1970s things began to change but I'm talking about when we moved to there, in 1964, 1963, no, eagles-- the sea was full of fish and the water was so clean and white that you could see your feet below, it was like glass, huh? Funtas was wonderful with all those villages, a line of villages, I call them villages. Before Funtas there are, Iqaila and Abul Hasani, but those didn't have many inhabitants. Funtas is first then Abu Hlaifa and Manqaf then we reach Fahaheel. Fahaheel was a town, it was bigger than all of them, and the extension of Ahmadi began to affect it, huh? It began to have a bigger commercial street and so on but with the spirit of a village, outside the city, a different and beautiful spirit, very beautiful. It looked like Failaka, perhaps, but in in a different way, it's not an island, just villages, so they had their own character. To the west there were, in the middle of the desert, some shacks, people were still living in shacks or simple houses, one floor houses, built with cement or a mixture of cement, which had been recently introduced, mud and other debris with some dabbing. Aaa-- some of our brothers, the badu had begun to settle, on the edges of villages, I mean they they'd started working in the oil companies, the army and the police. The old rural system changed into a semi settled system. They began to live on the edges of... Shacks and tents were common but they began to make clusters. I remember well, my memories, I mean when we rode around with our horses, we could see clusters of shacks, some of which were of wood and some were so and so, and the sheep next to them, a phenomena, a phenomena. Then I saw all that change, all of it, if it was...

- You said you went to elementary school in which year exactly?

- In 1964, 64.

- 64. - Yes, yes

- When you first moved

- When we moved, yes.

- What was the name of that school again?

- The Funtas common school for boys, the Funtas common school for boys.

- It's currently the Navy Base.

- Oh God, yes.

- Mmm...

- You said there was something special about its architecture.

- Yes.

- What?

- It was like Shuwaikh University, Shuwaikh High School, but smaller. I mean it had a main entrance with an arched gate, built with cement with dabbing, that was a prevailing system in Kuwait, hmm. When the era, the era of building with mud was over, I remember they started building with cement bricks and cement and the the surfaces were sprayed with a cement mixture using a small machine.

- Mmm--

- They sprayed the walls, it was a suitable and cheap technique and it was also suitable for the desert as it creates pebbles on the aaa... Then they swept over certain edges, for decoration. The same style, which spread in building some clinics, in old Kuwait, and hospitals, in old Kuwait, was used in our school. The school had two huge wings and a court. It was well designed and well distributed, the old building. As an architect, I remember, I tried, in the municipality, to prevent knocking it down, I wanted to include it in the list of historical buildings and talked to architect Evelyn Al Ali but she didn't have the time because they assigned it to be a navy base. I also wrote that it should be preserved, to build the navy base and preserve the old part. Not because I was nostalgic but I became an architect and knew that the building, there were small annexes added later on and had no architectural value but the first part of the school, no. So I always said to my friends, I said, "That's not reasonable." In the 1960s our Sheikh, at the time, on the notebooks I remember well, was Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem. Then came Sheikh Sabah Al Salem. So our notebooks, as children, had the picture of Sheikh Abdullah then Sheikh Sabah.

- Mmm--

- Huh? My older notebooks had the picture of Sheikh Abdullah, we didn't catch up with Sheikh Ahmed Al Jaber, but our Sheikh, when we were children, on our old notebooks, those of second, first year, elementary, second year elementary, was Sheikh Abdullah, may God rest his soul. The curriculum was beautiful; I mean when I look at the notebooks, my mother looked at them, even in some of the notebooks, it was a beautiful curriculum, a strong one. Schools were beautifully built, that was in Funtas, I'm not talking about Kaifan, not about Mansouriya or neighborhoods like Shamiya or Daiya, in the city, I'm talking about Funtas. A beautifully built school aaa, with gardens. Our curricula, I think, were very good and strong with a high degree of discipline, they (the teachers) were tough but co.. compassionate, at the same time, I mean they beat, that was common, they beat and aaa-- not severely but they beat us on the hands and feet, that was common too. They also monitored, they gave us, gave us I think a lunch meal.

- Mmm--

- They... the school system was to aaa give us eye ointment and vaccines. They gave us eye ointment and aaa sprayed the school with pesticides, from time to time. I remember, when I was a child, someone came to spray. We had a clinic, in the school, there was a Kuwaiti male nurse, in a Ghetra and a white suit. His son was with us at school. Our nurse was a Kuwaiti, a Kuwaiti man who gave us injections, his name was Ibrahim, I think, he's dead, may God rest his soul. I can get all those names. What else? They gave us meals and eye ointment.

- The meals...

- They inspected because we had villagers and badu so they checked our nails and sometimes they checked us for lice, I mean wow, it was urban monitoring. An educational program and they taught us about food, in the science classes and stuff. We we had a very good sports program; we played football and a variety of sports, aaa I also remember, once again I talk about the musical band and the theater group, we acted in plays and played music at sch... that was in a rural area, huh? I have pictures, those are, I still have pictures, in black and white, of such things. Aaa... our headmasters and teachers were revered, respected and beloved at the same time. Aaa beating on the feet was there for the naughty ones. Beating on the hands was there, Mulla Naser, may God rest his soul, beat with the knuckles on the head, slightly, or pinched the ears, he held the ears and squeezed but he didn't beat in a harmful way that that that could hurt but we used [He laughs] to say the knuckles of Mulla Naser or the pinching, pinching of ears he pinched our ears but he was also a beloved and respectable man and and, aaa I don't know what to say. The middle school was the same, we had fights sometimes, children fights, boys and stuff but those were nothing I mean out of the ordinary, fights in the area were... I used to tell my father and he replied, "Son, this was the sport of people of Kuwait in the past."

- [She laughs]

- They teased each other but they went into fights as if they had been matches, "We beat you and your beat us that year." They fought over trivialities and reconciled quickly then fought again, just like, like matches.

- Yes [She laughs] - So we continuously mixed sports and fighting. Skipping school, jumping the wall and going to the sea. They skipped school, jumped over the wall and went to the sea to swim only to get caught.

- Mmm...

- [He laughs]

- When the water was nice, their fathers had boats too. We had sad stories, I remember two kids who sailed and died, we paid tribute to them at school. They sailed during the, what do we have in April? Strong wind called... not the Marba'aniya, storms in April. They took a small tin boat and went fishing, one afternoon. A storm blew and they were found by the Saudi borders.

- Ugh.

- They drowned and died. We were so sad for them at school. It was said that they should've listened to their fathers and stuff. Those are stories of accidents that got stuck to the memory. Someone called Muhammed Jasem and his friend Ya'qoub or something sailed in a small tin boat, called Tannak [He laughs] huh? Wind blew and a storm hit the sea and they couldn't come back. Stories, the students brought a huge spiny-tailed lizard to school and released it to chase a teacher. Those were the mischief and stories of students.

- Tell me about your friends in elementary school and what you did in your free time for instance. Other than horse riding and the...

- Yes, the free time, we were-- my father raised my cousins with us so we were many boys and my sister, we have one sister who has been born later--

- Mmm...

- Just before we went to America, we had that one sister but we had four cousins. Our friends came to visit us from... from Funtas, I mean they came with motorbikes, some of them had motorbikes and they came with them. A boy at school who had a motorbike was something, I remember one of those, his name was Ali Al Shraidah and Faisal, they came and we met and played muqsi, went to the desert, in spring, we stroke, we set traps in the desert. We went searching, searching for worms, under the walls and set a trap here and a trap there. Some friends came with air guns but I didn't like shooting birds. They had air guns but not shotguns; we were too young so they didn't give us shotguns. Aaa those a little older, in the secondary school, had shotguns but we had air guns and stuff. That was in spring but in summer, no, if we didn't travel, there was the sea, if the water was high, we went swimming but if the water was low we went ca catching crabs and searching for shells and stuff-- oysters. We went exploring and so on, in our Dishdashas and someone got stung by a stonefish or something.

- [She laughs]

- Sometimes we went into fish traps, not ours, fish traps to see what was in them. A group of us went once into a fish trap that belonged to the Minister of Education, in Mahbula too, to find ourselves face to face with a huge stingray. When we saw it, we were so young, we jumped and climbed the bamboo sticks of the... we were kids. It was a joy and excitement that you... and the sea was so clean, it had no pieces of glass or metal, we could find those from time to time, but compared to what I see now it was a lot cleaner, a lot. We had the sense of adventure, we were kids and that was magical for us. We were between elementary and middle schools, you know? When I look at anything now I think it grew smaller but back then a buckthorn tree was huge. Someone showed me once a tree and said, "This is the buckthorn tree." I said, "Are you serious? It grew smaller." And he replied, "No, it didn't, we were small."

- [She laughs]

- It's true, we saw it huge and so on. Aaa the other day I said to Dr. Adnan, "True." I saw so many animals, I remember seeing snakes, a horned viper, you could find it in Kuwait, in Funtas, you could find it and see it in the desert, it's called the horned viper.

- Mmm...

- I saw sea snakes and huge turtles, the size of a big box, thrown by the sea to the beach, bitten but alive, we turned it over and threw it back onto the sea. The fish market in Fahaheel was rich, the fish market is still rich but when we went to the Fahaheel fish market, for instance, oh, my God, it was full of fish, such an excitement. One of our friends said, "I went fishing with my father." And another one said, "We caught so and so." That was the language and we knew the names of birds and the names of wild plants. We teased one another, "You don't know that, I know that, how could you not know that?" All the birds, which came in spring, we knew their names. The plants that grew, Lotus, Emex, Cheeseweed and stuff, we knew all those and teased each other, "How don't you know this?" That was a Haloxylon and that was so and so, we knew I don't know what, I mean we were in touch with nature.

- Mmm--

- That's a part of the things in my memory, which I remember, huh, sometimes we went diving, we just fooled around and got some tiny pearls. The old spots of diving for pearls were at Abu Hlaifa and Funtas and we used to go there casually, "Let's go and dive here or there." Someone said and another one went "My father knows--" We dived and sometimes we found some shells and we got them out to find small and tiny pearls as if we'd found a Dana, those were no Danas or nothing.

- [She laughs]

- But I have some of such stories and aa--

02:02:24

- How did you learn such things? I mean it was... because you lived in nature, right? Even swimming for example? - Yes.

- How?

- My father taught us, he taught us and took us to the sea many times, he had friends who went fishing.

- Mmm...

- We also had dogs, given to us by the Al Ansaris, uncle, uncle Yahya Al Ansari, the brother of the architect Ahmed Zakaria Al Ansari, his wife was German and he lived at Bida'a. They gave us a couple of German, not German Shepherds, they called them Belgian Shepherds. They were like the German Shepherds but shorter, more like wolves, they went with us wherever we went. We also had some German Shepherds, we had horses, dogs, our friends and so on, because it wasn't a city where your neighbors might complain about anything, there was nothing. Our neighbor, Sheikh Abdullah Al Jaber, Jaber Al Abdullah, the Governor of Ahmadi, at the time, was across the street from us, by the sea. Later on, many years later, Sheikh Mish'al built a house and lived there.

- In which year?

- That was in the 1970s, late, late seventies, but in the beginning, when we moved to live there in the sixties, we had no neighbors except for Sheikh Jaber Al Abdullah, the Governor of Ahmadi, he was our only neighbor and the rest of the area was houses and lands, not inhabited except in the weekends when their Kuwaiti owner went there. - Mmm...

- Huh.

- Okay.

- There were so many empty spaces, vacant lands open to the sea, I mean everywhere. Aaa Sheikh Khalid Al Abdullah lived there for a while, he died, he was the brother of Sheikh Sa'ad, may God rest his soul. He had a son called Jarrah, far away, another Sheikh, Sheikh Muh-- Sheikh Saleh, who was in the army, lived at the end of Funtas, but far from us, a kilometer or more away. I mean we knew even the hadar who lived there, Al Humadhis spent some time there and went back then came back again, they have vast lands there, which they still frequent. Uncle Ya'qoub Al Humadhi, may God rest his soul and so did Sheikh Muhammed, who lived farther, towards Funtas, I'm talking about the hadar, the Jena'at had lots of lands but didn't go there, I don't recall that any of them lived there.

- Mmm...

- But the Sheikh, who really lived there and whose wife and children were there, was Sheikh Jaber Al Abdullah, the Governor of Ahmadi at the time.

- And the students of the school, did they come from far places or...?

- No, in Funtas they came from the following places, they came from Funtas, a place called Saihad Al Awazem, from Iqaila and and Abul Hasani. Those who came from Iqaila and Abul Hasani were mostly people of the desert and the inhabitants some of whom were Emiratis or wo worked in some places like the farms of Sheikhs, a family or two. One of those was the Mulla of a mosque, his son... they brought him from the Emirates, at the time. The rest, all of the the school, its core was mostly villagers, the people of Funtas, well known families, I mean like Al Haqqans, Al Hamdans and Al Shraidahs. We still visit them and have an intimate and strong friendships with them. Al Radhans, well known groups, Bekheets. Some families were there and all of them are well connected, closely related and married into each other's families. They had relatives in the city too, I mean they had married from the families in the city. Aaa Abu Hulaifa had its own school, to which its children went, they were mostly Ajams and the Jerris were the lead figure family there with the families of Sheikh Al Malik, Al Jaber and Al Asfour, the Ajams, not the Asfours of the city, who consist of three branches, other than those of Abu Hulaifa, those are good people too. My sister went to a private school, in Abu Hulaifa, it belonged to Al Jerris, uncle Khalifa Talal Al Jerri, whose elder daughter was the principal of the school. My sister went to a private school, with my little brother but Abu Hulaifa had its own schools, they had a state school, a good one, by the sea to which my cousin, Yousef, went. For some reason he failed a subject and went to that school, in the summer or something like that. It was a good school. Aaa... Manqaf didn't have any schools, perhaps some small ones, I don't remember, but Abu Hulaifa had a different school. Then, then came Fahaheel, no, Fahaheel had everything; it had an elem... kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools. All of us went on and moved to the Fahaheel high school school. When you went to Fahaheel high schools, for boys or girls, the circle grew wider. The girls and boys came from Fah... Ahmadi, girls and boys, schools for girls and others for boys, those came, students from Shua'iba, some of those were Kuwaitis, from the oil company and some were Arabs, Palestinians and Lebanese, from the oil company. So the Kuwaitis, the children of the of engineers and technicians, of the Kuwait Oil Company, who worked in Shuaiba and Ahmadi, and living there, went to school and a new type appeared; the city people who had already lived in Ahmadi. We met, at the Fahaheel high school, with the people of Funtas, Iqaila and Abu Hulaifa, we all met there. Then we grew too many for it so they built more high schools but the first group of girls, from the Tenth Region went to the Fahaheel high school for girls.

- Mmm...

- All the girls of Shuaiba, Ahmadi, Funtas and all, of course some of them didn't go to high school, some went to the Teachers College, those who went to high school but some joined the army or the police and some and and... but those who went to high school we were... and there was a wide street between us, two huge schools but the circle grew wider and that was another dynamic [He laughs] but you saw a different mixture, a different mixture.

- Let's go back to middle school before we move to high school.

- Yes.

- Aaa before middle school, aa you have memories about certain occasions, for instance? You mentioned aa the anniversaries celebrations or--

- On the National Day we held celebrations.

- The National Day.

- Some-- sometimes we presented plays on certain occasions, like Hijra or the Prophet's Birthday. But sometimes no they were purely literary occasions, I mean we had teachers who took a certain story, I remember I played the role, at school, of a fisherman and the play had a chant. Some of our friends played the role of your son, and the embarrassing thing was when a boy played the role of a girl.

- [She laughs]

- My father went through the same problem himself, he said, "In Mubarakiya we had the same thing, a boy could play the role of a wife or a daughter for instance, they were covered, okay." It's really funny, huh? But we acted plays, not necessarily religious, I mean not necessarily on religious occasions, no, a patriotic occasion or a literary occasion or, or... I'm sad to see how the-- in many places they've shut down the theaters and the... we had a studio where we painted. I remember we made huge paintings, at school. Aaa I had a friend, his name was Mubarak, he was older than me and he was a painter. Our teacher nurtured and encouraged us, I was lucky that he taught me, a very famous teacher. When I was young I didn't realize that he was a prominent artist, his name was Mr. Muh... Mr. Al Hadeedi, whose paintings are on the the Commercial Bank He taught me and Mubarak water coloring when we were young. He was from Ismailia and was a very brilliant teacher, a genius with watercolor. I acquired one of his paintings years ago, before he died, without him knowing that. When I saw it my eyes were filled with tears and said to Yahya Salem, at the Bu Shehri gallery, "This is my teacher." He said, "I've heard about that." I said... a banker was selling the painting and I bought it. I said to him, "I remember, when we were young that he taught me and Mubarak water color." Aaa we had an elite group of teachers, they gave art its due attention, they gave sports their due attention and they gave the theater its due attention. Once again I repeat, that was not-- not the city, we were in an area with a mixture of very few, I mean less than four per cent were from the city and the rest were village Kuwaiti people, Kuwaiti villagers and Kuwaitis from the desert but we had a theater and we had a day, I remember, they brought a table on a day, at the end of the week, and put it in the basketball court, at the morning gathering. They brought the boys who kept poems by heart, or read them, or even recited poems, which the Arabic teacher said it was good for us to hear. A young boy stood on the table, climbed a chair and read poems. We applauded and had fun. I also remember when I went into the school, in the morning, that we heard the morning readings of the Qur'an and after a certain period of the reading we heard Abdul Wahhab's chants and sometimes Um Kulthoum's. But those were not educational chants; they were strong and beautiful poems and so on.

- Like what? Do you have certain examples?

- For example, I I remember the 1967 war, or something like that, Abdul Wahhab was singing as "The aggressors exceeded all limits, so it's only right to fight and sacrifice." I used to hear that song a lot. Um Kulthoum, too, sang "O' homeland, homeland--" and things like that. I mean there were things related to Kuwait or something. It was a nice program. Nowadays I hear the musical program of a close by school and it bothers me a lot. It begins at exactly 7:30 and I think it's very retarded and the music is annoying, it's meaningless, I mean I have a high taste for music and listen to international and local music and I know the history of Arabic music and the Arabic orchestra but I don't think they have anything to do with what children hear at schools nearby in the morning and I get upset. I say, "What's this? It's nothing." It's something mmm closer to discord. They call it almost discord and distraction, more than to build; it's the same melody, repeated every day, boring, it's mundane and tasteless. We used to hear the Qur'an for some time in the morning directly followed by chants, before the bell rang then we walked and got ready and so on. I remember I have a picture, in black and white, playing music with friends, Fawzi, Faisal and, and, and, and so on.

- At school?

- At school, at school. We had a teacher of music and we rehearsed aaaa what do they call that? Activity--

- Ammm....

- Activity, he brought us saying, "Come today, in the afternoon, you will stay, tell your families that lunch will be at school, the school will serve you lunch, and you'll stay to practice then the drivers or the bus will take you home." So we stayed, as a group, to practice for a play or a musical sketch or even for a project; paintings, for instance, for for the school, a whole wall was covered in canvas and they took four students, the ones clever at painting, and the teacher drew the main lines and said, "You do this part and you do that part" and and...

- Beautiful.

- Yes, no, no, our programs, in the sixties, no, no, they were excellent, it was really a strong program.

- Compared to the schools inside the city, do you know anything about those?

- No, I remember that some of my cousins went to the Saif Al Dawla School, in Qadsiya, but I don't remember, I mean I don't, but they didn't say that their schools were not good, they were happy with their schools.

- Mmm...

- That generation, but I, I mean we when you ask, no, we did not downgrade. I mean when we left the city and went to Funtas, we didn't feel that we were downgraded in the educational system. Yes, there was a slightly different color, a different cultural color; they were our people, Kuwaitis, our village people and badu, within the same grand culture of Kuwait, but we didn't claim that there was a downgrading in education, never, never, not in the teachers, nor in the curriculum, nor, nor, nor, nor in the school or even the buildings.

- Mmm...

- On the contrary, perhaps more beautiful than the city; half of our school was in the sea, we saw the groupers tied to the wall, alive, and a teacher... I mean... phenomena..

- Beautiful.

- Not ordinary, and mmm tens of buckthorns, full of fruits and and the boys... there was a small grocery store, we went, they jumped over the wall and went to buy sweets, chocolate and stuff. When they jumped, for the grocery store, they went to bring fruits from the buckthorn tree leaning out from the farm, next to the school. They filled their pockets and came shouting, "Come, we've got fruits," and so on, it was different.

- Now we move to middle school--

- Yes.

- Where? In Fun...

- It was the same, it was a common school.

- The same.

- Yes, and we went to the city, my father went to the city every day, to his office, my father was a businessman and had an office in the city, his work, my poor father, wasn't in Funtas, he had an office in Mubarakiya, in the center of the city, and every day he drove there. The road wasn't paved, he had a driver and went to the city and back every day. He used to say,.. then he witnessed the road turning into a highway. It was a road graded and covered in gatch, a graded dirt road covered in gatch. When Sheikh Abdullah died and Sheikh Sabah moved to his palace, in Messila, that road was paved.

- Mmm...

- And a roundabout was built, I remember the accidents of people who drove into the roundabout, at night, people came from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait, thinking they were driving through a... The palace of Sheikh Sabah Al Salem, in Messila, had a roundabout, in front of it and the drivers crashed into it [He laughs].

- Mmm...

- So aaa, but we went, once a week, to visit our aunts and relatives in the city, and sometimes we stood in a line and said to my father, "We want to go to the cinema." And he used to question us.

- [She laughs]

- What film are you going to watch? Where will you go? Which cinema? Al Al Hamra or Al Andalus? What's the film about? And he reproached those who hadn't studied and-- huh? We stood in a line, I mean to ask my father to go to the cinema, we'd go to my aunt's or something to take their kids and go with them to school, to the cinema. That required calls, there was one telephone and your mother talked to theirs and so on.

- [She laughs]

- So that she'd approve to your going out with their kids and you'd go... but my father used to go, once or twice a day, to his office in town and come back, in Mubarakiya. Mubarakiya was our neighborhood, Al Faraj neighborhood, the Sheikhs neighborhood, which is the Stock Market now. The houses of my grandfather and uncles were there and my father's office was there too. When I said, "Why?" He said, "Son, that's our neighborhood." I mean the Kuwaitis' offices were in their areas.

- Mmm...

- He went and came back once or twice a day.

- Did you go with him?

- Sometimes, on Thursdays, he'd take us to the office, we went with him. He also had industrial lots, in the... in Sharq, and we went with him there too, particularly the elder ones, I mean my cousin, Ali, and I. He raised my cousins, sometimes he took the two of us and sometimes he took all of us. It was a visit and a tour to see and learn etc. I now, now... there was no heavy traffic but the road wasn't easy, it wasn't... our problem now, when I moved to live in Manqaf, my problem now is the heavy traffic not the road, it's a highway now and it's perfect, it takes about 20 minutes, because people are usually asleep in the early morning. I pass by my mother, in Jabriya, but now I say "Wow, my father travelled this road when it was full of holes and" [He laughs]. Yeah, the intermediate stage was an extension of the elementary school but we were a little bit older. Aaa, on the contrary, we grew more mischievous, over the following years, when we were kids our mischievousness was different from that of middle school. - Mmm--

- Aaa but it had the same spirit, I mean, the place was still beautiful, and and the school was in the same context, the sea was the same. The subjects were just different, but aaa, I miss it now and see that in the generations with aa the shrinking of the artistic and sports expression. They presented a little of that saying, but no, they said to us, "Just stay and the activity won't stop, the artistic activity won't stop, the theatrical activity won't stop, the sports activity won't stop." But they sometimes borrowed, in in a certain generation, or in the 1980s, when I came back to Kuwait, during my studies abroad, I saw the changes, not the Kuwaiti but rather the regional, even the regional attitude, Kuwait is a part of a wider regional circle. It's a shrinking of art and fighting the art and downgrading sports and and aaa a retreat to a certain circle, one that is not worthy in my opinion.

02:19:05

- That was in the 1980s.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- The late 1970s.

- The movements of religious excess as I call them. That doesn't mean that the religion is not good, but excess came up and explanations, inhuman explanations with more militarization aaaa, religion turned into a material for... rather than a spiritual, humane, gallantry and cultural material. That's how it was in my time.

- Mmm...

- I mean, Mulla-- Mulla Naser or the Arabic language and religion teachers didn't talk about such subjects. They concentrated on the ethical sides; gallantry, generosity aaa, what, dutifulness to parents, cl-- they concentrated a lot on cleanliness, personal cleanliness and the cleanliness of the place and the school and there was a garden, a flower garden in a boys' school.

- Mmm--

- I mean, yes, yes, a flower garden in a boys school, not a girls school, and a farm where we planted. I mean the educational vision was completely different, a very different educational vision, I mean, I repeat, a boys school had a flower garden and a shed, where we sat and talked. We had a farm where we grew vegetables. Aaa, should I tell you about a flower garden in a kindergarten or a girls school, you'd say yes, but no, I mean were they turning us soft? No, there was a different vision, "Let them communicate with nature, they are by the sea, it's right behind them." I think the curricula planners were different and their visions and values were different. Then came the fanaticism, constrictions, shrinking and militarization of the cultural concept aaa based on fear.

- Mmm--

- And a loss of trust and so on. Those had hope and visions because, I even said that to many friends, I said, "Before, when we were young, we heard a lot the words revival and independence, revival, a lot. Then, after we came back from America, we began to hear: safety man. I mean, safety and security. No, we have not been raised on safety and security although Abdul Kareem Qasim intruded on us. We've been raised on independence and revival. Those were like key words, pillars. We are a generation raised on two words, which never left our ears: independence and revival, independence and revival, revival, revival, revival [He laughs]. Okay? Those were deeply instilled in us, but I just looked and wondered, "What's going on?" I mean we haven't been raised on-- even my brothers, my little brothers, I mean, God, you guys are the generation of safety and security. Wars increased, all around us, tensions increased so the tone changed. I'm not with that, it's ok, beat on the revival, hang on to no, war or not, security or not, you must push the current towards a continuous revival.

- Mmm...

- Don't stop, revival and continuous improvement. We grew up on two big words; Independence and revival but my younger brothers, no, they grew up on a different note and their notebooks are different. I remember there is a 20-year gap between me and my brother Mansour, my youngest brother. There are twelve years between me and my brother Nabeel, and fifteen years between me and my sister. Aaa their notebooks are different, the qualification, effects of time and place or space-time are different, very very different. Safety, security and sta stability. Where were we? We were talking about independence and renaissance while they talk about safety, security and stability, I mean there were shakings or tensions in the region.

- But you are talking about the curricula of the 1960s, the 1970s or the 1980s?

- Eighties and nineties.

- The nineties.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yes.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Not only the curricula.

- Different rites.

- Not even the curricula, aaa, I have a topic, I'll be talking about in November, about a word, which I consider viral, "Our weather doesn't allow this." That has so many meanings, to which people are oblivious, it has many meanings. They blame, blame our weather, our weather has nothing, nothing to do with it. We lived, our grandfathers lived without air conditioners or fans, and we, as kids, lived and our weather has never been a problem, when we were in Funtas, neither its summer nor its winter. We never had that phrase; "Our weather is not good." We waited, with the scorching heat, waited to finish the exams to play in the sea. Our hair grew blonde because of the seawater, it was burnt by the sun, we looked like Mehris. They used to call me the Mehri. We turned brown and our black hair turned blonde, because of the salt and we never stopped, my aunt used to say, "Don't you settle down?"

- [She laughs]

- I mean there was nothing called heat, we waited to play, catch fish and swim in the sea. Those who wanted to travel travelled but as long as we were in the country, we didn't have... we went sailing in someone's boat or went fishing with our friends, that was when we stayed in Kuwait in the summer. We looked at the tables of expected high and low tides and went, "Tonight, the water is high-- tonight and the moon is shining." We had a different activity. "Tonight it isn't, the water is high at noon." We prepared ourselves for what we were going to do, as long as we were in Kuwait during that summer. I mean in the summer we didn't have that phrase, "Our weather is not good and we don't like it." We were children and we enjoyed nature very much. We didn't have the... we put on things, we covered our heads, we knew it was hot and we got burned, I remember, the sand by the sea burned our feet but we didn't care about that, it wasn't...

- At home, did you have fans or air conditioners?

- We had fans and air conditioners, we had them but we didn't care to sit with a fan, all we cared about was to sleep at noon, after lunch, but as soon as it was four... although it was still hot, we went out. Our program was the sea, our program was our friends, playing football with our friends and stuff. That was if we were in Kuwait, we must have a story, I mean we didn't have, pardon me, even our friends didn't talk about our weather, I mean I hear that now, what's that?

- Mmm...

- Our weather changed, our weather doesn't allow for so and so, our weather... it's okay, buildings grew in numbers but... there's a sort of a detachment and are we not in harmony with our environment or our natural climate and we don't care, we just complain about it. Back then there were no, or even before that, there were no fans, air conditioners or refrigerators but that wasn't said.

- Right.

- They had more harmony with their environment, a lot more.

- Tell me about your house and and the design of the house and the bedrooms.

- The design of the house followed a system called the bungalow, like in Ahmadi. It was a rectangular house with a pitched roof steel structure. It was built with a cement material and had two entrances and two main courts. To the right there was a large diwaniyya and the room of my father and mother was in a middle area then another court. We, the boys, the children, had a room for each two. Our house was divided and had one dining room for the... the diwaniyya was very huge with simple divisions. It had a dining room aa with a table but we we used to sit around a cloth, in another room which had cushions and bolsters, the old way. My father preferred that and we, as a family, gathered and sat around a cloth spread on the floor. We sat with my father in a room and the room was multifunctional. When the cloth was removed we sat on the cushions, to have tea and so on and to talk. My father always asked us, "What have you done at sch school? What happened with you?" He always began with questions, "What happened with you? What exciting things have you done?" And so on. Through the conversation he knew our affairs and talked to us all the time, but he always began with questions, "How was your day? What have you done?" Sometimes we asked him, "Dad, what have you done?" and stuff. We answered him but he liked listening to us and he opened the conversation with questions, he always asked questions. That was at noon then he went to take a nap. In the afternoon he had the tea, sometimes we went to him and sometimes we went out, by ourselves. Those in the house, I mean, yes, they knew we were going to play football or going somewhere and that was it. Even when I went riding horses, with my friends, my father used to say, "Your limit is to reach Abu Hulaifa, don't go into it and to reach Funtas but don't go into it." I said, "Why?" And he replied, "Son, I don't know, should anything happen to you, at least we'd know the distance. We'd know you are in between here and there. Don't go with your horses, you and your friends, beyond that realm, stay in this area." And we didn't go beyond the highway of Reqqah, we stayed in the desert area till Reqqah and never reached Fahaheel, I mean, no, my limit was to reach the limits of Abu Hulaifa or Manqaf and back, and the limits of Funtas and back. I didn't go into Abul Hasani and Iqaila so our families knew where we were.

- Mmm...

- If we went to the sea, they'd say, "Don't go too farther than Abu Hulaifa, for instance, don't go too far, we need to know where you are when you go out." Sometimes we went with our dogs, to catch crabs. We took our skewers and went out in groups, we didn't go individually, I mean no one went by oneself.

- Always in groups.

- Yes, I went out by myself, sometimes, to meet my friends who had horses.

- Mmm...

- But if we wanted to go to the desert... and that was a good habit taught in the desert, because our friends, the badu did the same, they didn't go out individually, when their boys went out, they went in groups of four, six or eight. Even at night, they didn't go out individually, for them and for us it was unwise to go out all by yourself. Even in diving now, don't go by yourself.

- Right.

- So we went out in fours, twos or threes, and so we did with horses; I could ride alone in a close by area, when I had an appointment with my friends, who rode horses, to meet in a certain point then moved together.

02:29:13

- And as a teenager has your idea about aaa home, for instance, or school or your parents changed?

- Yes, adol-- adolescence has different types, I mean some teenagers go through a tough adolescence aaa and some have less quiet adol adolescence. I was a sports person and liked art, so aa the vigor of adolescence was released in sports.

- Mmm...

- I mean some people don't play. While raising my kids, I taught them to be busy with sports programs, my sons and daughters had sports programs. I feel, now when I'm this old, I realized that the students, boys and girls, who have no parallel programs to support their sports, artistic or even the literary and scientific talents, go through tough times, in their adolescence because they still have massive energy which is not released. We used to play sports, I had a program either in sports or in art, I mean you moved from this to that and I did the same with my children. Yes, you turn different; you have acne, in your face, your voice changes and girls, huh? Our fights, at school, increase, we grow volatile in temper, we get into fights quickly, either in middle or high school. All those happened, they happened, our fights increased in... I remember well, it happened, it happened to all of us, boys and girls, we grew agitated, volatile and wanted to prove ourselves, in our masculine or feminine pride, through fighting. The rate of fights increased, at school, whether in middle or high school, but not very much aaa because all the boys grew agitated and we became like the the the excited animals.

- [She laughs]

- Eager to fight, okay? Even our headmasters, I mean, the headmaster once scolded us, Mr. Al Ameri, may God rest his soul, at high school. He said, "I don't know about you, you are excellent students and we expel you for fighting, what's that?" We fought despite being good students, we studied and stuff. We were three excellent students, three, Dr. Al Hajri, may God rest his soul, he became a surgeon, later on. Me, Mubarak and a third friend of ours, An Ajmi, [He laughs] he also became a doctor, a pediatrician. We were mischievous but were in the lead but still we were mischievous. He said, "I don't know, shall I give you medals or expel you?" You act in mischief, despite being clever. They once gave us chickens and after dissecting them we sneaked them out to a restaurant and our teacher complained about us.

- [She laughs]

- And so on, or fights. So it was a period and there was... I remember there was a funny dynamic aaaa I remember aaaa we didn't see the girls or harassed them, but I remember a dynamic when a girls' bus passed by a boys' bus, there were funny dynamics, I mean one of us could have a sister there and we went, "Oh, how sweet the girls are." And he didn't know to say what we said or what, okay? He knew that his sister was on that bus. Or sometimes, after school, the driver went to take him and his sister and there would be different dynamics but we didn't aaa we didn't have that that over-- over concern. I once again remind you that we were not in the city. The boys got excited and said, "Yes, a beautiful girl and we saw her" and stuff but they said no more and there wasn't that severe horror about what to wear and how to be looked at or said about. The stories we hear, we are in a conservative society and a desert community, you know, but we knew that that was my friend and that his sister was at school and and, okay? Yes, we had fun and laughed because those were girls, aaa it was a disgrace, yes those were beautiful girls and stuff, but we didn't talk about any of them, it didn't happen, and those horror stories about those human wolves didn't exist. Aaa there was some violence among the boys, they harassed each other and had problems, among themselves, they got weird and fights happened, aaa those are issues which our society doesn't know how to handle because in the past they got married in an early age and there were issues and I think those problems need to be considered, they haven't been solved yet. They grow up and the issues are still persistent; a mixed society or not, to get married or not and to have friends or not. That's a problem our societies are unable to solve. I still encourage and say to our societies, "Get married in an early age and don't have children, forget about that matter." I mean I've been asked a lot about that, some societies have the girlfriend concept so let's have the tradition of a girl being proposed to by a boy and they get married in an early age but without having children, devise a program for not having children if you are not mature enough to have children. If the marriage fails let it fail, if it succeeds that will be great but should it fail, it'd be a lesson for both parties. We need that bridge because those issues do exist, in our time or in any other time but the moral pressure on us was higher, in our time the moral pressure was a lot higher.

- The moral pressure.

- Yes.

- Mmm...

- It was higher. Not guilting but because there was a gallantry and zealotry, as you feel jealous for your sisters you must be jealous for your friends' sisters and the girls of other families. The pressure of that was a lot higher, in our time; I am almost sure of that. Mmm but the pressure was within the same gender, I mean boys harassed boys and girls harassed girls, I think that was there. That was a phenomenon that needed to be tackled and I think it still persists, all over the world, but it needs to be tackled. The old trend of getting married in an early age disappeared and had no alternative. The alternative, in my opinion, is simple; to get married without having children and that's it. If it's successful, it'll be great but if it isn't, it'll be a lesson, a lesson. I'm still asked, by the students, sometimes, many boys and girls, here in the university, say, "Is that possible? We have a colleague who gets pregnant every semester, she is really a pain in the neck." [He laughs], okay? And I said to them, the students I mean, "Marry while you are still young, what's the problem? But don't have children, don't have children particularly while you are still in university, do it later, when you know your partner, get married, know your partner. Live with your families, it's not a must for you to have a job, they'd nurture you, both families, until you mature, you mature, the whole relationship is all about maturity. Aaa that's the side still not solved; it wasn't solved in our time and still isn't. But we still had very few occurrences, almost about one per cent, to have a young boy married, in high school. Those were very few incidents, to know that one of us, in high school, was married or an old one, in middle school, or high school, we had old students.

- How old?

- Ones supposed to be in high stage but were still in middle school, or supposed to be at the end of middle stage and you found them in an elementary school. That was common, in our time, families got their children into schools late. You could see a tall boy at sch... in the class, the only one, or two, who are old, they joined the school old and late. That was common. Then you heard that he got married while being in high school, because he was already old. Those were a few cases, one or two per cent, but it happened, it happened.

- And you talked about the art activities.

- Mmm--

- At school.

- Yes.

- How did those affect you? How were, let's say, your beginnings in art?

- Okay, I now, at this old age, began to realize how important certain things were, after working in education and after a long practice in the profession, the sports and arts, with their different types, currently neglected by our people, do two vital things sports make you, make you deeply communicate with your physical side so you are not separated from your body. They raise your sense, your feeling towards your body; to be boy or a girl into sports you must be strongly conscious about your body and have physical courage, not only mental. You have that communication with your whole physical entity. Art and literature, which are the theater, painting and poetry, make your communication with your feelings and emotions deeper. When I block those I deprive the human being of their body and emotions. Even when that person grows up, they become amputated, I mean numb. A part of their entity is not working properly, their mechanism is not working properly. Now, at an old age, I began to say, "Oh, this is serious, serious." And I really began to know some of the young people I teach and even my brothers who... I have two brothers who were not into sports. When they grew up they got upset quickly and severely when they lost. We, who played sop... individual and team sports and los... won and lost, beat and got beaten, we used to fight, while playing. I mean, Al Ma'arri School once destroyed our bus because we had beaten them with one point.

- [She laughs]

- They damaged our bus. I remember I was sitting with Waleed Al Haqqan, telling him, and Faisal Al Emairi, Faisal was the goalkeeper, Waleed was aaa a winger and I was the other winger and another friend. We were tied then Waleed scored the last goal. The bottles flew towards us from the bleachers, from the stands. The bottles flew, at us, at the end of the match because Waleed scored the goal at the last moment. Then they destroyed our bus completely, they damaged it and they flooded at us from the streets. Sports then wasn't just sports for us; when we played in other schools it was the pride of our school versus that of the other school, their neighborhood versus ours or our friends...and it turned [He laughs] turned from a game... what was even worse was defeating them on their field not ours, yes and they destroyed our bus. Let's go back to the point, in the first place you know that, you know winning and losing, victory and defeat, and and not only that but you got beaten with bottles while playing a sport, I mean pain and winning, joy and pain. When you grow up and get into projects, with winning and losing possibilities, you'd already, since your childhood, had partnerships with your friends, had been trained in a team, you'd gone through competitions, lost on days and won on days, beaten on days and been beaten on days. So our boys and girls, who didn't go through such experience, whether in an individual sport... I played ping pong individually and football in a team, so when I went through life, when I beat and get beaten, win and lose I take it as a sport while my brother and sister or someone else's brother and sister, who didn't go through that experience, don't handle the shock of winning or losing properly. I once said to one of my brothers, "The reason is that you didn't play an individual sport or a team sport when you were young." So when he loses or things go wrong, go wrong for him, he takes it hard without a sense of sportsmanship. I said that, I mean while talking to friends and accordingly when you take part in a play, when you are young, you read the script and have that conversation, with your friends and teacher, who sits in front of you, about the script: "No, your voice is too loud, the body language is not right, your hand is raised like this." While you are unaware, while rehearsing for a play, you are learning body language, emotional expression, crying and laughter. Your teacher is teaching you the Arabic language or the English language, because we acted in English plays and in Arabic plays and the music, even the music, he said, "Beat the drum loudly when the actor is about to kill." [He mimics the drum sound]. "Do this and it means that he's about to kill." You are young and now he's teaching you, aaa developing your memory so when you're watching a play, on TV, you know more meanings and more and more taste and have more communication with your feelings and the feelings of others. When we say "The theater is not allowed, acting is not allowed, don't play music, remove the PE classes and give them to maths." Oh my God, what are you, what are you doing? Who will teach them that?

- Right.

- If there are classes or popular communities that present Ardhas and celebrate weddings, it's okay, but even those disappeared. But the matter persists, even in the religion, I say, "Folks, the Qur'an says: We relate unto you the best of stories." Is it prohibited to act a story or another? It presents wisdom and it has indirect lessons. You communicate with art when your teacher says for example, "This red is too much, it heats up the painting, it gives it extra warmth, we need it a little bit cooler." You are communicating with your feelings and emotions and you have more sense. If they taste poetry, we had students who read poems from the popular poetry, whether Nabati, folk, badu, old poetry by Al Mutanabbi or modern by Ahmed Shawqi, from the century, the twentieth century, it makes no difference. You listen to the poem, whether from Um Kulthoum or from a boy reading it. Your taste grows more sophisticated, your emotional intelligence becomes sharper, but when I cancel those two subjects and cancel the classes of agriculture, I cancel the classes of agriculture, cancel the picnic, cancel the PE classes and cancel the theater, music and art, what do I get? A programmed person? Programmed in Arabic and math? Is he a machine or what? You are amputating that boy or girl so I feel disgusted when I hear the... Now, as an old person, I hear the school playing music even an idiot won't listen to.

- [She laughs]

02:43:43

- That's called cognitive dissonance, I mean there is music, I know how music might be inacceptable, any sick thing, whether music or math, is sick, whatever the subject is, so when you play tasteless music, yes, I agree but what's art? Art is something else. Now art, for them is not art and what's not art is art, an artist is not an artist and the one who is not an artist is an artist. It's a huge confusion. A drummer becomes an artist? Not necessarily, a drummer is something and a percussion player is something else. Those who pretend to be artists are a whole different story. Mm art and literature turned into a subject, I mean they call someone a man of letters and he isn't or a woman of letters and she isn't, a poet who is not a poet and an artist who is not an artist, so it's like the saying that goes, "Who don't know a falcon grill it."

- [She laughs]

- It's the same, those who don't know art will grill it and so on. But in our time, I repeat it again, the general system was not like that, it was well planned and once again I say it, I'm not talking about the city schools, I mean I was impressed that I still remember, and the notebooks are still there and alive, I mean we can bring them and open them, as a historic material, there's material evidence. Open my notebooks of elementary school and middle school and I read the texts in them.

- Mmm,..

- I read the poetry, which we read as children, huh? A tangible material, it's not like Fareed is telling stories, in front of the microphone and imagining things, no, no the notebooks are there. One can go to the historic documents archives and say, "I wanna look up the curricula." You can draw the comparison, you can say, "I want to see samples of the 1960s curricula, get me all of them, to compare them to a sample of the 1990s curricula, get me all of them." And you will see a big difference, a big difference. We used to celebrate nature singing, "The birds chirp, pleased with the light and say in joy: How beautiful the light is." This is a chant we sang in elementary school.

- Mmm...

- So you are enhancing my sense, I listen to the birds and still listen to them. I hear the nightingale in the street because when I was young I used to say, "The birds chirp, pleased with the light and say in joy: How beautiful the light is." And every new day the morning brings a new day on which the birds twitter, it's instilled in me, already instilled, deeply.

- Mmm--

- But now I see a mess, I don't see a tree, I don't see a buckthorn, I don't see birds, I don't see fish, I don't see shells and I don't see-- I got my face stuck in the the camera or, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying that our time was better, I'm just saying that time goes by but the curricula planners are different.

- Right, of course.

- The curricula planners are different.

- Mmm, was there a certain person or a certain teacher who affected you?

- So many, really, honestly they were so nice, I mean aaa, take for instance Mr. Hamed, he had a very strong influence in math, see, I haven't talked about math, I talked about art and stuff, huh? He once said a sentence, which I still remember and made me an architect. I had a friend, I told you about him, he's in the Emirates, his name is Abdullah Saleh and he became the Emirates Fund, he's a friend whom I am still in touch with. We once solved a math problem, at school, and Mr. Hamed, may God rest his soul, said, "This answer is correct and so is that but this one is more beautiful." See? He was talking about math and said that that answer was more beautiful and eloquent. At that moment he instilled in me a concept that math has its aesthetics he said, "More beautiful and eloquent." He also taught me that math has art and that art has math. I used to say to him, may God rest his soul, and to his son, who was a chief engineer in my office, "Your father gave me a gift like no other." My father was a businessman and had a contracting company, he had a consultant architect, his name was Shawqi Makram and he migrated to Canada. He was an architect and I remember his drawings but my eyes began to catch the aesthetics in math even more because of a word said by a teacher. I also had a teacher, his name was Yousef Aiysh, he connected grammar to poetry and rhetoric and subsequently I used to parse sentences from fourth grade in middle school when I was at fourth grade in elementary school because he made us love the subject.

- Mmm...

- He introduced us to poetry smoothly, he taught, he didn't teach us grammar in isolation from the-- from poetry. He gave us the rhythms of poetry as if they were music and said, "Go guys." While we were pleased with the rhythms. He didn't play Ibn Al Muqaffa or... no, no, he taught us the music of poetry, okay? He said, "Look, look, see how it is read." He concentrated on our recitation-- and that boy who stood on the table, in the morning, "Look at the recitation." You felt pleased with poetry then he went, "How can we parse this?"

- Mmm....

- He made you love parsing, which, as a subject, is similar to math, okay? We learned the poetic patterns, the aesthetic patterns and the proportion, the sense of proportions. One said that math had beauty and one... you know what I mean? I remember them by the names, Mr. Mr. Hammad, for example, loved agriculture, he was an Egyptian teacher who taught us to love the soil, water and agriculture. He put our hands in the mud and we planted together and enjoyed picking the beans and eating them together, while they were still green. He pulled out a carrot and gave us to eat together, he washed the carrots and distributed them among us to eat and we were pleased. I mean that was, I remember them very well, those teachers. Mr. Assaf, for instance, he was a science teacher. They once brought an eagle to embalm but he said, "It's too big to embalm." So we took it home.

- [She laughs]

- An eagle, a huge one, was wrapped in burlap and thrown by some boys and their fathers. Its wing was hurt but it wasn't broken so it couldn't fly. The teacher said, "No, that's not right, I don't want to..." He didn't want, didn't want to kill it so he said, "Do something about it, we don't want it." His eyes were full of mercy. I said, "I will take it." And he said, "You must tell your father that..." Anyway, we came-- the boys, the young boys, said, "No, no, our father doesn't want it." Because it was not a falcon, which you could train or something. "No, no, we brought it for the school." Anyway, we took it home and put it on a stick, a huge wood beam. When my father came, in the car, he looked and saw an eagle. He said, "Who brought it?" We said, "Dad, dad," all of us and our cousins went, "Dad, dad, please, please, leave it, leave it." He said, "It might pick your eyes." And he made a condition, "okay, okay, tie it, the servant will tie it to the wood beam and give it food but when it can fly release it." It was really huge, an eagle, you know, an eagle, okay? But we were excited, at night we went at night to see it and went by day to see it. Then one day it began to hover, to fly, it went down. My father was worried that it might... and he said, "Son, it's so fast and can carry a small goat." My father said, "It can carry a lamb, it can pick it up and fly away, keep away from it." Anyway, when it became well he said to the servant, "Come on, take it to the desert and release it." We went raising the ends of our dishdashas in winter.

- [She laughs].

- Then we left it and it went flying, I mean, it was an experience. Aaa... but the teachers, Assaf, Mr. Assaf did that; he saved the eagle and it ended up in our house. Mr. Hammad fed us the plants we grew, Mr. Hamid and so on. I remember a teacher, I don't know if he's dead or alive, Abu Shammala, he wasn't so well-- and the PE teacher, Muhammed Ibrahim, an Egyptian, he exhausted us in sports; he made us run till our tongues dangled, he was tough but we played well. I mean, praise God, we were lucky, I don't know, I'm not, I don't want to be romantic or poetic, about the past, because I'm not nostalgic but they were teachers of quality, teachers of a really good quality and they were faithful and loved Kuwait and the whole Arab world. I mean you could feel they had a message; a teacher had a message, not a teacher working for a salary. I mean Mr. Hamid, for instance, who used to say, "Come in the morning." [He laughs]. "All of you who want to." Or the one who stayed, at the time Kuwait wasn't-- I mean not... but they were teachers with a message. - Right

- And my father used to say the same about their old schools, they were teachers with feelings for the message, with patriotic, national, Arab and Islamic sense in general. They loved every one and so on. Our headmasters were tough, with strong personalities but compassionate, at the same time. I mean they could punish but gave prizes and so on. They played with us ping-pong and played with us-- They came to watch those who played and suddenly they went into the pitch, to kick the ball with us, the headmaster.

- Mmm--

- He didn't have that... aaa distance from the students, not the teachers, I remember that one of our headmasters loved football, when he saw us playing, he passed by the yard to check on things, when the ball went close to him he went in and kicked it then went out again saying, "Come on, guys, let's beat the other schools" and stuff. I mean, yeah, in a state school? My God. That was a state school, I'm not talking about a private school, a state school.

- You said your aaa sister had gone to a private school?

- Yes.

- What was the difference?

- Um Al Qura, Um Al Qura in Abu Hulaifa.

- What was the difference? Was there a huge difference?

- I didn't live that period but my sister used to say that perhaps it had been the beginning of an era, that of private schools, and they concentrated more on English. My father had a friendship with uncle Khalifa, and and... They talked, perhaps and he said, "We've started a new school, why don't you bring the kids to it?" And he said, "Yes, why not?" Something like that. But she also mentions that her teachers, one of them was the principal, the school owner's daughter, aaa, she was close to them, she knew them well and they are still friends and know each other's kids. They got married and had children who know each other too and so on. Aaa mm education, at the time, wasn't that commercial, perhaps, nor bureaucratic, it wasn't bureaucratic I feel disgusted at such phenomena, we currently have, we have some extra bureaucracy, huh? But it wasn't like that and and it wasn't that official; it was more about the message; it was also more intimate and mostly social with more serious education, seriousness. It wasn't over burdened with negative ideas. Once again I think that the general perspective was that we wanted a revival and pros... prosperity and independence, that was the broad line, revival, prosperity and independence, revival, prosperity and independence. Those were the broad lines which led, now, at an old age I understand that but as a child, back then, I didn't know. But when I look back and remember I say, "Oooh, I can backtrack now, I was a child, back then, just having fun."

- Mmm...

- I had fun, went into fights and played sports but when I recall the notebooks and the memories I go, "No." When I look at my younger brothers and the story of safety and security, no, no, we were not like that; revival, prosperity and independence, no, no, no, the rhythm was different, the pace was different and the rhythm was different, yeah, I wish we concentrated on that even more.

- God willing.

- Stability or no stability, a challenge or no challenge, when you build a generation you want it to be connected to itself and connected to its nature and you pass the ball to continue the march of revival and prosperity and to keep the independence, the and... and the strength of the country and its vigor. That has no has nothing to do with security or no security, you need to be, at all time, doing that.

- Right.

- You don't bring the envelope down, you raise... you raise the target and you don't lower the target. Does having no stability mean to eliminate the principles of revival, prosperity, preeminence and independence? No, no, that, at all time, is the supreme principle. My safety and security are in that, in the first place. Safety and security do not mean to shut myself down, seclude myself, that's a type of seclusion and fear. You opted for a policy of seclusion and fear, instead of the policy of self-confidence and, and... no, regardless, should I defend, I should defend those, should I fight, I should fight for those, those values and those principles; prosperity, independence and [He laughs] and revival.

- Right, one thousand per cent.

- Should someone betray, they'd be betraying those values. Should one be delinquent or assailant, they'd be assailant against those values and those are human and fair values, on the contrary, even on the human level, they are real and fair values. And the happiness, I want the happiness of the society, it's health, revival and prosperity, do I want safety and security? I lower the envelope, lower the aaa bar [He laughs], no.

- Now we go back to high school.

- Yeah.

- You went into very different rituals.

- Yes.

- Tell me about them.

- The high school stage was a different and strong experience, I mean a little bit shocking because first of all the population was bigger, from a smaller population to a popu... and the sources changed, I mean the contexts from which the boys and colleagues came from, they came from different backgrounds. All of us were Kuwaitis and Arabs, a mixture, but they helped us see a new category, not from the city boys, the ones inside the city, no. Those were the boys of the oil cities, Shuaiba and Ahmadi those were another color of the Kuwaitis; the color of Ahmadi and the color of Shuaiba. Shuaiba was less, I mean those were closer to the refinery. Those living in Shuaiba were mostly Arabs with a few Kuwaitis, lower in the in the rank; they were mostly, mostly technicians. But the ones coming from Ahmadi, no, those were the sons of assistant engineers, engineers perhaps, some of the medical staff of the Ahmadi hospital, their sons, Kuwaitis and Arabs with a different culture that defied the village culture because they were living with the English. Even the Palestinians, who came to school, were an elite, people with different incomes and different education, their fathers were doctors, their mothers were doctors, lab technicians, chemists and so on, they went to the Hubara Club, okay? Suddenly they clashed with the badu and villagers and we were in between, the city boys with one foot in the city and one foot with them, all of those. Then you saw the Kuwaitis, who were in the city, their fathers worked, some of them worked in the port, not even in Ahmadi, they lived in the... but their work was in the port, in exporting oil and the port of Shuaiba and the refineries aaa, some of them were captains, whether on the tug boats or the sailing boats, or worked in the marine, the marine police, in the port. Different categories and their dialect was that of the city but their culture was of Ahmadi, and they were proud to be Ahmadians, okay? They had their ego, how sweet, but they were nice, okay? We were in their context, we were hadar and had relatives in Ahmadi, we had relatives in Ahmadi, we still have relatives living in Ahmadi, but you could feel that the category of Ahmadi was different, they got in. Then came Fahaheel, Fahaheel had the family of Al Dabbous, originally a Kuwaiti family from the city and a part of them was outside the city. The culture of Fahaheel was a mixture of town, city and village. Its outskirts were village like, but its core was a town, aa town city, huh? A more urbanized badu society. Then there were the merchants, who owned lands and property in Fahaheel. There was a group of families, like Al Adwani and Al Dabbous, no, those had shops and stores in a different dynamic. They had power in the area. Sometimes the old frontier villages and towns... our Sheikhs had relations with the families of Jahra, Al Ameer, Al Ayyar and other well-known families aaa even the origins of those, Al Mentefeq. In Fahaheel we had Al Dabbous and Al Adwani and other historically known families, so the dynamic was different. Then came the villagers and badu and all of us mixed in Fahaheel, okay? The dynamic was different. Our teachers were also good but the challenge was a lot higher because high schools are tough, all over the world, I mean the hormones are more active in boys and their mischief is a lot wilder, the first and second graders were monkeys.

03:01:01

- [She laughs]

- First and second graders were like baboons, fights and quarrels and they had their egos. Acne filled the faces and the hormones were in the top, they were volatile like matchsticks; a word could cause a fight. Our headmasters prevented students of some families to go through the same door, I mean some tribal and family groups went through the eastern door and the other group went through the western door. Should they go through the same door, there'd be a fight every day. The headmasters, deputy headmasters and some tough teachers stood by the doors when the students came or left.

- Mmm...

- Yeah.

- What was your feeling when you moved to the aa...

- Yes, I always tell this joke, I don't know about girls but the boys, when you move from middle school to first grade of high school, should they see you as a bookworm and not a sports guy, they'd step all over you but if they saw that you were tough with a strong fist, no, your territory is determined, that was it, just like in animal tribes, baboons and wolves in a certain hierarchy; who cowers away and who is a bookworm, and who is an introvert and who is a... It must be clear, you must decide your place in the system, no, here... aaa and this was a serious and important educational point, in the past and is now. My kids went to mixed schools where the dynamic is very different. In the coeducational, mixed schools, with boys and girls together, the boys, I don't know about the girls, except from my sister, Sama, girls don't have that violence, but the boys, no, we have violence, we have violence. We have fights with knives and fights with chains, bottles get broken, it's common, common, violence. To survive, among them, you must, if you don't want to... I mean when I first arrived, I went through three or four fights, at school, automatically, just to... it wasn't like I wanted it, they started it, not me. When we grow up we recall sometimes, you were not alone, you were with four of your friends against another group of four, you were not related to each other, huh? They were a group of aaa baboons and we were another group of baboons, they were wolves and we were wolves, they were friends and we were friends. Then we have a confrontation to see who dominates. You must lay the foundation. Then they wouldn't let you be, should you beat them this time, they'd stir another fight, to get even. Should you be beaten, you'd stir the fight. It's a sport but some are more violent than others and some are worse than others. Some went for fist fighting, pity fist fighting and some others, no, they make it an all war. They called their area boys, relatives and the allies of the allies of their allies and waited for the other party, in the market or caught them outside the school and... I wasn't in that kind of a thing. We just had pity quarrels, my friends and I, a few of us, against someone with their friends and had a fight. Or a friend got beaten and came to me saying they'd harassed him and we gathered and retaliated, never outside the school. Should they not get us, they didn't get us but should they get us they'd punish us in a pity quarrel. But the worst fights were the ones that led to the police station. No, they ambushed each other and caught each other, at the market for instance, perhaps while being with their families. This is, this is too much. It happened, they ambushed each other at the market, someone with his friends and the others with a bigger group of friends to beat them and so on. I didn't like that, that was an ugly history.

- And in your free time, I mean, what did you do back then?

- The same thing.

- The same thing.

- I mean, I'll tell you, I haven't talked about the television, but there were TV programs, I remember... I remember... I remember Thursday nights, for instance, were the nights with plays and Um Kulthoum's songs. My father liked for us to sit, all of us, to watch an important play, one of the Kuwaiti plays, or an important film, or... for Um Kulthoum, we didn't sit, because we were too young, but we knew that my father and the elder ones sat to watch on of Um Kulthoum's evenings. We used to watch nice TV series, in Ramadan, there were nice series and nice films, in black and white, they were very nice and I still, when I see them I go, "Wow!" They had good taste and their cinematography was very good. Black and White films came in high quality and you could see Arabs and Italians working together and stuff. We loved that period with its drama and Egyptian crime series, Al Khutt and stuff. Nour Al Demerdash was a director and actors like Mahmoud Al Mileejy, with his roles, we watched all those and and their scripts were good and not, not cheap, as a literary material. We watched films and watched plays, I mean those were the evening programs, with the family, in addition to playing, mischief and running around, there were times for... Then came the holidays with their colors; religious holidays and national holidays. There were also deaths, funerals and weddings, all those came through your life and you went with your father to congratulate some people and went with your father to condole others [He laughs]. Life was full of events, summer was summer and winter was winter, in winter there were barbecues, the desert and stuff. The summer was something else, spring was something else and the... etc.

- And and the time of graduation, or the time of the... the end of high school, you had aaa something special.

- I forgot to mention...

- You used to do.

- We used to read magazines.

- Okay.

- And stories, I remember aa... Tintin, Samir, Batman, Superman and the the-- there were novels, stories called the Green House or the Green Island, very wonderful stories, we used to read those. My father had a huge library, I inherited a part of it and my sister took another part. My grandfather also had books and a library so we were readers. My father had a library and sometimes I slept in his library, reading aaa whatever you might think of, from classic poetry to modern poetry, to Ahmed Shawqi and after Ahmed Shawqi, Ibrahim Tuqan and and and... My father was... my father, when I read his library I read him; in a time he was more into Sufism and you see his books aaa I remember other than the Arabic books and his love for literature, for literature, I read the Torah and the Bible, the Oxford editions, he had them in Arabic. When I grew older my understanding and discussions, with my colleagues at university, were based on an understanding of the Torah and the Bible, not according to our account but according to Oxford. When I talked to Jewish people, in America, they said, "Where have you got this from?" I replied, "This is not our account, it's the Oxford edition in Arabic from my father's library." I gave them the reference of... And when I came back I liked the eastern culture, my father used to read Confucius and Chinese books and he said to me, "Do you read these?" and I replied, "Don't they say: Seek knowledge even in China?"

- [She laughs]

- "Are you worried because I read these?" I have books about Taoism, Confucianism and Hinduism etc. Translated into English and stuff but my father didn't cover that... his were general readings, in Arabic literature then Eng... whatever English, Edger, Edger, what's his name?

- Edgar Allan Poe.

- No, novels, international novels translated into Arabic and novels in English, my mother read in English and French.

- Mmm...

- He had a collection of National Geographic, from the fifties and sixties, he had an English library and an Arabic library and a--

- And you stayed at the same house?

- No, a year or two before the invasion they, my father went back to the city, to Jabriya.

- In the late eighties.

- Our house was appraised in stages; the state wanted to build a street and our house, our land was huge, four or five thousand meters and was appraised in stages. They first took a part of it, to build the street, then the second part. Then they continued in a full reorganization of the whole area turning it into investment housing with a high population. Our house was near Alia and Ghalia, it's a huge building now and some of our land lots turned into buildings, those that were farms. My father decided to go back to the city because of the long trip and my mother got fed up and said, "It's a long trip and we grew old, let's go back to the city." So they went back to stay in Jabriya.

- In Jabriya. - Yes, basically we were-- my grandfather was in Fireej Shyookh, the Faraj neighborhood, currently the Stock Market, then the first generation, when Kuwait became modern, aaa they took plots in Dasma, area W, in front of Mansouriya. My father wanted to build in Salmiya and he did then he sold those buildings, for economic reasons, he found a good buyer and we stayed where we were, as if he liked it and we liked it so we stayed. It was a different and a nice experience for me.

- So when you went back to the city it was... In which stage, of your life, were you?

- Huh, at the time, no, no, when they went back, before the invasion, I was oooh, I went to America, on a scholarship, in 1975.

- Right.

- I graduated in 1979 and had my Master's degree in 81, so they oooh, before the invasion they went back, they were there and I came to them, during my stay in America. I started working and got married while they were still in Funtas. I stayed in the city but when my father left the... after the house had already been appraised and knocked down, they left and went back to Jabriya, they bought a house in Jabriya, that was a year or two before the invasion. Luckily the area was still almost isolated, at the time, for in our house we had no neighbors, there were just buildings. We stayed and so did Sheikh Abdullah, Jaber Al Abdullah, there were just buildings. They had no neighbors except for the buildings emerging in the back, so it could've been dangerous for them, not to be in Funtas, we were in Mahbula, not to be in Funtas nor in the... Abu Hulaifa, I mean we didn't have that much of a Kuwaiti population, around us, so for us it was good that-- I mean that [He laughs] our family went back to the city otherwise they might've been hurt even more... perhaps.

- Will you tell us about the appraisal?

- Yes.

- Will you tell me about that period?

- Yes, yes, yes.

- Will you tell us about it?

- Yes, now, I knew, at an old age that... aaa... the other day I went to offer my condolences to some friends in Funtas, Funtas consisted of farms and houses and those were appraised to build new roads and as a result... that also happened in Funtas...and such villages, just like what happened in the old city; some people didn't know that their houses, when appraised, would be within new arrangements and so they accepted the appraisals for houses not knowing that those would turn into plots, sold in the market and turn into buildings, except for a few people who knew it but they knew better than the people of the city, so you feel their houses were appraised and they were given... and some people benefited, some people benefited but you had the feeling that some knew the game better than others. Later, when I became an architect, when I graduated and started working in the municipality, I began to know more things and follow up on more things. Land acquisition, not only in Kuwait but all over the world, is a policy followed, but some people are far from it and don't know about it, so they have no knowledge of economy, business and property while others are more attentive and aware and know more than others, consequently take the chances in a way better than others. I mean there were families in Funtas, whose property was appraised but they stayed poor, they did nothing, partly because of their financial ignorance, they didn't know what to do or didn't know how to develop while others, no, others benefited from the acquisition of their houses and built buildings in Funtas, from their houses etc. Just like the people of the city, so it has to do with your personality, your money, your understanding and your responsibility towards aaa your assets, your financial assets, the land, construction and so on. Many people benefited and some stayed simple and couldn't do anything, when I go to them, for a funeral, I see them. Some people's houses are shared among heirs and don't know what to do and-- and so on. So in Funtas, and other areas, houses and buildings emerged, while their owners didn't know about them, I mean how those emerged and who built them; it's a kind of a mystery for them.

- Mmm...

- But some people, no... And people kept others in the dark, in diwaniyyas. But as an architect and being aware of the structural plan, I laugh and say, "Wow, the same story is repeated for me." Some people don't even care, I mean... and they talk and say that the government built the street, as if the government was high above and built the street, while for us, being in the field, that didn't mean that the government was in a far place and built the street, it's something you see, know... deal with and so on. The farms, some of them were appraised as farms then turned into shopping malls, while the people were unaware, or shopping malls being constructed in some areas, while the municipal council is not in session and arguments begin. It's a real estate game that takes place, in America as it takes place in Kuwait.

- Mmm--

- Huh? I mean in Milwaukee some farms turned into malls for the, so called, intelligence and cleverness of the real estate developer who knows when to go to the municipal council and when the elections of the state governorate are held. They do the same in Kuwait, the same tricks and they take the chance sometimes violating general rules but they make it a legal game. I mean it's not unfamiliar, it's aaa common, I mean some areas appeared, in Qurain and other areas. I mean, those Qurain markets cannot be authorized by the municipality, it's impossible for the municipality, with its system, vision and structural plans, to be going in that direction, there are leaps that happen during elections.

- Mmm--

- They lobby and the game exists all around the world. It happens in Korea, it happens in Chicago, it happens in Kuwait and happens in Beirut [He laughs].

- Shall we take a minute?

- Yeah.

- To change the battery.

- Yeah

- I hope all is well.

- This is a continuation, shall we go on with the interview?

03:16:20

- Okay.

- Aaa we were talking about the appraisals, the ... the land acquisitions and the thefts, as you say--

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, or using the ignorance, using the ignorance, using the change, the change in the electoral cycles of the municipal council, when the municipal council is in recess, whether in Kuwait or in Beirut or Chicago. Sometimes legal gaps happen and some clever real estate developers, or rather devilish ones, lobby and get approvals for organizational changes and sometimes they do it while the municipal council is in session, they lobby aaa, we studied those cases and saw them in reality but some of them are ugly, some of them are bad and some are even foolish. I mean they don't suit the... but it's real estate greed and they gather, one night, and make a certain arrangement, with certain groups, in deals mixed with economy, politics and favors. Then out of nowhere a commercial area pops up on a site, not allowed, or not acceptable for, to be commercial. I might as well launch larger attacks on many other sites, including that of the new Kuwait University, I mean all of it.

- Mmm...

- It's not, aaaa, it's not of the real development, what's done by professionals and officials, it's rather a matter of lobbying and... and... shifts, I call them turns, but those are not unfamiliar or surprising, not in Kuwait nor outside Kuwait, they exist and their examples are too many in Los Angeles, in Chicago and everywhere. Aaa a gap takes place and some people know the tactic and know how to move according to it etc. Aaaa it's an appraisal phenomenon very... not appraisal but rather developmental, I don't call it appraisal, the Hessa Al Mubarak neighborhood was a strong phenomenon, a strong negotiation phenomenon; many heirs of one property and the land took so many years, it took ten years of negotiation. It was a good... it was a good workout; it was supposed to be developed. It took years, I mean it was one of the questions, a big question mark, a prime land in Da'iya, staying still for many years. We have a friend who wanted to make arrangements in Benaid Al Qar and it was the same, he took seven years, that was Lou'ai Al Saleh, an architect who tried to convince the owners of Benaid Al Qar but he didn't succeed, I mean he... he said, "I got tired, I've tried for seven years to make rearrangements among the owners."

- Mmm...

- He proposed those, I mean those were nice efforts by Lou'ai or by the real estate group, what they've done, but there were ugly and harmful efforts that took place in a variety of areas in Kuwait. Aaa the growth of Fahaheel is good, I mean aaa it has vertical access to the sea and its growth is natural and beautiful with a touch of well-studied chaos, but all in all the problem, our problem is not only the appraisal, our problem is the aaaa the population ratios we have, aaa... aaa. Then not-- not mixing with expatriates, we have, I mean suddenly a region is filled with Indians, in huge numbers, in high density and the Kuwaitis move away from it... Public places are usually available for everyone but suddenly they change; this area is for Filipinos, that area is for the Indians, that is for the Egyptians and that is for the Kuwaitis, a different one, I mean such phenomena happen but we, the architects have that sensitivity but the appraisals, no, the apprais... we have another matter, besides the appraisals, that of constructional violations, the violations in buildings, it's awful, take those who dig a basement, under the house, to the street.

- Mmm...

- And those who build two extra floors then get caught by the government when they want to sell and they say to them, "Come, knock those two floors down." But we have the phenomena of constructional violations, too many, numerous and extensive ones, extensive. Some people complain about someone who opened a shop, among the houses, without a license, for instance, and so on, not in the city, in the ar-- the farther the area, the more the violations are. Many diff...varied markets emerged, popular markets, aaa in Fahaheel and Funtas and they mushroomed. I call them the workers' markets, I mean they are classified as commercial but they are... they don't have the people of Kuwait or their nature is not that of markets, those are markets of counterfeit and cheap Chinese and non-Chinese goods, sought after by the workers, their families, wives and kids and they become like... Their locations are bizarre; next to a co-op society and Sultan. I mean there are areas which I see and say, "These couldn't have been built by the municipality." No way, it's all because of the chaos that takes place with the construction manipulation, at night, a site dedicated for a co-op society and the Sultan Center and between those a popular market pops up. It kills that, this kills the co-op society and the co-op society kills... As if the economic concept was bad while Fahaheel has a harmony, Fahaheel has a certain harmony but the populations fill places and some-- a group of inhabitants go, we have the Indians and Egyptians have the highest percentages present and the Indian continent, including Bangladesh, Pakistan and India versus our brothers the Egyptians.

- About which area are you talking now?

03:21:45

- The... our area, to the south, Fahaheel and you see you see, then you see blocks of flats popping up, popping up and the same is in Farwaniya, the areas far from the Kuwaiti core, there is a Kuwaiti core there but it's a small Kuwaiti core, the Kuwaiti core in Jahra-- no, it's big but when you go to Farwaniya, the Kuwaiti core shrinks, so does the Kuwaiti core in Fahaheel but when you look you see mushrooms of buildings, mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms. In some of them there are newly married Kuwaitis but those are few, but ultimately there is a mushrooming of blocks of flats and you see buses coming out of the area.

- Mmm... - Buses of the Asian work power, or the Arabian work power oooh, I mean there are phenomena that I read as an architect. Sometimes I take tours just to read, to read, to read, no, you see the people of Fahaheel shrinking, versus the blocks of flats which are growing larger, because the architecture is changing and the population is growing larger. I mean when we were in Funtas, I'll give you a comparison, in the period which I'm talking about, the elementary and middle stages, Kuwait had a total population of about 300000 people, Arabs, Kuwaitis and foreigners, all of them, today, no, we are on the verge of 4 millions, Kuwaitis, Arabs and foreigners, where are the 300000? [He laughs]. You are talking about the population density? Per hectare or kilometer square, no, the population density is so high. The areas where we hunted, ran, with our horses and hunted birds is now a mushroom of buildings, all of which are investment residences with high density.

- And you saw that thing, while living there, close to the end of that period?

- Yes, yes, yes and in abrupt speed, abrupt speed.

- How?

- I mean, it seems that the economic value, I mean the people who got those lands, lands organized to be investment residences with high density, the banks supplied them with quick money because the demand on accommodation was high, because of the population.

- Mmm--

- The increase in population. We, we, as Kuwaitis, have become a million and for us we have two, two millions of work force. Those include the work power projects, which fill the country, whether highways or... We have labor camps, which people do not see, you know.

- Right.

- I mean, near Wafra and beyond, labor camps as far as the eye can see, Chinese and Egyptian males, living in small bungalows or temporary houses, with bathrooms and... They work on highways, in oil companies and oil exploration, you name it, highways... Then they go to the markets, okay? Then population changes took place, the, the Indian community, for instance, now has a class of company managers and information system managers, those come with their wives and daughters, you see them in cinemas with us, which is nice, nothing wrong. They dine in restaurants because there is a different income for the Arab and Asian work force we have. Even the Filipinos, they began to become restaurant managers and those come with their wives... accountants and computer analysts. So first we had workers, workers but now no, no, we have high professionals and we have a small class of Asian and Arab managers, whom you see everywhere and they fill those areas and they have their advantages, you consume, you produce and what you have... all those phenomena come in different colors.

- Right, now, aaa excuse me, let's go back a little bit, you mentioned you had gone to America in 75.

- Yeah. - And you stayed there till 81

- No, till 79, I graduated.

- 79 and you came back?

- Undergrad, yes.

- And--

- I worked for a year at the research institute.

- Right.

- They gave me a master's scholarship.

- For the Master's degree.

- Yeah.

- And you went back to America in 81.

- Yes. - You said you had married... which year was that?

- Aaa.

- You were still in Funtas, right?

- Yes, yes, I got married in 82.

- 82.

- Yeah, yeah.

- How was your family... beginnings? You lived in Funtas or...

- We came for a month.

- Mmm...

- My wife and I stayed for a very short time then I left aaa I rented a flat in Salmiya, I lived in a flat till I got my turn for a plot and so on. Then I stayed at Aisha Al Salem, after Salmiya then joined the army and and finished.

- In which year? - 86.

- 86.

- I served for two years but I was also working, I served for a total of two years, in the corps of engineers then I moved to Aisha Al Salem and worked as a consultant for the minister, in the municipality. In 1989, one year prior to the invasion, I opened an advisory office, in association with KAO. I was with Ghazi, may God rest his soul, I was younger and Ghazi was in the KAO. They gave me an office, which I rented from them. I worked in architecture and they did the engineering. My wife worked in the KAO the architecture department but I had an office.

- Your wife was an architect?

- My wife was an architect, she was my colleague in the grad program and finished her PhD later, when my children finished with university, she finished her PhD.

- Mmm, so you worked in Kuwait at the same...

- We worked in the KAO, then after the invasion we came back and I worked in the private sector and she worked with me, in the office. We've practiced for ten years or more. Then aaa we went to America for four years and came back to Kuwait, after that I decided that I don't wanna practice any more, yeah. Dadadada [He laughs]. Sami Al Bader, may God rest his soul, said to me, "In 15 years, if you stay, like us, the way you are, you're gonna get fed up." Because down the line you become either too commercial or too professional, then you need to decide to be either commercial or professional, I didn't want to be commercial. My father said to me once, "Son, you have to become, I mean you have to change your way otherwise you're gonna get tired of this." I used to say to him and and I used to say to him, "I'd rather become a real estate agent than become a bad architect." So... then I got fed up with the whole story. I decided I really don't wanna practice. Not because... the profession, in itself, is beautiful, exquisite and offers the society many services but you need to keep a certain cash flow to cover your financial commitments towards your staff and your office. People sometimes have to make concessions and sometimes those concessions are not nice. They could be acceptable financially but they hurt me psychologically and hurt my situation so I thought I didn't want to have that rupture between what I believe and what I do. So I suspended the license, unwillingly, I didn't shut, I didn't shut down but suspended the license, in a system called license suspension. Some friends said to me, "This is not reasonable, you are doing well." I said to them, "No, I'm doing well but I'm not happy." I mean I wasn't in debt, I didn't have a problem. If I didn't make profits I was breaking even but all the process, not the designing and the creative process itself, the process itself, taking the profession lightly and the problems of the profession itself. I became a member in the profession practice committee, in the Society of Engineers, to solve the issue of confusion, in the profession, the wages rates and the price hammering, as result of foreign interference, because we had and still have that, I know that that matter is still there. Some people now take the maps and design them abroad, in Asia or in Egypt, for a different cost, which creates a parallel market, a submarket in the dark, ultim-- ultimately the process turns into a price hammering, a price banging rather than a profession with self-respect, steadiness, stability and so on. So to compete with those you hit below the belt, you must make concessions and make concessions and sell the projects in the parallel market. People who does that float financially but they harm the country and harm other things. I don't think they have similar values but that exists. There is an honest doctor and a bad doctor, an honest lawyer and a bad lawyer. Not... some of them are good and successful. I didn't know, or didn't want to continue with the... with the way. Aaa I saw that education was good in that... aaa instead of building a block of flats I'd build a human being, that has a high psychological return.

- Mmm...

- The... the income is nice in return for the risk which we-- the problems and psychological pressure you went through, while running an office, I mean ultimately, even if it's less, I know how to diversify the sources of my income. I have more skills but... and I have friends, with whom I'm always in touch, my generation, they have offices and sometimes they say, "We don't know whether to envy you or not." I started to learn.

- [She laughs].

- Okay? Because they still have-- have the same problems, when I listen and talk to them professionally, those were the same complaints which were aaa in our time aaa the price hammering and what they called aaa flooding the market strongly, in currency exchange, when you price the projects, you don't want to... I mean professionally you are a specialist, you become a professional at pricing you price professionally and competently but at the same time you don't want to be greedy, I mean some people have the high art and knowledge of pricing. There are deep studies to be able to make proper project estimation, wages, time planning and so on. But we have the matter of commissions, the culture of commissions grew strongly, which is selling the projects, in the parallel market and getting commissions, and pricing abroad, because the projects are produced abroad in much less costs, less than a tenth, I mean you can't, you are competing with an office pricing in the Indian or the Egyptian currency, you cannot compete. Or... I had a case in which I competed with an office using the North Korean currency, by God Almighty. I went into a project where my competitor, as I found out later, the one who took the project from me... I began to name a price then another then another and the client said to me, "Sorry, we have a turnkey with a North Korean consultant and a contracting company." I said, "You are crazy. Is that reasonable? You are asking me to compete with North Korea?" It happened, it was a project for developing a whole area outside Kuwait, in Sudan. I formed a Kuwaiti British team, a Kuwaiti team of Kuwaiti architects with a planner from Japan, who used to work in Kuwait and a consultant from Britain, who used to work with us in Kuwait. We formed a team and made a proper pricing so as to succeed but we were hit by a North, not even a South Korean firm because the Kuwaiti developer wanted it cheap. When he met the Koreans, the contractors who will implement the project, they turned against us and said, "Why? Come on, we'll get you..." So it topped it. At the beginning, when we competed, we competed with Indians and Egyptians, outside the market then we discovered that we were competing with even North Koreans and Chinese, for horrible prices.

- That was in which year? I mean in the nineties or--

- Yes, yes, the late nineties.

- The late nineties.

- Yes a it was a project in Sudan.

- Mmm...

- It was a huge development project on a four by four kilometers area. In the team I had architects, planners and traffic planners, such a job, such a job but pricing was another story, organizing and--

- That was your last project?

- It was one of the last projects which... and-- no... I had other big projects, the Americani hospital, I won that project but a Czechoslovakian contractor took it from me, with a Kuwaiti, I was the official winner. The American hospital. I had a conversation with Sheikha Hessa, too [He laughs] after that incident but it wasn't her fault, ultimately other dynamics take place.

- Right.

- The government system or... the aaa I was pricing the restoration of Al Seif Palace and a Kuwaiti contractor interfered, he brought his subcontracting crew to design and they sent for me to work on his terms and reference and I said, "No, that can't be. I haven't worked yet." So you see such phenomena happen and not only in Kuwait, they happen abroad too.

- Right.

- I began to see that the profession phenomena call for aaa huge financial conflicts and very big financial and political alliances. When you are young you do things and you feel happy, I mean our youth, which is good. We don't want them to be shocked; they can build a villa, aaa a restaurant then another restaurant then mmm a small mall, a clinic in Salmiya, a clinic I don't know where, okay. A block of flats in Farwaniya, a block of flats in Salmiya, okay. But when you go for the game of heavy weights, the huge projects, you'll see that there is no joke. I've covered almost all types of projects that could be done in Kuwait, by type. I've built industrial buildings, I've built power plants, I've built houses, I've built investment accommodations, I've built small clinics, I mean everything but ultimately when you go for the heavy weights game; huge projects on a larger level, no.

03:35:22

- Mmm...

- Playing gets... so rough and-- and it's natural, not only in Kuwait, the same thing happens outside Kuwait, in Lebanon, Japan and Chicago, I don't say... but what happens is that-- in countries where the profession has a better strength center, aaa higher competence and more clarity. Until now, our society, five years or more ago, didn't know and still doesn't know what the architect and the non-architect does. They still don't know; they consider them a kind of a mystery or... or... etc. Then the-- the culture of defamation; we still have scientists, doctors and engineers, at the university, who defame the profession while our colleagues, in the profession, the real specialists, know their limits. So there are, there are cultural changes and changes in... and the Kuwaitis like the very cheap products, huh? That's because they come from a culture that doesn't value the arts or the value added because you prevented them from doing theater and music, as children, so they grew up to become a minister, a businessman or a businesswoman while they lack that side and consequently don't know the added value. What proves that is their inability to buy artwork, for example, so if they don't know the theory of value, how would they know the added value, which a good architectural project can have, compared to another project? But they deal with the concept as a mystery: Our luck wasn't good, our sister's house is beautiful, ours isn't. Their luck-- our luck is not good. They don't realize that those dealt with someone who knows while they went to someone who knows nothing and still they say, "Our luck is not good, our sister's house is better than ours because our luck is not good." No, no, no, your luck was not bad, you went to the wrong, wrong professionals and so on. Ultimately I said, "The next generation will be better perhaps, because time changes." I remember, in the society, when we were in the council for regulating the profession practice, when they voted, we didn't, we didn't go to vote, on something professional I mean, and when they asked why? We said, "Come on, we are as they say: Stand in two lines and they said we are only two. We are 6 and you are 150 and you want us to vote with you? You'd devour us, that can't be. We discuss it, we hammer it and it's either you convince us or we you but to vote, no, we won't vote. It's a trick." We said to them, "This is a trick, we are way fewer than you and we won't vote on that matter. You can get me facts and laws to convince me or I get you facts and laws to convince you." The committee of profession practice got us as far as not to vote.

- Mmm...

- No, collect the facts and present the laws, in Kuwait and abroad; in Britain and Japan, to convince me or I you, but voting, no, we won't buy that.

- Because you were a minority.

- Yes, [He laughs] I mean so many times have they played, with us, the card of voting, no, no, no, don't do that, we won't vote. You can convince us, with reason, we are all engineers, architects and wise people so you can get me the facts and laws of advanced countries, facts and stuff, yes but otherwise no, we won't buy that voting trick. I mean look at the tactic; let's vote, no, no, no... You are that many of offices, X offices, and we represent less than fi-- twenty five, less than 2.5 per cent of you and you want to vote on devouring our interests, no, we won't vote. This is how far it went, we won't vote. All those burdens, I mean you were not born in Japan and and things are clearer and you were not born in the Netherlands, where things are clearer and so... things accumulated on us, just like Sami, may God rest his soul, predicted and so did Ghazi, may God rest his soul, who said, "We enjoy it but it's not a joy itself." But we didn't enjoy it in the context we were in. You pass through periods of being upset and... collecting your money was a problem in itself [He laughs].

- And when did you get into art?

- That was a strange coincidence. I was raised on the love of art and literature but that was brewing while I was practicing architecture. I wasn't separated, I mean I loved art, I loved the theater and loved the cinema and followed up on those and stuff but to step out of architecture wasn't a probability. All of us, the architects, boys and girls, draw and paint but when I was a child, as a child, I drew well and played musical instruments. In addition to drawing well I was lucky that a teacher called Ratib Al Qatami, may God rest his soul, taught me, not one of the Kuwaiti Qatamis, he was a Palestinian Qatami, and he was a calligrapher. So Muhammed Al Hadeedi taught me art and watercolor and Mr. Ratib Al Qatami taught me calligraphy. He taught me the basics of Ruqʿah and Naskh scripts and taught me the theory of proportions. That was enough for me, when I became an architect, to know the rest of the story, okay? So until now I remember him, standing by the board, making a stroke and showing me the... the number of dots in an Alef, in Naskh and the number of dots in an Alef in Ruqʿah. The Ba... Baa, and showing me all those. Then I grew up, writing and writing. My father's handwriting was beautiful, all of his friends, I remember their letters, those who studied in Al Mubarakiya, their handwritings were beautiful for educational reasons, they called it Ruqʿah following the frond system, on the diagonal. So the letters of my friends, my father's friends, from Cairo and Bombay, when they wrote, were almost the same, not the handwriting itself but it's geometry and the style of aligning the words and I told my father and he said, "Son, they taught us to write that way." So you are talking about the vision of education. I liked my father's handwriting and he collected manuscripts too, so my eyes got used to seeing hands... beautiful handwritings and manuscripts. My father used to look for old copies of the Qur'an, old codices, written by hand or perhaps printed only once but they are originally hand written, partially or fully. Mr. Ratib knew that my handwriting was good and I learned from him calligraphy and I tri... tri-- I liked to-- and he'd tell me things like "Your handwriting is beautiful." And stuff. All those brewed while I was unaware, so how did I get into art? All those things brewed while I was unaware. I took elective courses, in America, in arts, electives, sculpture and more, 2, 2, 3D, three dimensional design but not architecture. Those brewed... one of my teachers taught me figures; we studied drawing bones, muscles and human being, nudes, bone, with the medical students; architecture, medicine and arts students studied together and drew together. My teacher said, "Why don't you join us, at the college of arts?" And I replied, "I'm committed to a scholarship in architecture." And he said, "I can talk to the embassy. Why don't you switch to arts?" That's a story that stuck to my memory. He said, "Your hand is good and your sense is very good." I said to him, "No, I'm committed and I'm pleased." He gave me very high marks, I aced in art easily, absolutely easily, without any effort at all. When we talk about my projects aaa it gets-- architecture was a lot harder. So that teacher said to me, his name, I still remember his name, it was, Dick Dale or Richard Dale, he said... he said to me, "I'll tell you something, you're gonna be a good architect but you're gonna be a much happier artist."

- [She laughs].

- It's still ringing in my ear, like Mr. Hamid's word, when he said to me, "You are going to be a good architect but I'm telling you that you'll be much happier." What he said was one hundred per cent right. When I went into art I felt a lot happier. I was sad for not being able to express, through architecture, what I wanted. Because a building is easy so what's the story? Aaa to save the time, it kept brewing in my mind till I became 45. My kids had just joined university and I was living in Puerto Rico, my wife is from there. My wife went... joined the PhD program and my kids went to university, the older ones, so she went to the university and said to me once, "Fareed, what do you need?" We had a small company, which we started there, and I said to her, "Get me a bottle of Indian or Chinese ink, a big one, any watercolor brush, but big ones, as big as aaa-- my hand is itching, my hand is itching." She said, "What's the matter with you?" I said, "I don't know but my hand is itching, get me the biggest watercolor paper, a box of water color paper." She said, "What are you up to?" I said, "I don't know, I'm writing something but I don't know what I'm writing." I had small sketches which I was-- but my hand was itching, itching, just like that, it wasn't like I was going to be an artist, no, no, it wasn't like that. Anyway aaa I had made some sketches, with meaningless letters, almost like the disconnected letters of the Qur'an because I began to understand that the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research was written KISR, so I wrote abbreviations and I said, "Oh, we also have letter abbreviations, with no meaning, in the Qur'an, aaa I have the indexed dictionary of the Qur'an, by Muhammed Fu'ad Abdul Haqq, so I looked for all those letters and found they were 14 vocal movements. You know how a boom happens? The-- the brush went boom, boom, boom, boom, one after the other, boom, boom, boom, they came out one after the other. At the time, the September 11events took place.

03:45:14

- Mmm...

- After that, I'd already issued that collection. I established, with a group, a group of immigrants, because I lived in Puerto Rico for four years, aaa a society, which we called the Arab Businessmen Society, the Arab businessmen and the Arab Professionals in Puerto Rico, a chapter, we made it legal. Of course those were not people of religion, they were a mixture, I mean immigrant Lebanese and Palestinians and I was the only one from the Gulf among them, they chose me by the name. I mean someone said to them, "There is someone, staying in a house up the mountain." I knew him because he had a carpet shop in the mall and I bought carpets from him. He said to them, "That Kuwaiti lives up the mountain, he looks educated but I don't know what he is doing up there." They got me into the group and I started it with them. We had a Palestinian millionaire, who owned about-- fifty pharmacies. He studied at Yale and his family had a small pharmacy. Then he got... there was a family, in Puerto Rico, who were fighting over their pharmacies, they were distributing their property and they bought all that family's pharmacies. He was the chairman. Then September 11 happened. There was a Moroccan architect, with us, whose hobby was music and he had... he had hours on the radio of the university of Puerto Rico. We gathered after September 11, a mixture of people, not specialized in religion, I mean from different religious backgrounds, we had some Christians, a dentist, with Palestinian and Lebanese businessmen etc-- one Moroccan and one from the Gulf, only one Moroccan and only one from the Gulf, me. The hit took place and we thought we'd have a program to cover the September 11 blast, blah, blah, blah. We worked on a media plan to guide us on what to do. He said, "I'll broadcast, on the radio... I'll increase the broadcast hours and repeat music from Oman to Morocco, through the Gulf, and talk about that." They called me to conduct interviews with our boys and girls, he wanted them... the country wanted to know who we were, huh? But luckily we were not the extremists, I mean-- and and... then he told me... I remember the architect, his name was Sabbana, he said to me, "Have you got any art work?" I said, "Yes, I've just done some... but I don't know." He said, "Let's hold an exhibition." There was also a colleague, he is now a prominent engineer in Qatar, his name is Hasan Al Sawwan, from a Palestinian family that lived in Kuwait and Qatar, he was also a zealous activist. An exhibition, we took a hall in the university. I showed 25 pieces and he showed 25 more and we had interviews, here and there while Sabbana was shouldering... then we brought an Azhari Sheikh, who was [He laughs] he was there. Hasan Al Sawwan said, "They called us." We had a part... aaa the governor, a woman of the island, the governess of the island represented the Senate and he said to me, "She wants to get a Rabbi, a bishop from a church and a Sheikh to interview them on TV and each of them will give a speech after September 11."

- Mmm...

- We had many immigrants in the-- in Central and South America. We brought that Azhari man, he was a nice Egyptian man, we sent his clothes to a dry cleaner and made his uniform elegant, his jebbah. His English was weak so we sat with him coaching him. His English was simple but we wrote him a speech to read. He spoke poor English but he was so smart. Hasan and I wrote him the speech, he wrote it in Arabic and we translated it, for him, into English and made him read it [He laughs], we gave him some coaching, and we went, as his guerrillas with him.

- [She laughs].

- We were in suits and he was in in his maroon hat, white turban and jebbah. We went and the Governess saluted us. The Rabi sat next to him [He laughs] while Hasan and I were behind him, then he gave his speech. I mean I went into art by chance; I was just writing and it all happened... I came to Kuwait.

- What year was that?

- The year after September, September 11, I came to find the story of the second attack on Iraq, they bothered us--

- 2003.

- Yes, Saddam harassed us a lot, you know, and one of the reasons that I left the profession was that Saddam moved the army twice a year and consequently our projects stopped, ours, KAO's and others'. He moved the army and the architects stopped; we postponed the project, suspended the execution and suspended the supervision, we suffered in the consultancies and so did the contractors.

- That's the generation of safety and security.

- Yes, that's the safety and security, yes, damn him, he killed us. Anyway, I came because I had things to attend to in Kuwait, I had an inheritance and things, things with the Ministry of Social Affairs etc. I was attending to those and I don't know how but I met Lubna Sayed Omar, she is a friend, so close to my heart, and her father was... Al San'uosi wanted to present me, in a program with him. I knew that her father died and Al San'uosi said to me, "I must present you in a program with him." She said, "What have you got?" I said to her, "I've done so and so and I have so and so." She said... she is very much into networking... She said, "You have modern calligraphy art? Show me, can I see one?" I showed her one, I opened it in the car and she said, "I'll tell you where to go." Where? She introduced me to Dr. Ghunaim Al Faiyz, may God rest his soul. He and his wife, Jameela Al Ibrahim had just opened a gallery, in Salmiya. She grew up with Jameela, with Dr. Hasan Al Ibrahim, who was the minister of-- huh? "Come, come" [He laughs]. I went but Dr. Ghunaim wasn't there and Jameela met me and said, "Fareed, I'm... It's nice to meet you." And we became friends, lifelong friends and Dr. Ghunaim died, may God rest his soul, his death broke our hearts but we became friends, their kids are our friends and neighbors now. Jameela, Jameela and Ghunaim were my neigh... neighbors. When Ghunaim came he said, "An exhibition." Boom, an exhibition? Is that for real? [He laughs], okay? All my work got snatched away and my hands kept going, I wasn't even planning on going into art or not going into art and... and although my capabilities make it very easy for me to make figurative and abstract art, there was something deep about the language and the composition of the language and... not because I wanted to make letter art, I wasn't going that way and I didn't intend to become an artist, that was a cultural and linguistic storage that got out that way. Perhaps one day I'll do something else, I just did it by chance or because of the accumulation of the subconscious, I mean I didn't get up one morning to say, "Today I'm going to be an artist" or "I'll make art." I wasn't, I wasn't. But architecture contributed a lot to that because the courses of design, the courses of theory and the courses aaa they enriched the background. A calligrapher once said to me, "I could never know that this is... This is strong calligraphy but the schools of calligraphy can never do this today, you are coming from a different place." I said to him, "I'm coming from the college of architecture." He said, "These strokes are not common." I said, "Yes, we can knock down a wall and build a wall, we are not afraid of breaking a letter, you fear that but we don't, we..." Sometimes I reject a whole wall and say to the contractor, "Knock it down, it's nonsense." "We have boldness different from yours," He said, "There's a boldness that doesn't exist in the common schools of calligraphy." And I replied, "It's coming from [He laughs] another port; from sculpture, modeling, architecture, design and so on and so fort." So... and someone said to me once, "You're breaking things." I said to him, "No, no, no, don't give me that, I know the theory of the golden ratios in architecture we break them, build them or even stretch them. You follow the old school but for us it's something that we know very well, we know it well. You are afraid but we aren't. The traditionalists said, "You and a group like you, a group of Arab and Moroccan calligraphers went into the field from the school of art and architecture." The traditional calligraphers were upset and I said to them, "You don't get it, those who went into calligraphy from the school of art and architecture, whether Moroccans, Iranians or Indians, came from the schools of fine arts or sculpture or architecture. You know, I mean you must go back to the origins." They said, "What?" I said, "You are within the school of art, you need to study art but should you stick to calligraphy you'd be traditional craftsmen and imitators. You follow just one of the subjects of the college of Fine Arts or sculpture, at the time, should you study it... You are upset because that Moroccan artist, male or female, breaks the rules because they've studied sculpture-- why are you upset?" [He laughs] They are upset, you know, there are amazing Moroccans, Iranians and Turks. I said to them, "You don't get it." They got upset and we had... we had a meeting, here at the Calligraphy Museum, and they went, "What are you doing? Why are you doing this?" They brought us, here in the university once, they brought from someone from Al Azhar, they brought a calligrapher, they brought him from Egypt, for me and for Al Ballam, because we taught a class with beginners who used calligraphy and when they asked why and stuff we said, "You talk about the theory of the golden ratios, we didn't invent it, it's been there since the time of the Pharaohs, the Assyrians and the... and the Greeks. Ibn Muqla benefited from it and used it in calligraphy; he made it elegant and made it something, he gave it style. I accept that with pleasure and we still say it, learn the classics, we still say that. Just like a poet who learns the classics then writes modern poetry. Or when you learn the basics, at the college of music; you know Bach, Beethoven, Scarlatti, Vivaldi and others then you compose modern music, what's the problem? You learn the basic rules but that doesn't mean that you must stay... and so on. So I went into art with mere unconsciousness and coincidence, I hope is [He laughs].

- Excellent, for how long have you been in the field?

- Goodness, since 2003 and this month they will get me 10 carpets, of my work, from Turkey.

- Mmm...

- Carpets this time.

- Mmm...

- I made jewelry with calligraphy and now I'm making a knife, a spoon a-- spoon, inspired by calligraphy. My problem is where to find casting. Today Khalid Zamani, one of my friends, talked to me, you must go to his factory. They are a family working in gold and jewelry but Khalid had, he has a small factory and he is looking for me, of course he doesn't do that but he's looking, in the market, for someone who makes casting.

- Yes.

- If not I must go to Egypt or Turkey or India or Japan or Korea. I just want something simple, that's to see, I mean you try now to... Okay, I know that in Kuwait I can do jewelry but can I make a knife in Kuwait? For eating? It turned out that some people do that but with aluminum but I want to make a compound of brass and metal, it'd be like... like yellow but a little bit whitish. I saw that in Korea but I liked the composition and Khalid said, "I can do it for you but I must find someone to give me a table." So I want to try it in Kuwait, to cast iron.

- Mmm...

- Yesterday, yesterday aaa we found a Kuwaiti young man who makes 3D... 3D printing and I made the process, I changed it from wax to 3D printing. - Mmm...

- But we must take the risen and make it into a mold but I'm trying... exploring what's in the Kuwaiti market, among those shops--

- Right.

- Who casts iron, who casts brass and who who-- so you, so it turned into an art, product design and-- but it's really fun, it's rewarding, not financially but rather... but I'm excited about the carpets.

- God willing.

- Two have arrived which was good then a group, aaa I like to see the professional explanation but some professionals sometimes degrade things [He laughs] so now I'll see the coming ten and how they would be like, I don't want to take too long.

- No, on the contrary.

- Yes.

- On the contrary.

- Yeah.

- We're enjoying this.

- Mmm...

- Aaa--

- I hope the younger generation won't have our frustrations, aaaa I remember, with Sami Al Bader, may God rest his soul, he said, "Why a college of architecture? What will they do? Saturate the market?" I said to him, "No, that's not the target, Abu Basil." He said, "What?" Ahmed Zakaria Al Ansari was like a father to me and we were in his diwaniyya, here in Idailiya, I said to him, "We need a creative catalyst." [He laughs] "We want girls and boys to compensate for the small size of the country with creative power, which was originally there before the oil because the oil is not... is not lasting. What made this country a country were the ability, speed, entrepreneurship and creativity of the society, so we need to increase the number of such people because they are growing fewer." [He laughs]. He laughed and said, "I agree, I agree."

03:58:27

- [She laughs]

- I said to him, "No, no, they don't necessarily have to be architects." I remember a friend of ours, Husain Al Awadhi, who died with lung cancer, he was an active architect and we said to him, "No, we discussed the young people, the point is not for all of them to become architects and work as designers, for all of them to work as teachers or work in the Public Works and the municipality. We want a group of young Kuwaiti men and women to become a creativity bomb that activates and moves, to work as bankers, as real estate developers, to become fashion designers, it's up to them, it's up to them." That... that ratio was what made Kuwait a country acc... according to our belief, out group's, what turned us from a coastal city into a country and a member of the United Nations, that has its position in the... was that creative spirit, the ad.. ad.. adventure, taking the risk and initiatives and the entrepreneur but when the oil emerged and became a huge bounty, it became a bounty with problems and we became very bureaucratic; our societies want to live on the job security and that spirit of revival and the... [He laughs] continuous prosperity and independence began to fade away turning into what... safety and security and to stick to my job and desk and to peace and safety, no, no, no, we got lost, the whole core of the ignite Kuwait's gone down. Kuwait in the first place, what makes the spirit of a country was that, not this one of safety and security. To sit at the table in comfort, it's not about that.. Da da da da.

- I like the creativity bomb.

- Yes, yes.

- Yes.

- It's a bomb of peace, Ghunaim, may God rest his soul, said, he said, said, "We want a bomb of love, giving, nurturing, and service based." A bomb with baldness, courage and... not hostility, I'm not talking about hostility or rudeness or indecency or pedantry, no, I'm talking about civilized, strong, sturdy and initiative courage. May God rest their souls, they were good, the ones who were with us.

- May God rest their souls.

- Yes... that bomb was Al Ghunaim's.

- Yes.

- A bomb of love and I call it a creative bomb of love.

- My last question.

- Go ahead.

- Aaam.. was there aa mm something you wanted to do but you couldn't? And why? Is there anything else you want to add?

- Ah, all what I want to do is happening but a lot slower than what I want, I mean, aaa I was, I'm almost 62 now.

- I wish you a long life.

- I saw many friends, including your father, may God rest his soul, a generation that worked and sometimes I feel sad because we could've done more and could've achieved more and... our advance is relatively slow and that upsets me a lot, that's the only thing that upsets me. I thank God for a lot of blessings. We've seen a lot and lived a good life. We've toured the world and learned and my experience in childhood was nice with its challenges aa I think we were lucky aa.we, we had many things and we saw good things and and including the things... but no, all in all, we are a lucky generation but regarding our desire to offer the services, I think we are too slow. Our society is slow, too slow for such a small society, I mean a small society must be quick. I'm upset because we lost the Kuwaiti rhythm, I mean a lot of people say silly, repeated and useless things. They are politically correct but it upsets me that we as a society... Norma, my wife, I remember... she taught for a while in Kuwait, in a private school, she said to me, "Fareed, I'll tell you something." She said, "You know, the girls and boys of Kuwait are very creative." She wasn't complementing, I mean she's a mother of Kuwaitis but she said to me, "No, no, I'm not saying that to please you, I think that the genes here, in this small society, are very creative, I mean, so smart and clever." But with that description and according to what I know, we are too slow. That's the only thing I wished it'd been a little bit faster and for us to know a lot of things I mean, my fath.. my father told us once a nice story, he said, "Son, you, who travel abroad, we send you there and you come back with your ideas so advanced and you need some retuning so as to..." I don't want to mention names but this is a true story, on which I'm looking for documents. A headmistress once filed a complaint against me for planting trees across the street while the school was surrounded by scrap cars. We are generations coexisting at the same time and place, I mean all of us are Kuwaitis and all of us coexist in the same time and place. Some people have old-fashioned ideas, she's the one who plays the awful music in the morning and Dr. Adnan Ibrahim knows them and we talked with them. She said that the ministry told her. You complain to the ministry because I planted some trees, which I donated across the street? While behind the other wall there are four scrap cars and mattresses thrown in the garbage in the street? She sent an official letter to remove the trees surrounding the school, they were not around it, they were parallel to a certain area of the school. We have people who fear nature, they are suspicious about threes, huh? They wrote, in the newspapers, that it was dirt, the trees were dirt. We exist in the same time and place, can you imagine that? [He laughs] So sometimes you say that we are not... We are aging, life is... physical life is limited but mm it's natural but you wish you've done more. Right now Dr. Ajmi, Dr. Adnan and I have an initiative for the area to make... I thought I'd turn against that headmistress, if you don't like the tree, I'm presenting, I have already presented, to the society, a map with all the places that must have walkways. I suggested those to them and talked to the board members and we... Adnan, Dr. Al Ajmi, one of our students, Marzooq and I will go to the governor and the manager of the Ahmadi municipality to wood all the walkways of the area.

- [She laughs]

- Life is short, we won't have the time to make parks, I mean I had it on the structural plan to implement the plan of greening around Kuwait, we are behind and the percentage of ignorance is high. I remember Ahmed Al Bahar, Nizar Al Anjari, Ridha Al Matrook, Sulaiman Bahzad and I hugged each other when the decree of HH the Emir was issued with a national plan to green Kuwait, we hugged each other and congratulated each other. I mean we'll turn public spaces green, we were, they were in urban design and I was in the Minister's office, we co.. congratulated each other and hugged each other, in-- in tears and when was that? In 86, 87. The decree was issued in 86, 87, and today I look to see the workers standing on trees, breaking them with their feet and sweep the humus, I'll be giving a lecture on that, the tree leaves must not be removed from the ground.

- Right.

- They must leave it to turn into humus and the humus makes the top soil, they sweep it, with plastic, and send it to the incinerator, we're behind and that's the only thing that bothers me and I go, "Oh my God."

- [She laughs]

- Yes, but I have a lecture which I will give, God willing, on that matter.

- Beautiful.

- Yes but I see, on Instagram, girls and boys, naturalists and environmentalists, they are tackling, Sara Al Ateeqi, they tackle and you go, "Wow, that's good, that's good." But for us, the ones who are used to the fast rhythm, you wish for that to be faster but all in all, aa I mean, I'm telling you, since we were... When you ask me now and I remember Funtas and recall... I say, "Oh my God, we are a lucky generation." That's what I'm talking about. I didn't talk about where we went, in the world, or where we toured, because of our scholarships, we tou-- we toured the world and saw and saw and saw.. I'm talking about Kuwait, which is not... about which they say, "Our weather doesn't allow it."

- Mmm--

- Those who don't like it consider the country ugly and grumble about it all the time. No, you haven't lived my time, no. And what do our pals say now? "What happened?" No, the human side is missing; technology has advanced so far and the human dimension retreated and the environmental dimension retreated. Now we want some of those back. Right?

- Mmm?

- [He laughs]

- We will pass you the baton, God willing.

- God willing.

- God willing

- Is there anything else you'd like to add?

- No, no, thank you very much, thanks

- Okay, aaa my name is Reem Al Ali and we are in Idailiya, at the College of Architecture. Today is October 23-- 24, 2019 and it's 10:30 now. Aaa Mr. Fareed, thank you for agreeing to this additional interview on the invasion. Will you tell me, let's say in the year prior to the invasion or aa at the beginning of 1990, you were in Kuwait?

- Of course.

- With your family?

- Of course.

- How many kids did you have at the time?

- I had aaa of course Ameen and Alia, my first kids, Ameen had been born and Alia had been born while Amara, the third, was born during the invasion so I had two children and my wife and we were in Kuwait during that period.

- And you were working in Kuwait?

- I was working-- aaa... I'd just moved from the public sector, I was the consultant of the State Minister for the Municipality Affairs. After six years of working at the municipality I opened a consultancy office aa I had a license for a consultancy office and... and started working in association with the Kuwaiti Engineer Office, I rented an office from them. I made the architecture and they did the engineering part. I was in a period of transition, from the public to the private sector and had been working for a year in the private sector, yeah.

- That was at the beginning of 1990?

- Yes, yes.

- Aaa... let's say in aaa.. in August?

- Yes.

- Were you in Kuwait?

- Yes, we had just come back to Kuwait. We knew that Saddam was on the borders in August. We were on summer vacation in Puerto Rico, my wife's country, and got the news that Saddam launched threats and mobilized his forces towards the Kuwaiti borders. We thought he was just bickering for financial compensations or blackmailing Kuwait for money. We never thought he'd move... into Kuwait but we were... We were convinced, through our phone calls with our friends and family, that he was pressing so hard to get money from the Gulf but we didn't expect that such pressure would turn into a direct invasion on our land.

- And--

- Despite knowing that... we were-- we were in July and my wife, Norma, gave birth to Amara... was pregnant with my daughter Amara, and the doctor said to her, "You can either give birth in America in October or you can go back before that to give birth in Kuwait." We decided for Norma to come back, because of the kids' school and my work, to give birth in Kuwait. We didn't-- we couldn't stay for more than July and in late July we came back to Kuwait and and in August the invasion took place... We'd been in Kuwait for a week and aware that Saddam massed the troops on the borders.

- And on aa August 2nd, when you heard that Kuwait was invaded, where were you?

- Oh, that's a very sensitive matter aaa we were living in a huge flat, on the ground floor in Aisha Al Salem complex, in Benaid Al-Qar, which is so near to the Dasman Palace and the Kuwait Towers. We didn't hear but rather saw a battle, running so close by, because when we... at dawn we aaa-- began to hear gunshots, not-- not from handguns, aaa machine guns. I was-- at the time I was, I mean, I've had military training sessions while being an officer in the Kuwaiti land engineering corps.

- During the draft.

- In the reserve, the reserve force, so I knew what that meant. So very quickly aaa I was talking to Norma and told her-- we thought it was something internal or-- but no, then we began to realize what was going on from the news and at dawn you could feel the guards, in their complex, running around. Then we, I went up to the upper floors and saw heavy fire shooting all around the Dasman Palace and Kuwaiti armored vehicles coming from Al Sha'ab Palace, on the Gulf Street, our armored vehicles, coming on the Gulf Street, pushing fast with their machine guns towards the Dasman Palace and... they gathered near aaa the Kuwait Towers. It was-- I mean it was very horrible. I began to think quickly about what to do with the kids and and my family was in Jabriya. After some time and before... I mean the day had broken and the sun had risen, we began to see the Iraqi airplanes, above our garden, with the Iraqi flag on their side and I said, "Ah, they had entered the country, they are here." We were... they were going directly to Dasman, I mean in addition to the other directions, there was a special force going for Dasman. Aaa I arranged the things with my kids, I woke them up, got in the car and took them to Jabriya with Norma. I began to see the streets full of Iraqi troops, at many checkpoints.

- Were there checkpoints on the streets?

- Not for inspection, they began-- they began to appear.

- For control?

- Control points, inspections hadn't started yet but you could see their existence on the street and-- and their armored vehicles taking certain positions on crossroads etc. Of course it's a clear military procedure; whenever they seized land they made fixed points, they seized a place and made fixed points. The social and environmental or rather the psychological atmosphere began to be... filled with tension everywhere and the streets turned into chaos. People who... I started moving between Jabriya and the... I wanted to secure my family. In the complex the foreigners began to get scared because our complex had about-- I can say not half of it but almost half of it were foreigners, besides the Kuwaitis. A few of our friends... Fahad Al Sha'iya, may God rest his soul, was there, Abdul Lateef... Lutfi Al Mulla was there. I don't remember if Sheikh Hamad was there at the time or not, Hamad Al Naser, Hamad Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed and the property, the complex was owned by Sheikhs, the sons of Sabah Al Naser, I worked for them as a consultant on some of their projects. Chaos started taking over and everyone began to quietly... aa take aa... secure their lives somehow... or find... find a source because we were in the square of the Dasman area. You are talking about Benaid Al-Qar, the Society of Engineers and the Society of Lawyers then directly comes the Dasman Square so the area was teeming with Iraqi troops. We began, no, to leave and move towards our families, in other areas because the area... the ruler's palace was close to us, it was a horrible day, it was a horrible day indeed.

- And you moved, on the same day, to Jabriya?

- Yes, I took aa Norma, she was seven months pregnant with aa Amara aa then aaa I went and secured her at my father's house and began to think, "Ah, he's hostile to America and he-- they will search for... aa the IDs of those with us." My wife had the... they started talking about that, on the radio, the foreigners and stuff, the Americans, the British etc. Propaganda began to spread and people got glued to their radios, listening every day so... how could we handle the... All of us, the Kuwaitis with foreign wives, whether aa Spanish, Americans, Italians, French and so on... we began to communicate to see how to start preparing for our wives to communicate with... the American embassy had been in touch with its subjects earlier, giving them updates, if there was a threat or not and they said that the Iraqis were getting ready and stuff... aaa we were not surprised that... that a crisis took place but we were surprised that an invasion took place, we were surp... not surprised that there was a crisis. We lived the period of the Iran--Iraq War aa-- and... and we were during the drills and before them, my brother used to se... he said he'd seen, in Bubyan, the missiles flying from two directions so we got used and we became kind of used to and coexisting with the dis... disturbance at our north borders and got used to the disturbance... we are a generation, I... now since you stirred that matter, a friend of mine once said, he said to me, "Fareed, we were born in a generation of wars." I said, "Yes." He said, "We were born in 57 and those born 10 years before us are our friends." We still have friends and mentors 10 years older than us, they were born in 48, 47, during the Palestine war onward so I said to my friend, Bader, I said to him, "No, if you look at it like that, consider our fathers a generation of war too, because since 1900, early 1900, till today, our region, as a whole, has been in a state of war." It's good that our societies build, marry, celebrate, travel and invest but we've been living a state of war for 100 years. It settles here and breaks out there, it settles here and breaks out there, It settles here and breaks-- I mean all our region, the Arab and Islamic world, the wider circle has, for a hundred years, after World War II or even the first, since World War I actually, has not settled. So it's really good that we build blocks of flats, establish schools, celebrate, plant, trade while we tell jokes. We say that the Lebanese are a people of pleasure, they go out on demonstrations, they have demonstrations these days, we are... Lebanon is a miniature of the Arab World and all of us are a larger picture of Lebanon aa despite the state of instability and war in our whole region, we are societies that celebrate, our children marry, hold birthday parties, set up companies, invest somewhere and inaugurate a project somewhere else, establish the so and so school, I mean it's great of us, in that condition, to live and work.

04:17:44

- Aa you mentioned that, during the invasion, there was aaa communication among the families with foreign wives?

- Yes, yes, yes.

- Have you personally witnessed or heard a story aaa about how they handled that situation?

- Aaaa.

- Or about someone who had a confrontation with the Iraqi soldiers?

- I don't... I don't have stories of that type but I know that the ee embassy began giving alerts to some of their subjects of women, they have a system, for instance my wife was in what they called...

- A club for instance?

- American Women's League and they had lady officials so those officials contacted a list of the American Women's League members and told them to take certain sec.. security measures or to contact so and so in case they needed anything or that the embassy was preparing for their safe exit. It seemed that the other embassies, whether the Japanese, the British or the French had the same system; they informed the women, their nationals, who were married to Amer... Kuwaitis or even the Kuwaiti women married to foreigners, they told them how they'd get them and their children out, so we were toured into that. All we cared about is for our wives not to be caught, or the husbands of Kuwaiti women to be caught. They'd say to them, "You are a foreigner, you are a traitor." They'd take them to a school and shoot them or something or-- or... bargain over them or use them because of their countries' situations, it was clear. Of course they did that to the Kuwaitis, they didn't care, they did, and did it with their citizens, I don't like to say Iraq, it's rather Saddam's regime, who bargain over his people, whether the Kurds or other ethnic minorities, the Assyrians and Christians, the Iraqi minorities, the Turkmen and and and-- etc. Till he got to the Shiites then the Sunnis it was like, "Those who are not with me will get crushed." So we were taken for granted, the Kuwaitis were taken for granted..

- And you were in Jabriya?

- Yes.

- Aa will you tell me about the area, what was it like there?

- Jabriya was was tense but it seemed that the city neighborhoods were less tense than the city center I mean we were on the outskirts of the city center... the-- of course they... we we didn't see because we didn't want to tour the commercial areas, in the country, whether Fahad Al-Salem, Ahmed Al Jaber, Salmiya, Fahaheel or Farwaniya. The news came that they broke into the shops and that looting spread, so the commercial areas... when a trader got their goods out or hid them somewhere, they came at night, broke the doors and seized the-- robberies, I mean the phenomenon of robberies was there... Then we began to hear about the looting of palaces, I mean the palaces of the prominent Sheikhs, the symbols, not the regular Sheikhs, who had villas, among other people's houses, no, they began looking for luxurious houses and luxurious palaces and considered them theirs. We began to hear those... and those stories whether about stores, storehouses or co-op societies... the... people got scared and rushed for the co-op societies to buy and store foodstuff, those were the prevailing phenomena; horror and fear.

- How did you get your daily needs, I mean from the co-op societies, were they available or--?

- We... I mean, mmm, my father wasn't... my father had some faith, in the beginning, and went naturally then we had some... we had employees of many nationalities; we had Arab employees, an old Palestinian employee, Ahwazi Arab and Iranian employees etc. Those brought us stuff because they dealt with different... they dealt with Indians, for example. We had-- we had some Sikhs renting our property. All those began to help us, those who had been renting our property or working for us for 30 or 40 years. Those were some of the ways then there were the people, the neighbors who helped as well. When the Kuwaitis went and bought something or had a slaughtered animal they'd knock on the door and say, "I've got a slaughtered animal, here's another." Or "I've got a slaughtered animal, here's half of it." Those were very beautiful phenomena; our people and neighbors became beautifully closer to each other. "We've gone to the co-op society and bought so and so." They'd knock on your door and gave you so and so.. "We went to so and so and bought..." They did that and so did we, we began to exchange stuff. Some of them were those who worked for us or rented our property and they did that and others were our neighbors who gave us and whom we gave and so on. Beautiful and positive behavior emerged; despite all that stress they gave you something or did something for you or say, "We've gone to the bakery and got you these bags of bread, distribute them among the neighbors."

- Who worked in the bakeries, for instance and the...?

- Young Kuwaiti men began to volunteer and young Kuwaiti women began to volunteer in... in amazing and beautiful different ways and at the same time the matter of medical services; the hospitals, hospitals became empty because many people, the Filipinos left, they were afraid and some of our house workers left, they got frightened or we said to them, "You have the choice to stay or leave."

- How did they leave Kuwait? Through the...?

- Their embassies, I mean the employees and some workers, the Asian employees in general went to their embassies and their embassies contacted them and gave them the choice to stay or leave, some of them stayed and some left. Aa we had Sri Lankans, drivers and so on, some of them left and some stayed aaa people were frightened even our brothers the Egyptians, Arabs and others, they could choose to stay or leave. The Palestinians had different attitudes; some of them were with us while some were against us, with Saddam aaa then suddenly, when that gap appeared the volunteering Kuwaiti girls and boys took the initiative, in all fields, which was a beautiful thing for which we raise the hat for them, including the Kuwaiti resistance and martyrs, males and females, we heard about some of them but we didn't hear about others, later on though, there were writings about them and their pictures and names were published, girls and boys, those have re.. reached the top, I mean they sacrificed their lives and everything. No, there were other classes, in the medical services, in building, in maintenance and in electricity services, they took the initiative everywhere, I mean a girl who worked in an office, in the Ministry of Electricity, could jump to maintenance, for example, with her colleagues.

- What was the situation at the hospitals like? Did you visit any hospitals?

- Aaa I didn't visit any public hospitals, I visited a private hospital, Al Hadi hospital, in Jabriya, because we were discrete, the Iraqi soldiers went to our hospitals and there was an important test, I had to do for my... my wife so we went to Al Hadi hospital. We had a doctor, a friend from the Abu Lughd family, he was well known then left... we forged for her... we began... we began to do forgery.

- Tell me about that.

- Yes, the Kuwaitis started falsification jobs of course, the employees of the Ministry of Interior and other governmental institutions took their machines with them and began issuing false IDs and driver's licenses. I mean we made Norma an Arab Lebanese or Armenian, I don't remember but we gave her a false identity and dressed her in an aba, so she'd look Kuwaiti or-- not Kuwaiti but an Arab so when they looked at the identity, they'd find her in a Lebanese aba or something like that.

- So they can't tell.

- They can't tell-- and the Kuwaitis' IDs changed so they'd be non-Kuwaitis, so when talked to, they pretended to be foreigners. I did just that, later on, when I left with a friend, after we had got them out and she went to... aa we went to... their presence in private hospitals was less than that in public ones because public hospitals are larger, I mean Mubarak, Al Sabah and the la large hospitals, the Iraqi presence was clear in those compared to a few soldiers in the private hospitals, at the doors, in the outside but not inside. There they had more extensive presence.

- Who were the doctors or the medical staff?

- Those who stayed, those who stayed were approached, "Go to work and you'll get paid and stuff." It was a huge mess; they changed the currency, the Kuwaiti currency into Iraqi currency, and changed the license plates and the Kuwaitis refused and didn't use them-- there was a lot of symbolic and psychological resistance.

- So people began to go to work?

- No, those who went, no, those who began going.

- Kuwaitis.

- Those who went to work did it out of responsibility so the water supply wouldn't stop or the water supply wouldn't stop, thank God they did, they went not for the salary, they knew that if they didn't go, the country would come to a halt, they knew that.

04:26:16 - But the schools and ministries for instance?

- No, no, what schools? What schools? They said, "Come to schools and curse your regime." But no one went, all people ignored them but those who worked were the staffs... the staffs aaa the staffs of electricity, water and medical services, Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis, who loved Kuwait, no, those... and some people went with them... I know some relatives of mine and friends, young boys and girls who began to drive ambulances, those were not ambulance drivers, they grad... graduated as engineers or financial affairs clerks but no, no, no, they went into, turned to rescuing in order to help the victims, the murdered and those in the resistance. The corridors were filled with Kuwaitis of different shapes and types, that was it. They also took on the supply... the money supply, the... not only money, money had another operation; it was a political and resistance operation. They looked for money too, I mean the Kuwaitis themselves, it was part of the resistance, on another level, a very sophisticated one. I'm talking about the regular level that no, water and electricity kept running, praise God, the Kuwaitis and members of the resistance got those. Then there were the food and drinking water, for example, those too, those too were run by a huge staff of Kuwaitis; the bread, supp the the food etc. Then those began to paralyze, stores began to run out of stock and there were st... stores of merchants which were opened and their contents went to the... distribution points, the merchants began to distribute...

- For free to the...

- Yes, for free, for nothing or "Take it for the wholesale price, just rid me of the goods and handle them later on." So they gave the goods away for very low prices just go and take them etc. It was evident that in those seven months... we didn't stay for seven months, I stayed for two months, or less, then left for Amara's birth. In addition, I knew that if we stayed, they'd take us. With my earlier training in the army I knew that we became hostages. Young people, of certain ages would be killed or executed so I said to my father later on, I said to him, "Father, we must leave and join our forces and families but if we stayed they'd leave the elderly, they'd leave those and go for males and females of certain ages and execute them." They executed the Kurds, in North Iraq and did it in other places. For them to control the country they had to eradicate the reproductive generation, women and men, they'd either disperse or kill them and the elderly would naturally perish while the young ones, the young ones would be brain washed; those were young enough to be brain washed but people, of certain ages, those they'd execute or kill or disperse. Back to the-- on other levels we knew of, there were political and military resistances going on, with funds and weapons, those were of another type but I'm talking about the daily services for people, those didn't stop for a long time.

- Before we move to leaving Kuwait aaa.. you mentioned the checkpoints, do you have a personal story about that? Have they stopped you?

- Yes, that was regular, it was regular in Kuwait.

- Do you remember something that happened to you?

- No, not in Kuwait, it happened outside Kuwait, when we left

- When aa..?

- There were critical points.

- When did you decide to leave Kuwait?

- What happened was, no, back to the group of us, who were married to foreigners and wanted to get them out. I had a friend, at university, his name is Dr. Malik, his wife and my wife were from the same country, she was a Puerto Rican lawyer, my wife was an architect and his was a lawyer. They were both pregnant, at the same time and we were colleagues, I mean colleagues and friends, and our wives were from the same country so we coordinated things together for the plane... How could they get the Americans out? Jesse Jackson came and Muhammad Ali Clay came and they reached an agreement to allow the Kuwaitis' American wives to leave, in a group, through the Canadian embassy.

- By plane?

- They'd leave, yes, yes, they'd leave, at a certain phase they'd gather at the Canadian embassy and from the Canadian embassy they'd go to Baghdad then leave. We had our ears glued to the radio, around the clock, to hear what was going on. Of course the lady officials of the American women's movement in Kuwait, the American Woman's League, coordinated things because you couldn't trust whatever was said, they must say it themselves, yes. "Go to X point, it's your assembly point." Of course those were very sad and tense moments; your wife, with a belly this huge, and your two kids and you are bidding them goodbye as they are going to Baghdad. You are getting them into the trap again and your heart... no but there were assurances and... and we arrived and all of us, the Kuwaitis, saw that we knew each other, the group was by the buses, saying goodbye to our kids and wives to...

- Just the women and children?

- Just them, we said goodbye to our women and children, by the bus that would go to the Canadian embassy, to fly them next from the airport to Baghdad and we ag agreed... You could see tears and people exchanging goodbyes and the kids crying baba, baba and mama, mama etc. Aluiya, my daughter... such a scene, it was such a scene. Many of our friends aaa... They got aboard the bus and we left, with our hearts beating heavily, praying for them to arrive safely, God willing with our ears glued to the phones. They reached Baghdad then aaa my wife said to me, Um Ameen said to me, "They did a trick when we got there, all of us, they said 'those can't leave, the women will leave without their children because the children are Iraqi subjects.'" It was another act and the kids talked and cursed aaa--

- That was in Baghdad?

- Yes, the children spoke Arabic and English and they kept chattering about Saddam and the invasion of Kuwait and the mothers went, "Hush, keep silent, don't talk," and so on. The children talked to each other, they didn't know politics. What happened? Saddam invaded Kuwait. Where are we? In Baghdad. Those were there and the children kept talking to each other so the mothers hugged their children and said to them, "Don't talk, we are in Baghdad so be careful." So aaa the American and the Canadian embassies replied saying, "No, we haven't said that, they'll leave with their children." And the Iraqis said, "This one's name is Ameen Fareed Abdal and this one's name is Jasim Ali Al Ali and that one's name is Reem so and so Al Ali, no, no, no, no, these are Iraqi subjects, they are Kuwaitis and so they are Iraqi subjects, no, no, no, they won't leave." They did a trick, their names were on their passports. The ambassadors said, "No, no, we agreed that the mothers will leave with their children." They spent 8 hours more or a few hours more to... while we were on our toes, all of us and the women were on their toes, it wasn't reasonable for him to separate them, he wanted to separate them to make a deal. He wanted to make a deal with the Americans, make a deal with the French and make a deal... and arrogance, personal arrogance as if "I am great so honor me and talk to me," etc. "No, I'll take their children, all of them have Arabic names and they are Arab children. If they are children of Kuwaitis they are Iraqi subjects now and you are kidnapping them." She said to them, my wife's friend, a lawyer, María Luisa the lawyer, Dr. Malik's wife, said the same thing, she said, "Be patient, he's fooling around and negotiating." They kept them for a few extra hours then released them, with their children, and they arrived to Jordan then flew to North Carolina, I think, as I recall now. When we knew that they arrived at Amman we felt relieved, all of us, and began calling each other, "Have you heard the news? Yes they arrived at Amman, great." Because Amman was playing an in between role, in the middle, but we knew that Amman was safer than Baghdad. Then they flew to North Carolina and that was the stage which... aaa their exit then we, the other groups-- aaa I think Dr. Malik was in the army before me and so we knew... yes, he was a consultant of radar security, I was in the corps of engineers and he was a consultant of radar security, because he was an electronics engineer. We met, because we were reserve officers and he said, "What will they do?" I said to him, "They will arrest us, all of us, from ages 16 - 18, even those who haven't joined the army, to ages 45 - 50. Those are the ones who have the ability, men and women. They will execute us or hurt us, I mean they won't, they won't leave us, no. The elderly, they think, will perish and the children they'll brainwash them, if they stay... stay in the country I mean. So we'd better be af-- leave and see what we're going to do, out there, join our forces or our Kuwaiti systems abroad, there was a resistance, many forms of financial, cultural, military and political resistance etc etc... We'll write, whatever, but we must leave because..." I also went to my father, my father didn't want to leave, I said to him, "Father, it's so and so." I said to him, "I advise that even my brothers, around my age, shouldn't stay, they can go to Saudi Arabia, anywhere, the Emirates, then we'll see a way to arrange things because... and let's have a room, for your valuables, like many other Kuwaitis, who did the same. They have a room in the basement which they block with cement it has no doors, they kept their valuables there and blocked it." I have a handicapped brother, whom they wanted to take, as I heard later on. A handicapped brother and they wanted to take him as a prisoner. My father went to them and said, "He is handicapped, what do you mean prisoner? He's handicapped, handicapped, what prisoner?" I mean aaa... aa anyway aaa I said, "Even you, father, leave." He replied, "No, no, I'm not leaving, we're staying." I said, "Pardon me, father, I think this will happen and and I'll be back to you, if God destines it." So me and Malik, Dr. Malik planned to leave, each of us with a friend or two.

- By land?

- Yes, we left twice but they caught us at Fahaheel and Ahmadi and sent us back, because the Kuwaitis who left before, those who left south were so many.

- Will you describe that to me in details? What car did you choose? What did you take with you?

- Yes, on our first attempt Malik and I left in their car, a regular Chevrolet jeep or something, we left together and--

- What did you take with you for instance?

- In the first time we just left, we didn't study the matter well enough. People said that they let the Kuwaitis leave towards Saudi Arabia, of course the first groups left in the first week, those who escaped quickly, since the very beginning; some political figures, who left in a hurry and were sneaked out, those were followed by a whole group, because had they been caught, they would've been killed. So they left the southern road open on and off, on and off, on and off. Sometimes they opened it and sometimes they didn't but the first groups left in huge numbers, those escaped to the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain etc... by car so we went... aaa with our IDs aa as Kuwaitis, to leave like people left but oops... the road was blocked, it was over--

- What month was that? Sorry.

- That was maybe... the invasion was on August 2nd... we are talking about aaa...

- October?

- Early September, after they left... I can't remember exactly but it was right after our wives left, through the Canadian embassy, we began to plan for leaving after them-- so in a few days or a week, after they left-- I mean we can find out the date on which they left... How the Canadians got them out... that has a specific date, we could search wise find out. Within a week, following that, we began to... we wanted to leave and we had two attempts towards the south but we found it a dead end, Kuwaitis couldn't leave for Saudi Arabia any more, you couldn't go to Saudi Arabia.

- What was it like on the borders?

- At a certain point "Where are you going?" "We're going to aaa Bnaider." "What for?" "We want to cross to Saudi Arabia." "No, no, what? There is no going to Saudi Arabia, we've closed the borders, you can't leave, go back, go back, there's no Saudi Arabia." "We are Kuwaitis and want to leave and go to Saudi Arabia." "No, you can't." We tried twice then we thought there was no hope in that direction and we devised another plan. We have aaa friends, we have acquaintances and even relatives aaa among the people of aaa... Muhammarah, in Ahwaz, I mean we had a man, a manager, who was renting a garage, from us, in Shuwaikh, he was from Ahwaz and we have... aa I'll tell you something, I mean... It's history and it doesn't matter... we must record this. In Kuwait we have a huge denial of our ethnic and tribal connections to the Iraqis and the people of Muhammarah, huge denial, all of us don't look at that direction but we don't have that in our family. Aaa we have origins, not close ones, and relatives in Iraq. We have origins and relatives in Muhammarah, a lot of them, including the family of Sheikh Khaz'al, our in-laws and relatives. One of our relatives, Yaser Khaz'al, they were leaving, they had a boat and they were leaving Kuwait because their aunts were Kuwaitis and we're their relatives. Take for example the Al Rifa'i family, Al Naqeeb family and others... Al Gharaballi family, all of us, even our Sheikhs have relations with and connections to Muhammarah, Az Zubayr, Basra, Al Faw, the lands of Abu Al-Khaseeb, okay? So we have connections there and we also have relatives in Iran and... Iran and Muhammarah, the Arabian Iran or Khuzestan. I said to Malik, "Let's make a plan." Malik's grandmother was Iranian, from Isfahan, my grandmother was a Turkmen but we had no communication with them while he was in touch with his. Our relatives, Abdals, were in Muhammarah in in Kufa and Amarah, I mean the tribe and clans, as families we knew each other, like the family of Al Naqeeb, the family of Al Bader etc... We found out that the man, who was renting our property, knew women leaving Kuwait because they-- they worked in Kuwait. We changed our names into theirs. Now we hid our IDs as Kuwaitis and used Ahwazi names that matched those people's names, as if we were their cousins, born in Kuwait, a good plan. We falsified the IDs... We hid our passports and made fake civil IDs, we told them we had made IDs or drivers' licenses.

- Where did you.... the...?

- Someone from the Ministry of Interior did... they falsified documents for the Kuwaitis, all of them, whoever could do something did it.

- He took your pictures and...

- He didn't take pictures, we gave him a photo and he added it to a car... your name on a license.

04:40:28

- A driver's license, yes.

- A hundred per cent Kuwaiti, okay? That man's name was Sa... Salem... Salemian Al Ka'bi, he wrote our names like that and and... even the Ahwazis, when Iranization started they changed the name into Salemian. His name was Salem and so he added that syllable to his name to Iranize himself and so they forged our names. There was an old woman with us, she became our aunt, Malik and I, as if we were relatives, Malik and I, not from the same family, but we, the Kuwaitis, look alike with their tanned color and stuff. It worked well. We left with that family, the Ka'bis, who are also our relatives, with the the Khaz'als, right. We prepared the car and left with the old women. Malik took a lot of cigarette packets with him and said, "Fareed, this time we must leave, the other direction didn't work, this time we will get out." We were desperate to leave. He took some cigarette packets with him, "What's the matter with him?" I wondered, I didn't know such things. He said to me, "No, give the Iraqi soldier packet of cigarettes and he'll let you go, okay?" So we had the cigarette packets and I said, "We must not pretend." He said, "How?" I said, "I don't speak Iranian." Malik spoke a little Iranian and our features-- he said, "No, we are Ahwazis born in Kuwait so we speak Kuwaiti, okay?" Great. [He laughs]. We rode with the old woman, the old man and a driver and went to Basra. "Your IDs?" We heard that a few times. When you went that direction they didn't say anything but when you went towards Saudi Arabia, no, they blocked the way. They let us into Basra. Now what was the critical point? There was a point that belonged to the United Nations, which we wanted to reach, it had the blue flag. Beyond Basra you could see many check points and they got more extensive till a certain zone, that's where the Iran-Iraq war stopped, a zone, over which the United Nations flag was raised and we wanted to ent... enter that zone and from there we'd enter Iran to take a plane, from anywhere, to go to Europe or America, that was our destination. At the moment our hearts were beating heavily, we wanted to reach that blue flag, of the United Nations. Anyway, at the last point an officer caught us and separated us, Malik and I, and took each of us to to a spot behind the gra... the vegetation, high reeds. We had crossed Basra towards the Khorramshahr area, on the Iran--Iraq borders just beyond The Shatt al-Arab He held us separately. At the moment I thought, "It's death now, it's either kill or be killed." He questioned us separately, "What relatives do you have?" I said, "The family of Ka'bi, so and so." "Who else?" He said and I replied, "My cou my cousin, Yaser Khaz'al." He said, "His name is Yaser?" I said, "Yes." He said, "What proves that the one who passed by us, is your relative?" I said, "They have a boat." It was true, they had a boat, what I said was matching. He said, "Why... why don't you speak the Iraqi or the Ahwazi dialect?" I said to him, "I was born in Kuwait " He looked at me as if he was saying, 'I know you are lying.'" And I looked as if I was saying, "I know that you know, do whatever you want." It was a str a strange sight, a strange sight. As if he was saying, "I know this is a mess, we are in a mess, we are so close, we are Arab brothers and our countries have blood relationships." He kept looking at me and I at him. A moment of silence prevailed and he nod-- he looked down, I was pleased that he looked down then he said, "Go ahead, go." I mean, I thought I'd kill him or-- he'd either slay me or I'd slay him, I could've done it behind that long grasses. He looked down as if he'd been ashamed of what he did. He said, "Why do you speak the Kuwaiti dialect? Why don't you speak the...?" I replied, "I was born in Kuwait." I didn't lie [He laughs] in that sense. Aaa there are other ironic situations, historical ones about which I'll tell you later if aaa there's time-- but it was... Later on I asked Malik and he said that it had been the same and that he... but on the way to Basra Malik kept distributing aaa cig... cigarettes. When we reached the zone, that had the blue flag of the United Nations, we felt as if we were carrying the entire earth on our backs and now we were relieved. The United Nations troops knew that we were coming from that direction then we crossed to the Iranian side, which was in another point, and there they received us and we said, "No, we are Kuwaitis." "Where are your passports?" "Here they are."

- Had aaa many people taken that trip?

- Yes, but not so many like the... the first group, which left towards Saudi Arabia-- that was a big group... We thought they were a mixture, like us, and that there were Kuwaitis sneaking out among other varied communities etc-- but we did it and we spent a few days in Ahwaz.

- And you said you had Kuwaiti passports?

- Yes, we were hiding them.

- Weren't you afraid they'd find them?

- Of course, had they searched us, we would've been done for. We had our passports to travel, how? We must leave with our passports but they didn't ask, "Where is your ID?" Huh, they said for instance, "Where is your passport?" And you'd say, "My passport got burned," in a story we made up. "It was burned in the passport-- the passport building. The civil ID and the passport were burned, in the passport building. We didn't find them, we were renewing our passports and this is all what we got." They knew, you know, they knew and we knew that all that was a concoction, all what happened was a concoction on different levels, we knew. But what was the story? Even the Iraqi soldier, you could feel that... other than the fools, there were foolish soldiers, mean ones, like a dog that you'd whistle for. Ultimately he was an Arab citizen, who knew that we were their cousins, across the street from them, whether he was an Iraqi, I mean you... I used to say to our students, "Imagine a tribal person, for example, even a tribal Iraqi, imagine, let's say an Iraqi Enizi, Dhufairi, Shammari, could he raise the gun in the face of an Iraqi. Kuwati Enizi or Dhufairi, or a tribal Kuwaiti? And the same with city people; someone of the Al Bader family or Al Naqeeb family, from this or that side, it's a story, or an Abdal from there raise the gun in the face of an Abdal from here? Or a member of Al Hakeem family and another Al Hakeem from Kuwait? Or Al Ali against Al Ali? It was a charade, just like that of North Korea and South Korea and South Yemen and North Yemen; this is your cousin an now we're fighting each other, it was a troublesome situation at the same... troublesome for us as Kuwaitis and troublesome for the Iraqi citizen, who wasn't raised on that, since his childhood he learned from his fathers and grandfathers that we are cousins, we are neigh-- neighboring Arab countries, we have connections and family relations, we have mutual trade, marriages, cousins, aunts. It was the same for the Az Zubayri etc. How could you fix that? What would you do?

- And you reached Iran.

- We went in, yes, we went into Muhammarah, thr... through an Iranian point and they asked us and we said, "Here are our passports." They stamped them and stuff aaa I mean they were-- they were not very welcoming but they questioned us, they asked questions, I mean you were subject to interrogation; From which area are you? Where are you from? They didn't... didn't want an Iraqi to get in, an Iraqi intelligence officer could get a Kuwaiti passport and get in, so they had to question us. It was okay, our dialect, names, areas and stuff. We showed our hidden Kuwaiti civil IDs and passports and... they released us saying, "Go wherever you want to... What's your destination?" We said, "We'll be joining our families abroad, outside Kuwait." Iran was a jump point and we'll go... the ones going to the Emirates will go, the ones going to the Europe will go, the ones going to Saudi Arabia will go the ones going to Bahrain will go. They knew... they knew that we just wanted to escape from him, those who wanted to stay in Iran could because they had friends, relations and relatives, if they have relatives and interests there, some of them were traders and knew and traded with many people.

- And financially, how did you manage?

- We were-- we had... we had Kuwaiti money, we had dollars and we exchanged some into Iraqi money, to give them, but we had dollars for bribes; to bribe an Iraqi give him dollars or Kuwaiti dinars.

- Where did you get that from?

- It was... you could... the money exchange offices, it was the same, I'm telling you, I mean like goods. Aaa in Kuwait, all of a sudden, a new mechanism emerged, the money exchangers began to supply money, banks began to supply-- you couldn't know, I mean a strange cooperation began, in Kuwait, a strange networking, a very beautiful one. You'd say, "I need dollars," and someone went, "I'll get you some." You could exchange money with a friend; you gave them Kuwaiti dinars and they gave you dollars. Your neighbors; you asked, "Who has dollars?" And they got you dollars-- "Who has a ba.. basket..." The Kuwaitis got you anything, I mean we began to follow a wartime behavior; close cooperation and unusual networking. They could get you IDs, any name you wanted they wrote for you and whomever you want to be they'd make you, imagine? No, and the one who was doing that for you was a Kuwaiti officer, from the Ministry of Interior, he forged you any ID you wanted; because he wanted to save you and save others. So there was a cooperation and we left with dollars and...

- And from Iran you went to...

- We went and stayed in Muhammarah, in a town which had... they call it... Shadegan, something like Shadegan, those were Arabic names, which they made Persian. We met our friend, he did great, Salem Al Ka'bi, he gave us a huge feast. Aaa we knew that many Kuwaitis went to different places, his house... Yaser's house, we didn't find the Khaz'als but we we knew that the Khaz'als went back. We didn't stay for long; three days at Al Ka'bi's and at the house of a friend of the old woman's, whom we went out with, where they hosted us. There you could see abas, iqals, head covers, beshts and stuff. They gave us such a huge feast; sheep, fish and chickens. They put the head of the carcass in front of you, I mean we as Kuwaitis are also tribal people and so on. So they brought the carcasses and put them in front of us, placing the head of the carcass, the traditional way, facing you and said, "Go ahead, please." They comforted us, I mean, they offered coffee and stuff in the diwaniyya, they were like you know-- they relieved our grief a little. "Whatever you want," their people worked for us, in Kuwait, and lived there so Al Ka'bi said to the people there... my father had industrial and mechanical plots, where they worked, so he said, "This is the owner of the place where we work." and so on. "They are related to the so and so family and to those." And and... and so they went, "Huh, what do you need?" They did great, may God reward them well. Then Malik said, "Let's go to Tehran and take a plane from its international airport." He stopped for a short time in Isfahan, to see some of his mother's relatives, who were so kind too, the people of Isfahan were nice and hospitable. They accommodated us in a traditional old house, in Muhammarah we stayed in an old Arabian house, the Arabian style, with a court, diwaniyya and stuff. Then when we went there they took us to an old Persian house, with a faraway bathroom but without a court yard, the other house had a court while this one had a different style. The invited us to tea as well, they took us to a teahouse, a restaurant... a place where they offered us tea. They'd been comforting us until we got there. Then we continued our way, we went north, by car, to Tehran, where we booked airplane tickets to France and from France we flew to the States.

- And your family was in America?

04:51:38

- They had been in Puerto Rico at the... that time-- I mean by the time we left they'd already arrived at Puerto Rico, North Carolina. Both of our wives are from San Juan, Puerto Rico. His wife is from San Juan and my wife is from Ponce de Leon, the city and second capital. We both flew to France and from France we flew to Florida then to San Juan and and... we got there. In a couple of days I... and I think Malik did the same, we have military numbers, I mean we have military records and military numbers from any unit. He was with the radar force and the security of... what do they call it? The flight and radar system, but I wasn't, I was in the land force, the corps of engineers. I called the embassy and said to them, "My name is so and so, my military number is so and so, my commanding officer is Mr. Abdul Rahman Al Hadhood, officers Abdul Rahman Al Hadhood, Waleed Al Hadlaq and Najeeb I think Beshara, those are my commanding officers, I report to them. I am in the so and so place, the so and so address, in case you need anything this is the fax number." They answered me, "Thank you, we are in Washington, and you?" I said, "I am in Ponce de Leon, Puerto Rico and this is my fax number." We waited and from time to time they checked on us, we filled forms and they asked if we needed anything or... I began to jog every day, so I'd be in shape should they summon me but that didn't happen, they answered saying, "We have taken a lot of translators."

- When did you arrive at Puerto Rico?

- That was about aaa I arri... ah, I got there... I'll give you the gauge with my daughter, Amara's birthday. She was born October 16, we celebrated her birthday a few days ago. I arrived two or three days before her birth, to attend it and thank God I wanted to see her being born. I got there to find Norma in labor. When I got there Amara was born, October 16, so it was in October, the invasion was on August 2 and I arrived on October 16.

- You spent the whole period of invasion there?

- I spent the whole period of invasion there and came back aaa at the beginning of the liberation.

- What was the situation like while you were there?

- In Puerto Rico?

- Yes, I mean what did you do every day? How did you communicate with your family in Kuwait?

- Aaa-- mmm... there was no communication, no communication, communication stopped. Then we began to get pie-- pieces of news from different friends then aaa little communication with the embassy, "Do you need anything?" Or they called asking, "Do you need anything?" Aaa I don't remember if it was about benefits of some sort--

- Have you worked for instance in...?

- I tried... But they said to me, "You are over qualified." They didn't have a lot of work and I... I was a private advisor and a consultant of a minister so when they looked at my resume... Someone said to me once, "What-- where shall we hire you? Shall we make you the mayor of the town or what? Where shall we put you?" whatever... Malik worked at the university, my wife worked at the university but I couldn't work, I began to-- because you are pending for... I began to-- I began to jog every day and babysit my children. Norma began teaching and her father gave us some engineering work because he was a prominent engineer and contractor but our psyche was tense. We sent our kids to school aaa I used to jog in the mornings and afternoons just to keep in shape in case. You were torn between being happy for the birth of your daughter and being depressed about your country. It was a very, very tough psychological period for us.

- You spent the whole occupation period in...

- Yes, in Puerto Rico.

- Aa when you heard about the liberation of Kuwait, where were you?

- We were in Puerto Rico.

- Will you describe for me...?

- Aaa... before the liberation we got news that my brothers were taken, my brother and my cousin were taken prisoners, I got the information from a friend.

- What month was that?

- I collapsed, that was at the-- at the end of the invasion, before the end of the occupation, as I told you, I got the news and when I got back to Kuwait my family told me that they'd raided the house. I had a handicapped brother, four years younger than me, he died a-- a few years ago. He was supposed to live for not more than seven years but he lived for 52 years. He was born handicapped, I mean his mental age stayed less than two years but his actual age was 52 years and he couldn't speak, I mean his words were limited and and he was like a giant child, the boy was tall, he was taller than me. When they came they took my brother, Labeed, the lawyer and went... and took my other brother, Waleed then... for reasons unknown, a mix up in names took place, that was the brother of so and so-- a... a mistake happened and my brother was released, in Kuwait, before he they took him away and took my cousin, Ali, and went to take my handicapped brother but my mother began shouting at them, "What do you want? He is handicapped, do you want to see his diaper?" That was how she addressed them and the soldier was amazed and said that he was worried that the boy could be pretending, they feared that he was acting so she said to him, "Shall I raise the dishdasha for you to see the diaper? Look, he is handicapped." I mean they came to drag him and put him in the... he was handicapped and it was such a scene... So aa... when I heard that story I mean I got very upset and collapsed, there in Puerto Rico. They said, "They took Labeed and took your cousin, Ali, and took them to Basra." Of course that was a huge group aaa luckily for him they released them before they took them from Basra to the north. The forces-- allied forces came and cut the Amarah road from above and those who stayed in Basra... those who went north never came back-- those who stayed in the Basra prison went back to Kuwait on foot. There is a photo, which the family keeps, of my cousin, Ali, and a huge group of their Kuwaiti friends, including my brother, Labeed, carrying covers over their bodies and walking in the desert. Above them there was a cloud of... a cloud of rain and oil mixture, I mean it was an awful scene. Later on, when we talked to them, they said, "We drank water off the ground and people threw stale bread at us, as if we were dogs." The Kuwaitis helped each other; some of them began to make sketches, they led each other in prayers, communicated and and re-- recalled things together making... There was a un... my cousin, Ali, says he still remembers the scenes of unity among Kuwaitis, in prison or the place they were held in and... and that affected me a lot, while being in Puerto Rico, I got the news that that my brothers were taken, I consider my cousin Ali a brother because my father raised him so aaa of course you heard about those killed and the news of acquaintances etc. We heard the news of the resistance; the girls aaa Al Qabandi, and and Asrar or Abrar was her name I think and and Qabazard, who was killed, in front of his house, in Jabriya, because in Jabriya news got around fast in Jabriya and stuff and others and others... aaa I don't know, what was your question?

- When did you hear about the liberation of Kuwait?

- The news of course. We followed the news, in Puerto Rico, in English and Spanish, and we listened to the radio too. It started with Bush saying, "Our forces moved to liberate... the allied forces began the liberation." My wife's father was an officer, during the Korean American war so there was a mutual culture and we discussed what might, or might not, happen aaa may God rest his soul, my wife's father, Don Alfonso, he was a radio officer with the American army during the Korean war and I... so we talked to each other about what might or might not happen and what happened or didn't happen etc.

- But what about the moment you heard that Kuwait had been liberated?

- Of course that was a very special moment and a very very happy moment, it was like a miracle that I mean mm aa I heard something from some of the... I remember now, because my memory is getting refreshed, that some of my relatives, the Khaz'als and the Ka'abis too, whom we met in Muhammarah, they said, "They acted treacherously toward Kuwait like they acted treacherously toward Muhammarah and the country will be back, God willing." The word treachery toward Kuwait like treachery toward Muhammarah kept ringing in the circles there and and no one believed that we'd ever get back because we feared that our destiny will be like that of Palestine and Muhammarah and that with an act of treachery the whole country would be gone but thank God, God facilitated things and we restored the country and and--

- And when did you come back to Kuwait?

- We came back after a short period, I mean we didn't stay away for too long. Aaa when they allowed the airplanes, from everywhere to come, we came back at the first chance.

- Which month approximately? - I think, when exactly did the liberation take place? I remember it was in winter, three weeks or four weeks after that, I even remember that we were a small group of Kuwaitis and we flew over Kuwait with the smog still covering it, it was such a scene-- such a scene.

- Can you describe it?

- I remember, on the plane, when we came close to the airport, we saw the lakes of oil, some of which had been extinguished while some were still burning. The plane landed amidst smoke, among clouds and black smoke, we were landing in Kuwait but it looked like an injured country aaa whose blood was running; the blood was the black blood, the oil. You could see the burning wells and spots, spots of black lakes of extinguished oil and the smoke rising from the ground. It was a dramatic scene, I mean grotesque. And when we landed our feelings were aa--

- What was the first thing you saw?

- No, the airport, our airport was recovering and people were meeting their families, kissing and hugging them. We were a group, I mean we met I think in New York, and their families were waiting for them too. Aaa and the country was in a condition... it was still destroyed, the roads were damaged the country wasn't cleaned yet, no, we arrived when the country had just got out of the...

- What did you see, when you left the airport, going home?

- It was the same, I mean our streets were injured, our buildings were injured and you felt that the black smog began to color the walls and that the smoke began aaa... to paint a pale picture on the streets and buildings. The country went through a very tough period and had a sense of depression but the people were very happy, as if they were flowers, I mean-- the people, who received you, when you saw them in the streets, their faces were relieved, they sighed with relief after the calamity and the nightmare that had been on our chests over those seven months. That was there and there was-- there was a spirit of reconstruction, we were focused and indeed we directly-- I remember we went through a period in which we quickly gathered and I remember we set up a group of companies and worked, we made-- it was a kind of healing and stuff but as I told you, our families were so happy, crying and when we got home my father didn't believe it.

- You went from the airport to Jabriya?

- Yes, yes, yes, my father didn't believe it aaa we hugged each other and cried. My mother didn't believe that we came back alive and so on aaa--

- And you went to your place in Benaid Al-Qar?

- Huh, yes.

- How was the...?

- I went to aaa... some officers had been living in my flat then they left it. They had stolen stuff from the... our flat, when we wanted to leave, the most important things I remember we took were our personal files, I mean our personal files, our passports, medical reports; those of our kids, their medical files were essential in addition to the IDs, personal, personal and legal files. And we took, I remember, three or... three carpets, which my father gave us as a wedding gift, we wrapped them and put them in the car, we folded the foldable ones and rolled the ones that could be rolled up. We took our IDs and our family pictures albums, for me those were things to cry for, your personal memories, your memories. And of course the clothes they needed, the kids and Um Ameen, a bag for each one, moreover we had bags which we hadn't opened yet; we'd just arrived and a week later they invaded us, we didn't even opened those. We took the suitcases, which they would travel with, bags of clothes, just the basic stuff, put all those together, with your main IDs, your personal medical files and most importantly our photo albums, the albums of our children and our wedding. We left our library and everything, we left everything as it was, our furniture as it was and the plants we had as they were--

- How was it like when you returned?

- Huh, the the-- our books were there, aaa we've taken some private paintings with the carpets, our books were there, our furniture was dirty but it was there, the main carpets were taken, our kitchen, with all its contents, was there and there were even some extra stolen pieces but the flat was occupied by high rank officials as I was told by the residents of our building. I had two friends, may God rest their souls, they died later on. One of them was closer to me than the other, Fahad Al Shai'a, his wife was a Syrian and he was living upstairs and the other was Abdul Lateef Al Mulla and his wife aa Sh-- Shuq... Ashwaq Al Al Ghanim... Shurooq Al Ghanim. At the time they hadn't been living in the complex but aaa Abd aaa Lutfi had a flat there and Fahad said to me, "They questioned me in your flat." I also found a giant television set in my flat, which wasn't mine, they'd stolen it from one of the residents of the building and they kept it to watch. They then broke its screen before leaving. And... and on a wall I had a collection of masks, from the Caribbean Islands and from Africa, so I had a collection of masks on the wall, they were afraid of them. Abd said to me... Fahad said, "They were afraid of your masks, the ones you had on the wall." I said, "Why?" He said they asked him if his friend knew voodoo [He laughs]. I mean he said to them, "This is my friend's flat." They brought him for questioning and said to him, "Does that friend of yours know voodoo?" They also said to him, "Your friend is cultured, he has a huge library." I had a huge library, it's a huge library, not a small one. I have a library at home, my father's library and a library in Puerto Rico. He told me that they'd been afraid of the masks and I said to him, "It's great that the masks protected you." They didn't take anything from the flat, they just ate and ate and dirtied and dirtied but there were high rank officials, he said to me, "There were high ranks, high ranks stayed at Aisha Al Salem. Some of them were staying upstairs, on the higher floors, where Sheikh Hamad was and some were staying in your flat because it's on a corner, overlooking the sea." My flat was on a corner, in the Aisha Al Salem complex, block 9, the place is well known and is still there. He said, "They wanted that place to see the street and the sea and two high ranks were staying upstairs, near Hamad's flat, the other group, something like that." So they found the top floors and the direct view on the-- so I... I found that some things were stolen or missing, from my flat, but not so many, nevertheless the flat was dirty, the air conditioners were not working and dust covered everything etc..

- Aaa.. before we conclude I'd like to talk about aaa.. let's say the period of the reconstruction of Kuwait.

- Yes.

- And how did life go back to normal after the liberation.

- Praise God, we were-- when a war takes place, and that's a part of its psychology, a strong spree of reconstruction follows, just like when someone dies you find, after we bury them, that we have that aaa great desire for life. After the crying and the funeral we feel that natural desire for life and that strong desire for new things and that is what happened. We had friends and I remember we quickly established a group of companies, we were-- we established a network. We set up a company called Al Mazaya, it later on became Mazaya Property and we started Mazaya Food. The idea was that one day we wanted... we wanted... the shareholders were so many, we started with-- with seven. We sat by the swimming pool of the Aisha Al Salem complex, where I lived, and said, "Let's start a joint-stock company, with Kuwaitis from Funtas across the country to Jahra, with our friends we knew, good people from the university, secondary school and America. We saw an idea of cohesion; jina'at, Sheikhs, Sunnis, Shias-- everyone." We just wanted good people, girls or boys it didn't matter. Every one of us, the seven or six persons got five of their friends and we established a company with a capital of two millions, that fast. That was after the liberation. I imagine all of Kuwait was doing that; someone restoring their shop, in partnerships with others, there was a mechanism that surfaced and speedy responses. "Call your friends, those in the army and the university and .. some Sheikhs, friends and families we are doing so and so." "Yes, I I'll join you." "Get what you have saved and what you have in your bank account." I paid a sum of money, everyone paid two thousands and that became aaa the capital which we needed to increase; each one had to pay seven thousands but we did it and boom, we collected two and a half millions. We established the company and started to work. Aaa you went... ah, I went to my office, at the Kuwaiti Engineer to find my desk covered with... the... of course the Kuwaiti Engineer is a big company and it's among the big offices, I mean may God protect them-- may God rest Ghazi Al Sultan' soul, he passed away. Mr... Dr. Abdul Azeez Al Sultan was the manager of the office and Ghazi had a license of his own. I was their colleague and they were my mentors, they were older than me. I went and greeted them and we exchanged the congratulations on our safety. The office was robbed and dirty, they dirtied... I don't want to say nasty words, I mean there were feces on the tables, urine on the floors and and bottles of alcohol broken and scattered everywhere, they ravaged the office aaa some good light units were stolen, some maps were torn up and the library content was on the ground. I went into my office to find the same thing, it was a mess with dirt everywhere, they urinated on the floor and there was funk, so we had to reorganize everything.

- How were the streets?

- No, the streets were a mess, they were damaged. I am an engineer, you could see that the tank tracks destroyed the tarmac, I mean when a tank runs on the tarmac its track leaves marks. Tank tracks ran on the sidewalks and destroyed them. Tanks hit places and damaged others. The chaos of traffic damaged the public utilities and some of the public utilities were robbed, broken lamps, shops aaa... but no, people came back in an outburst of reconstruction and hea... healing.

- How was security at the time?

- It was impulsive and spontaneous. I know that a purging procedure took place, I mean, they pursued, our Kuwaiti forces, coming back to Kuwait, whether those inside, which were monitoring, or the ones coming from the outside, they did a quick search on aaa the pockets of hiding individuals, because those are called sleeping cells; armies leave sleeping cells behind. The forces combed the country for sleeping cells or sleeping intelligence agents, cooperating individuals, accomplices and traitors. They caught those and things happened, I just heard about those but I don't th-- I don't know them for facts but they... by the way we are a society that still lives, the Arab society, we in particular and the Arab society in general, live in a world of personal opinions which can be classified as half facts and rumors so you live... and I say to my family, "Don't fall victims to aaa rumors and personal opinions." But we heard about purging campaigns, they killed Palestinians and others, they cornered them in a farm with Iraqis, let them run and shot them, abominations happened aaa they heard about someone and someone slandered another saying that he was coop... those who wanted to retaliate against someone, a cousin who insulted--

05: 12:18

- You mean personal purges?

- Personal purges took place and accusations, all those are natural and within the postwar behavior. I mean in such cases you should take the person and verify their crime but things happened in aaa in a hurry and in haste; someone, with a desire to retaliate against another, would say, "No, I've seen him with my own eyes." And went and shot him at his house, out of a desire to marry his wife, you couldn't know, you know what I mean? He went and killed him, "I saw him, he is an accomplice." He took his anger out on that person etc. Stories like those spread but I still classify those not as history, no I say those are opinions and rumors and they need historians to verify but those stories spread. I said and still say, "The history of Kuwait, both the minor and the major, must be rewritten. In crises and wars the history is always written by the victorious and rumors. If you have the sensibility, humanity and the suitable scientific approach and scientific honesty, you have to verify the facts and and follow them, one by one. Abominations were mutual, the war behavior, in itself, is compulsory and atrocious, nothing good comes out of it, I mean despite being an army officer I don't say that it's a good thing; cautery is the last remedy and war is the last remedy, it's not the first thing you do. If it happens, it'll be bitter and horrible, you are not a war monger who wants to live off it, it's the last remedy, just like cautery, but when it happens it's not a good thing, not a good thing.

- Okay, is there anything you'd like to add, about the invasion period, that we didn't cover, or about the liberation?

- Yes, for example I have, as you said while we were talking earlier, I have a student, who is preparing a graduation project, aaa she wants to design a building which is related to the inv... invasion and chose a strange location, she chose the location of the kilometer of death, on which the retreating Iraqi forces were destroyed. It was a strong air attack, by the allied forces that burned the area. I asked the girl, her name is Fatma, I remember and she's still there, I said to her, "Fatooma, weren't you born during the invasion? You are even younger than my daughter Amara, what made you think of this? Why did you choose that subject?" Our students write phases of research and from her writings I knew that Fatma believes a lot of rumors and of course I corrected her mistakes. Aaa she was very dramatic about describing the war so I said to her, "Where did you get this from?" And she said, "I read it in books." I said to her, "Get me those books." No, those were simple books, their references were not academic, aaa books of personal opinions, someone wrote a book. Many people used the battle of Kuwait as merchandise and became heroes and heroines of resistance, not real ones, okay? They began to trade, just like they did with anything, they traded in any material. I said to her, "These books are not reliable, I mean they are more like war diaries. If you want to talk about the-- this..." She was pinning her thoughts on that kilometer so I said to her, "If you look at the area of Jahra, the area of Abdali and that road, if you look well at the number of wars that took place there, from the pre-Islamic era, over the Islamic era till the establishment of Kuwait, you'll find many wars that took place there; the battle of Qadsiya could be somewhere there, the battle of Kathma took place somewhere there, the battle of Reqqah... we and the Ka'abis had a marine battle in the same area." So it's not a matter of a cry by that one kilometer, that kilometer is not that important but it was as if it had turned, in the memories of her family, society and friends, into a legend of a gigantic battle that took place. I said to her, "No, you know the battle to liberate Failaka was a tough one, Um Qasr was an even tougher battle, Um Qasr itself, Failaka and the south borders." I mean I didn't take part in the liberation war but as an officer I can observe and know what happened. I said to her, "There are other locations that witnessed battles, even the battle of the Qurain house and the resistance members, that was such a story but this one is about airplanes that raided a convoy of retreating vehicles and it's a known tactic to hit the first and last vehicles then destroy everything in between." It was just a battle after all but the girl's head was full of drama, from her father, family and relatives. Aaa I told her that and she began to change her writings gradually which shows that... she's a good student, not a weak one, she's among the very distinguished, I taught her in the basic stage and now I'm teaching her in the graduation year so I taught her four years ago and now she's graduating so I went, "Ah, this is the excellent Fatooma." She has a lot of mythology about our war and the liberation of Kuwait. Mythology, it's really mythology, it's hocus-pocus. She didn't even know where the weight... the significance of liberating Kuwait comes from, she chose that... then we began to convince her, I told her about the Hiroshima experience, I went to Hiroshima and visited the Hiroshima Museum. I said to her, "Now the Japanese, that people, which was wild once and tore up the Chinese and the Koreans, turned into a civilized society, from its head, from its top to its base; from the emperor down." That emperor, whose shadow could not be touched, now kneels to greet the calamity-hit people in Japan. In the past his ministers... his ministers couldn't even touch him or the empress. They were people that took pride in killing others and now they have museums for peace and oppose the... the nuclear war and their museum of peace is a wonderful thing. I told her... we have relatives and neighbors, whether aaa our blood relationships with the Iraqis, blood and marriage relations with the Iraqis, blood and marriage relations with the Saudis and we have kinships with the Iranians, they are not Arabs but we have Kuwaitis of Persian origins and we have marriage relations with them and we trade with them, not only Kuwait but the Arabic and Persian cultures have been neighbors for four thousand years and for four thousand years they've fought us and we them, they've invaded us and we them and they've traded with us and we with them. So I said to her, "We must have a reconciliation with the issue of war and peace; I can't concentrate on the-- the highway but rather on the war and peace relation in your... your thesis." Gradually my colleague and I began to get her out of the trauma of that part. Why... I don't know who kept repeating that story and I said to her, "This is nothing compared to the battle of liberating Kuwait." She said, "But it was a road--" I said to her, "I know, I know."

- So there wasn't a full rounded awareness of...

- There wasn't, there wasn't. And that's a clever girl, a co.. competent girl but you feel that there is no emotional and narrative maturity with our girls and boys, who didn't live that period. I mean there is not a real story or a story that-- no, let it be an open culture, a rational one through which we discipline ourselves, ascend and become strong and brave enough to discipline our neighbors and brothers the Arabs, the neighbors and the... the Saudis and the Iraqis... You can see the current disputes, disputes with Qatar and disputes with so and so, disputes, no--

- And that will be one of the aims of the project.

- Exactly.

- The project of documenting the history, God willing.

- Yes, exactly.

- Thank you, we'll stop the recording now.

05:19:42

The End 348