Taj Apartments, Sharq, Kuwait City August 2005
Back in the coolth again, not so hot outside after all - a mere 47 degrees today, positively glacial. Three nice sci-fi books scored from the aptly named Kuwait Bookstore - a bit of a rarity in a country where the overpaid inhabitants exist only for takeout food, muscle cars and mobile phones. I've often wondered what it would have been like to be the idle son of a rich and generous Dad - and I guess being Saudi or Kuwaiti kind of resembles that. A harsh viewpoint maybe, but I am a bit tetchy after being scared witless by the way they drive. If you've ever seen a skinny kid in a white robe, wispy beard on his cheeks and cellphone in one hand, left foot on the dashboard of a 3-ton GMC Suburban and driving six feet behind your rear fender at a hundred miles an hour then you'll know true fear. Or, and I am sorry to say this, even worse if you share the motorway with a Kuwaiti woman driver.
I am not sure if it is a cultural artefact of life in this strangely conservative part of the world, perhaps the women are not allowed to be alone in a car with a male driving instructor or something similar that prevents them from having the faintest bit of road sense when they start driving , but I have seldom seen such hare-brained manouevres as the dear ladies in black can pull. In Saudi of course women are not allowed to drive - I'd put that down to the unbelievable and hostile suspicion with which any married Saudi regards single males and thought it was yet another Wahabi sect rule - maybe, however, one of the rule makers had recently bitten his beard off in a fit of anxiety caused by being tailgated by a 4 foot midget in head to toe robes with a tiny vision slit, nominally in control of a Landcruiser full of gymnastic kids tumbling from front to back on a sort of human waterfall. The poor dears simply never seem to make use of the slightest discipline on the kids, and also have no ability to judge distances or speeds - and of course I am the only person on the 40 motorway between the First and 8th Ring Roads (a good 50km of 4-lane highway) that ever uses indicators. I wonder if the locals think my brake lights have an intermittent short circuit...
Still, an interesting place and more liveable than Riyadh. The first trip I stayed in some nice Spanish style apartments in Salwa - at least they had a small gym and pool whe
reas now I am in a city block surrounded by building sites, feral pigeons and starving feral cats. The poor kitties are too scrawny to even trouble the piegons, and must live on insects or something. I finally cracked under the pressure last night and bought a tin of cat food for the one poor wee thing that cringes around the car park here. It is all eyes and ears and a tiny black-lipped mouth that made soundless hisses of defiance at me, but once I scooted the cat food foil container under the fence it was doing headstands in the stuff. And as luck would have it the owner of the building came out at that precise moment, and looked at me as though I was demented. Only in the affluent West would there be a program to capture, sterilise and release the cats - here they are part of the same unfeeling food chain that has Bangladeshis and Filipinos working in lethal environments for a pittance. A simple pyramid actually, with Kuwaitis at the top, Americans some distance below that and then a long hierarchy fading from pale to dark. Who'd be a swarthy Sri Lankan here... get run over by a Kuwaiti sheikha and on your hospital bed you'd be charged with damaging her car.
Time for yet another cup of tea with mint, and a rummage through the fridge to see what's for supper. Maybe I'll wander over to Mughal Mahal and get takeout curry.
I am not sure if it is a cultural artefact of life in this strangely conservative part of the world, perhaps the women are not allowed to be alone in a car with a male driving instructor or something similar that prevents them from having the faintest bit of road sense when they start driving , but I have seldom seen such hare-brained manouevres as the dear ladies in black can pull. In Saudi of course women are not allowed to drive - I'd put that down to the unbelievable and hostile suspicion with which any married Saudi regards single males and thought it was yet another Wahabi sect rule - maybe, however, one of the rule makers had recently bitten his beard off in a fit of anxiety caused by being tailgated by a 4 foot midget in head to toe robes with a tiny vision slit, nominally in control of a Landcruiser full of gymnastic kids tumbling from front to back on a sort of human waterfall. The poor dears simply never seem to make use of the slightest discipline on the kids, and also have no ability to judge distances or speeds - and of course I am the only person on the 40 motorway between the First and 8th Ring Roads (a good 50km of 4-lane highway) that ever uses indicators. I wonder if the locals think my brake lights have an intermittent short circuit...
Still, an interesting place and more liveable than Riyadh. The first trip I stayed in some nice Spanish style apartments in Salwa - at least they had a small gym and pool whe
reas now I am in a city block surrounded by building sites, feral pigeons and starving feral cats. The poor kitties are too scrawny to even trouble the piegons, and must live on insects or something. I finally cracked under the pressure last night and bought a tin of cat food for the one poor wee thing that cringes around the car park here. It is all eyes and ears and a tiny black-lipped mouth that made soundless hisses of defiance at me, but once I scooted the cat food foil container under the fence it was doing headstands in the stuff. And as luck would have it the owner of the building came out at that precise moment, and looked at me as though I was demented. Only in the affluent West would there be a program to capture, sterilise and release the cats - here they are part of the same unfeeling food chain that has Bangladeshis and Filipinos working in lethal environments for a pittance. A simple pyramid actually, with Kuwaitis at the top, Americans some distance below that and then a long hierarchy fading from pale to dark. Who'd be a swarthy Sri Lankan here... get run over by a Kuwaiti sheikha and on your hospital bed you'd be charged with damaging her car.Time for yet another cup of tea with mint, and a rummage through the fridge to see what's for supper. Maybe I'll wander over to Mughal Mahal and get takeout curry.
posted by Shane Hodgson at 1:31 pm
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