  As some of you may already know, I visited Kuwait a few days ago. Right now I'm back in Dubai. I haven't been back home in a couple of years. To be honest with you, my trip to Kuwait was rather weird. In a way I experienced a bit of culture shock. Many things have changed in these 2-3 years.
I really need to let it all sink in. Things are VERY different from Dubai.. hehe and then people think everybody and every place in the Middle East is the same... But I did my share of shopping though nyahahaha (couldn't help it, sorry) I went to two museums on the gulf war during my trip. One was in a destroyed house where the last group of the Kuwaiti resistance was fighting (Beit Shuhada Al-Qurain - Al-Qurain Martyr's House). They left the house as it was, with the tank shells and bullet holes. They also left one of the tanks in its original position standing in front of the house as well as a few destroyed vehicles in the courtyard.
You get a very strange sad feeling when you walk around the house. Inside the museum they had on display the handmade uniforms this particular group of the resitance made for themselves to differentiate themselves from the Iraqi soldiers. They were aprons with the words "Kuwaiti resistance" badly stiched on it. The other museum we went to narrated the events of the Gulf war. We met one of the directors of the museum while we were walking around and we chatted to him for a bit. Then he said "you know what?
I have to show you something. It's a surprise only for you guys". We followed him into one of the rooms of the museum. It was dark and when he turned the lights on it just looked like a regular meeting room to me. I thought our surprise would be some refreshments.... But then he told us to look into one corner behind one of the couches.... And there it was.
Saddam's HUUUUGE face with a broken nose staring at me. It was from a bronze statue that was standing in Basra. Some American soldiers gave it as a gift to the museum. It was about a meter and a half in height and a meter in width. The face was full of bullet holes and it was in a pretty bad shape, missing some pieces here and there. The museum director said the American army guys that brought it, said they snatched it before a mob of iraqis destroyed it completely.
The museum will put it in a display as soon as they finish some renovations they are doing..... ..... how weird is that? I saw Saddam's half statue that was brought from Basra as a result of this current ongoing war. Strange sentiments flushed through me as I looked at it. I can't really describe them. The country looks really really bad in comparison to Dubai. I don't know what the parliament or the goverment do every day they go to work, because they are definetly not doing anything to improve the country.
The grass on the side of the roads is greenish yellowish, burnt form the summer sun. Why do they have all those irregation hoses laying around being unused I will never know. The roads are really bad too. They are full of bumps, holes, and they are uneven. Kuwait is a VERY rich country and it used to have one of the best infrastructures in the whole world. Why is the current government doing shit to improve the country will remain another enigma to me.
Conservatisim has increased drastically in Kuwait. It is very visible. Within the Gulf states, Kuwait has always been the most liberal and modern country, even more so than Dubai and Bahrein. It's true, Dubai and Bahrein have nightclubs and alcohol is legal (theoretically for non-muslims), however, the local society has never been as liberal as Kuwait. Here in Dubai you can rarely see a local woman not wearing the traditional clothes, like the black robe (abaya) and a fine black shawl covering their hair (shela - not a hijab, think of how Jackie O used to wrap her head scarf). In Kuwait however, women are more liberated.
Very few used to wear the hijab or the abaya and the shela has never been part of our traditional dress. Thats thanks to what is commonly known as the "burning of the abaya era" by Kuwaiti women in the 70's 80's just like women burning their bras in the 60's in the states ;) Things have changed however. A lot of women wear the hijab now. They are actually the majority. We went to the cinema one night. The theater was PACKED.
We got the last seats by chance (I will not comment on the movie we watched. I'm still waiting to get my money and those 2 hrs of my life back) Except for my sister, my 2 cousins and I, all the women in the theater were wearing the hijab. What I find rather interesting (and very amusing actually) even though so many women are wearing the hijab, a very small number of them wear the abaya. They all wear the hijab with western clothes. Like I said to a few of you a while ago, traditional clothes are becoming extinct in Kuwait. I couldn't find a single decent caftan (darra3a) in the whole country.
People don't buy them anymore. Now they all prefer western lounge clothes rather than traditional Arabic clothes. Another fascinating phenomenon in regards to the hijab is that now, the hijab has become an accessory. Since I have been here in the Gulf I have been obsessed with how a religious traditional garment has become nothing less than a fashionable accessory and I still get shocked at the different styles, I kid you not. Very few Kuwaiti women wear the old traditional bland hijab. The socialites wear designer scarfs.
It's not that strange to run into someone wearing a Hermes scarf as a hijab.... I went hijab shopping with my aunt who wears one and I was lost in the hijab store. There are so many different styles and types of hijabs I probably looked like an idiot to the sales assistant staring at all the different hijabs available. They all have different names and different ways to wear them. Some women wear tight hijabs with their bangs out, other wear a type of small bandana that wraps the hair and then on top of it, they wear a sheer (actually really pretty) scarf loosely over their shoulders. Too many to name!
hmmm maybe I should ditch political science and study the hijab as a fashion item among Gulf women (it's not the same in other arab countries. Except the Lebanese, Gulf women are the crazy fashion obsessed type). In regards to the political sphere, the conservatives have taken over the parliament, the government and the ministiries. These conservatives are fractioned into different groups however it isn't a unified front. One one side you have the Wahabis (sunnis basically mimicking Saudi Arabia), then the Shi'as (mimicking Iran), then the tribes (those basically mimic their forefathers who used live in the desert and follow tribal laws and traditions) and then among those fractions there are even more groups, like the fundamentalists from each side. They wanted to separate the sexes in the universities, and outlaw music concerts (the concert thing was this march btw, 2004), but they didn't suceed.
But as they say, for every action there is a reaction. Because of this strong tide of conservatism, people are getting fed up of the situation. They are opposing almost every new change they are trying to implement (woohoo! ) . That's it for politics today. I don't feel like getting into it.
I may make a different entry about it some other day. Give me your comments, and ask questions if you want me to elaborate on a particular subject! I'm still trying to figure out my way through this blogging world, so please be patient with me 
