Nineteen Years Ago

Nineteen years ago, I remember waking up in the morning to my older brother’s violent shaking, “Rashed, we’re at war!” At first it didn’t register, I clearly remember my first words were a sleepy, “Oh, cool!”. Seven months later those two simple words were what I regret the most.

Then I saw my mother, ragged and panicky she looked like she didn’t sleep. Her eyes were bloodshot and the radio was blaring with patriotic songs and people screaming, “Fight! Fight for Allah, Our Land and the Amir!”. Oh how clear I remember these broadcasts.

It was yesterday when I was suddenly thrown off my feet at the sudden bombardment of the Ahmadi petroleum gathering tanks, I was about 5 miles away. The screams of my family, the panic and the crying of the women-folk. I still remember huddling in a small room, our building vibrating the windows rattling almost all night at the fierce battle that raged around Bayan Palace. The sporadic rattling of the machine guns, the deafening blasts of the artillery.

I remember waking up on August 3rd, 1990…to complete silence. Kuwait as a nation has taken its last collective gasp and died under the violent assault of the gigantic Iraqi war machine.

Nineteen years ago, the entire nation of Kuwait has collapsed. Families torn apart, some forever lost. To most of us, we still remember and ache deep down inside. Most of us still pray for the loved ones we have lost and will never see again. Those that have bravely fought and the innocents who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

That was nineteen years ago when my generation lost a greater part of our teenage years. From innocent childhood instantly transformed into adults. You gaze into our eyes, you can see something lurking in there. Things we have seen that our parents have wasted a lifetime to shelter us from. The horrors, the atrocities and the deep, deep sense of loss. We are forever marked.

Yet, that was nineteen years ago. For how long will we cower? How long will we smile and shake our heads and simply ignore the greater picture of life? Kuwait has been ravaged by wars both on its borders and in its own lands. She has fought to survive like a David stuck between not one Goliath, but three of them. And as always, we have always come out of these wars shaken and battered. It’s time to move on, only we can make her survive with our own strength.

I have seen with my own eyes what our generation are capable of. What the younger generations may do. Enough with the corruption, enough with the hide-and-seek game. Get rid of your milk teeth and grow proper fangs to bite when bitten. For how long will we ‘negotiate’ with Iraq? For how long will we always be the ‘younger sister’ to Saudi Arabia, pushed and shoved in whichever direction they please?

How long will we keep reading the same news over and over again about how irreversibly corrupt our government has become?

Nineteen years ago we have become a lost cause? A hopeless case?

My final question to you:

Did you sell Kuwait’s soul to the devil nineteen years ago?

~ by Я on August 3, 2009.