kuwait commute

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dusk at villa moda

four o'clock at fashion temple villa moda. nobody around, except for us architects in our office above the gucci store and a lonely security guard. everyone home for iftar, the sun is setting. time for a walk around the temple...





and for one of jenny holzer's inflammatory essays. I found a book on her art down on the shelves of the restaurant.

destroy superabundance. starve the flesh, shave the hair, expose the bone, clarify the mind, define the will, restrain the senses. leave the family, flee the church, kill the vermin, vomit the heart, forget the dead. limit time, forgo amusement, deny nature, reject aquaintances, discard objects, forget truths, dissect myth, stop motion, block impulse, choke sobs, swallow chatter. scorn joy, scorn touch, scorn tragedy, scorn liberty, scorn constancy, scorn hope, scorn exaltation, scorn reproduction, scorn variety, scorn embellishment, scorn release, scorn rest, scorn sweetness, scorn the light. it is a question of form and function. it is a matter of revulsion.

(jenny holzer, inflammatory essays, 1979-82)

ramadan kareem

I arrived in Kuwait on the first day of ramadan. then, I didn’t really have an idea how that would shape the experience, that the sentence “that’s because it’s ramadan” would end up being one of the most common answers throughout my entire stay.

the fasting is attended very widely in kuwait – spanning generations, classes, religious differences, even the typical middle eastern nationalism/tribalism. the young jordanian professional at the desk next to me, the syrian driver, the indonesian cleaning lady, achille’s aristocrat kuweiti friends, the pakistani security guard – they are united in their fasting.


achille with seikaly sisters razan and abeer

fares always peaks into the snack corner to see what the christians are eating (see pic). as if through exposure to temptation, he’ll obtain extra points from god. but it’s not about extra points or temptation, he says, but about the welcome change of routine. one month a year he eats differently, and more importantly lives differently. ramadan makes him a more conscious human being.

a change of routine it definitely is. also abeer, being jordanian but christian, usually looks forward to ramadan. in her case ramadan is almost synonymous with iftar, the breaking of the fast, every day at sunset. then families and friends get together for endless banquets, excessive gossiping, card games and other homy activities (usually she gains weight during ramadan).


with taufiq, fares and mahmoud

so around two thirty, everybody rushes home for iftar, which starts at sunset, around five. this collective routine makes rush hour traffic jams much more brutal. everyone is on the way to and from work at the same time. feels like I spent half of the time I was in kuwait inside a car surrounded by other cars...
also, drivers are more hungry and tired than usual, which results in spectacular accidents all over the city ("that's because it's ramadan"). the kuwaiti police puts wrecked cars in the middle of roundabouts as gentle reminders, yet to little effect...

something more structurally than traffic jams that bothered me about ramadan is the institutionalized intolerance. in public, fasting is enforced to muslims but also to non muslims, by law. munching some pringles on the parking lot of the grocery store could get me into serious trouble, I was told. a non believer is not granted the freedom to behave respectfully in front of fasting believers. he simply ‘joins’. in kuwait, unlike in saudi, chewing gum during ramadan is a crime.

I read up a little on the enforcement part. kuwaiti courts are not de facto using the the sharia, the muslim law. unlike big brother saudi arabia, kuwait officially maintains a separation between mosque and court, while a growing number of members of the assembly is trying to introduce sharia, with the pathetic political means they are granted from the emir. without success so far.
also the Kuwait Pocket Guide 2005 is ambiguous on the topic. a short paragraph on kuwait’s legal system outlines a very western ‘style’ court system (courts of appeal and cassation and everything), yet pages and pages are dedicated to the rules of sharia, albeit under the topic ‘traditions and culture’.

“Islam lays down rules governing all aspects of human behavior. These are known as the Sharia, which is considered by Muslims to be a Revealed Code of Law that is eternal in place and time and to which all human beings are subject, and which provides for all the conduct needed for an orderly society.”

in the traffic jams, I read (fought myself through) salman rushdie’s satanic verses. not initially intended as my middle east reading – it was rushdie freak pieter who’d passed it on for my trip back from japan. kind of revealing though, the intolerance of the mainstream muslim community towards the (temporal) temptation of the prophet.

I left kuwait on the last day of ramadan.
the exact end of ramadan, and the beginning of eid, the post ramadan festivities, is not known until the very end though. most muslims follow a certain mufti in saudi arabia, who announces eid as soon as he spots the new moon. so I left when the fun started. quoting achille - "you've been in the worst place on earth, during exactly the worst time of year..." - the day after I left, he went sailing (bastardo).

lifestyle

site visit

the halls of the shooting club under construction



this is the outline of the site we worked on, a piece of desert of 100.000 sqm situated along the sixth ringroad. a sjeikh, currently building a giant shooting club on the spot, wishes to develop his remaining property through a BOT deal (build operate transfer). the selected developer will build a project, operate it for 30 years and then transfer the site with the buildings to the landlord sjeikh.
we put together a proposal for a hotel, a shopping mall and a convention center as the villa moda submission.



a little north of our site there's a 'bedouin suburban neighborhood' under construction. hundreds of massive houses going up simultaneously for middle class kuwaitis. pretty impressive...







the sixth ringroad continues as the highway to basra in iraq, and was bombed into the infamous 'highway to hell' during the iraqi pullout in '91.




cemetery of cars wrecked by the iraqis


the burning oil wells

arabian villa

Frost Real Estace Inc is pleased to welcome you to your “HOME AWAY FROM HOME”. You came to the right place fro you and your family’s accomodation while you are in Kuwait. You may be pleased to know that we are housing employees of many western companies in Kuwait, in which some may be your neighbor or staying in the same complex as you are. You will have the opportunity to make new friends, talk and socialize with them.

state of kuwait

First of all, we would like to welcome you to the State of Kuwait, the Land of Friendship. Next is a brief introduction about Kuwait, the Land and the People.

The topography of Kuwait is typified by gently undulating desert gradually rising away from the sea to a maximum height of 200 meters. The mainland of Kuwait has no mountains or rivers. However, the flat sandy desert is broken by shallow depressions and low hills. All significant features in Kuwait are man-made.

The temperature averages 45°C (113°F) in summer and 10°C (50°F) in winter. The highest officially recorded temperature (in the shade) was 60°C (140°F) in July 1978, making Kuwait the fourth hottest place on earth, and the lowest was 6°C (43°F) in January 1964. Humidity is seldom uncomfortable. Annual rainfall is unpredictable.



isn't it strange, that the border between kuwait and its neighboring countries is visible from the air as the separation line between different shades of desert? it's actually a little bit off... notice also the pathetic stretch of alluvial plain that makes up iraq's entire coastline, squeezed between tigris and eufrates, between kuwait and iran... obviously part of the reasoning behind saddam's expansionist policies.


selwa, our 'neighborhood', seen from the roof of arabian villa



some of kuwait's man-made significant features look really intriguing from the sky. any ideas on what the red puddle could be?



an oil field with a settlement next to it, skirting the saudi border (yellow line). it is said that the kuwaitis were drilling obliquely (inclined) along the iraqi border. another reason for saddam to be upset.



agricultural fields irrigated by a pivoting sprinkler, close to our site. this 'farm' is visible on the scale of the country.