Kuwait

How I Lost a National Writing Contest

I was making my typical drive to work this morning and like driving a regular route in any location, for any job it gets very routine and anything that changes from that routine stands out in your mind.  One of the Arab drivers in front of me used his signal light to announce to the world his intention to make a legal turn to the right.  I remember feeling a sense of surprise and perhaps even pride that here, in this time and in this place a Kuwaiti driver was showing the good sense and common courtesy to signal for a turn.  He then turned left.  Dum-ass.

Fine.  This story is really about a writing contest, but I thought the driving example would be testament to my attitudes about Kuwait and in the end very germane to my case as to why I lost the writing contest.  To be fair I did get a certificate of participation as they give in elementary schools and we were all told that we were winners; and so you see I am not writing out of a futile and misguided feeling of bitterness.  I have my certificate.

The sponsor of the writing contest, AWARE is an organization dedicated to bridging the gap between the Arab and Western cultures represented here in this small desert nation.  As part of my orientation, last October, a group of teachers, including myself, were invited to the centre to get an introduction to Kuwaiti Culture 100.  Most memorable for me was the large buffet that followed the lectures and the question and answer period.

From the AWARE website I took  this  paragraph  to explain their purpose: “The Advocate for Westerners-Arab Relations center is a non-profit, non-governmental, and non-political organization working for promoting positive, constructive relations between Westerners and Arabs by organizing social activities and information services related to Arab and Islamic culture.  "It is through culture that we preserve our heritage, that we express our creativity and that we share our individuality with the world,"  Over the years, AWARE has built a reputation as a consistent, trusted, and reliable resource for westerners in Kuwait.” 

I was new to Kuwait and I thought this exercise at the AWARE would give me some valuable information.  By this time I was drawing on about 4 weeks of exposure and had toured some of the megamalls.  The Avenues is probably one of the largest and most modern malls on this planet.  This mall even has Dubai beat without the skiing.  Malls are large because they are the focal points of shopping and recreation.  They are domed cities in the hot desert where families come out to stroll the wide avenues and explore the many shops.

One thing I noticed early on is that Kuwaiti men love to parade.  They are well groomed, with trimmed five-day growth beards, immaculate dish dash and head gear, expensive watches, jewelry and foot wear.  They don’t seem to shop or carrying any parcels or even go into stores for the most part. I see them in groups, usually with cell phones and frequently holding hands. Freeze frame.

Yes, in this ultra conservative Islamic state boys and men parade in open public areas holding hands and often show overt levels of affection. The culture and religion is oppressive in the sense that it does not allow what the western world would consider normal levels of interaction between the genders.  My theory of rampant homosexuality in a religious society is simply another manifestation of the Catholic Priest Syndrome in which imposed celibacy from a religious hierarchy leads to repression and ultimately “intimacy retardation.”  In the case of the Catholic priests read the newspapers documenting  the abuse and torment some of these holy men have imposed on innocents.

In Arab culture boys are not allowed to date.  The more conservative families have their daughters covered at adolescence or earlier in the abaya, sometimes accessorized with a veil, a mesh over the eyes and gloves.  Is it no wonder that when women who are considered taboo, are covered and unavailable in any physical or emotional sense that men revert to other outlets.  Homosexuality, which does not actually officially exist here, is rampant.  Catholic Priest Syndrome in the Islamic world.

I am aware of a situation in  which a young woman was severely beaten by her mother because she was found to have boys’ names and numbers on her cell phone speed dial.  After the beating she changed her ways and altered all the boys’ names to girls’.  Lesson learned.

The two writers who won the AWARE writing contest were positive and passionate about the merits of Islam and Arab culture in Kuwait.  As I sat in the audience listening to their stories, the first place story entitled, “Fire in the Desert” had to do with the passion of the faith and the language, and I began to have self doubts.  Was I such a cynic after only 9 months that I couldn’t see the positive? Was I so jaded that I couldn’t get the winners points about equality within this society?  The answer was a resounding NO.

Equality?  What equality?  Upon three seconds of further reflection I thought the author was a dum-ass like the driver in paragraph one.  This young British author actually wrote that when he came to this country he was under the illusion that there was no equality between the genders and through living here he has been able to dispel this stereotype of Arab culture.  He cited an example from his own experience in which he went to a dentist and assumed, when in the examination room, that the man in blue cover alls was the dentist and the female in attendance was the technician/assistant.  Quelle surpris when he realized the roles were reversed thus proving gender equality in Kuwait.

First, I would have to say that the female dentist likely was not from Kuwait.  By the way my dentist is a Kuwaiti male trained in Ireland who has numerous female Filipino assistants floating around. I’m sure they don’t make a western salary and as for gender equality, I haven’t seen it yet.

Over the last two years I have been doing a quick read of Thomas Friedman’s book,        “The World is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.”  The book is about globalization, the flatness of the Earth has to do with the ability of countries to compete in the new global market place.  He explains why some places like China and India have become so successful and why the Arab world, for the most part,  has not.

I’m not a business person, but I think that openness is critical to successful business practices (Friedman, 2005)” because you start tending to respect people for their talent and abilities.”  He explains that when  chatting over the internet to another developer, planner, programmer or investor one loses sight of ethnicity.  You deal with people on the basis of talent and ability.  In fact the whole view of human beings is, “talent based and performance-based rather than the background-based world.”

In the Muslim world, as in Kuwait and Saudi especially, religious clergy, fundamental islamists ban jtihad, or the interpretation of the principles of Islam in the light of current circumstances.  Much of Islam is stuck in the past and has difficulty aligning itself with other cultures in a modern time in a globalized world.  The more radical would like to purge the Arabian peninsula of all foreigners and foreign influences.

Keep in mind it is often these same conservative elements that import drugs and alcohol into the region and go on sex vacations to Bangkok.  A friend recently told me that while waiting in the Riyadh airport for a flight to Amsterdam he got into conversation with a cleric.  They exchanged stories and itineraries and it seems that the holy man was off to Amsterdam for some well deserved sexual recreation in the red light district of this liberal city.  Hypocritically as this may sound, it is justified by the fact that such behaviour is permissible while passing through a secular society.  

Friedman states that  “in the Arab-Muslim world women are treated as a pollution or a danger to be cut off from the public space”.  Attitudes like this and the treatment of women which results effectively removes half of the talent pool from contributing to the enhancement of the economy and to the society as a whole. Equality?

Men have become accustomed to a system of great privilege from birth on, and because they are male that gives them power over their sisters and female members of society.  Ironically, gender control is also bad for men as it seems to instills in them a sense of entitlement and discourages within them whatever it is that causes one to improve as an individual.   

The winning essays spoke of tolerance and understanding, two things that I don’t believe are currently represented in the educational system.  My school, might be an exception.  I actually am allowed to teach a world culture course, largely of my own design.  This may be rewarding and enlightening to the students and eventually get me deported.  Conservative schools do not teach about other cultures, nor do they stress tolerance to other faiths or to other schools of Islamic thought.

As I sat in the hall at the AWARE listening to the winning stories, I could admire some elements of their technical and creative writing style, especially of the first place paper.  I later congratulated that author and indicated that I thought he deserved to win.  However, I am left with my observations that I live in an intolerant and privileged society.  It is a over indulged, pampered welfare society that depends on its Islamic tribal nature to cope with the modern world, and as a result is failing itself and especially the generation I now teach.  I am so glad I lost that contest.