In this section I will share some of my stories growing up in Kuwait. It’s about my parents, my childhood, Kuwait in the 80s and 90s, my adolescence, some school memories, my neighborhood and friends, and how life was back then.
Baby Sadegh
I was born in 1978. At the time, my parents were living with my uncle’s family in a big Arabic-style house in Shamiya, which is one of the most prestigious areas of Kuwait. So I can always claim that I’m “weld alshamiya” (son of Shamiya).
At age 2, right after the birth of my first sister Najat in 1980, we had to move out. So my dad rented an apartment in the recently expanding residential area at the time, Khaitan. It was a small 1+1 apartment. The year after, we had the fifth member joining our family, my second sister Amal.
I have fragmented memories of our Khaitan apartment. I remember the open space in the ground floor, full of pillars like all apartment buildings in Kuwait. I remember playing football all the time there with neighbors.
Rabbit Teeth
A memorable event of my childhood worth mentioning that had effects lasting for years after is loosing my two upper front teethes. The way it happened was kinda funny. We had double-decker beds in our bedroom, and mine was the upper deck. In one moonless night, after we were sent to bed, I was jumping up and down the bed just like a funny five-year kid would do. It turned out not funny at all. I fell from the upper deck down to the floor hitting my head first. On impact, my teeth shot out of my mouth. BAM! My front teeth are gone.
The repeated joke that everyone who met me for the first time was: “who ate your teeth?!” ha ha haa, not funny. I asked dad when would people ever stop making fun of my lost teeth! I never got a satisfactory answer. Anyways, I had to live with it. I recall that I’d sometimes try to refrain from smiling so I don’t expose the big hole in my mouth.
I had to live without my upper incisors for about 4 years. The replacement teeth I got, after waiting for so long, were a bit too big. Oh my God, this is a never ending nightmare. I’m being called “rabbit teeth” now!
After a while I got used to it, and it became part of who I am and how I look. It didn’t bother me much past my adolescence.
Bloodshed
But the memory that will forever be engraved in my memory is the accident of cutting through my knee with the longest horror knife you could imagine. No it was not my mom, it was my aunt, Jalila, who was staying with us at the time. My dad wasn’t home with no way to contact him (no mobile phones then), so my mom had to carry me and walk to the medical center on foot. She was crying and terrified. I remember what happened in the medical center. It was a bloodshed. My blood sprayed like a fountain and I so vividly remember my blood sprinkling so high hitting the room ceiling.
I was immediately rushed to the operating room. Since it was too risky to use anesthetics for a five year old child at the time, they operated on me while I was fully conscious. I screamed and shouted to the maximum limit my throat allowed. My mom was sitting just outside the operating room, hearing my desperate shouts calling her and asking them to stop. Four nurses struggled to keep me in place while the doctor was operating on my open-cut wound just under my knee.
Apparently the doctor wanted to make sure that there were no metal pieces of the knife left inside the wound, so he had to open it up much more than the actual cut itself. It was such a powerful traumatic experience that I will never forget. The physical scar survived with me to date.
More accidents
I had many “accidents” as I grew up, far more than an average kid would have. I was a naughty playful boy I guess, at least that’s what mom used to say. At age three, I spilled burning hot cooking oil from a pan onto my shoulder and hand. At age six, I hit our hosts’ wife in their home’s corridor while she was holding a tea pot filled with boiling water, spilling it all over my belly and side. I got 3rd degree burns that were very painful over 10 days. I even once drank from a thermos imaging it had cold water, but I was wrong. It had boiling hot tea. I burned my throat badly. I was about seven years old.
Moving again
When I turned 7 we received my 3rd sister, Fatema. At age 8, my parents got their 5th child, Mohammad. They realized that our apartment is getting tight for us. We had to move out one more time. So in 1988 at age 10, we moved out to a bigger apartment in Salmiya. It was a 2-bedroom apartment, but it was more than double the size in everything. This is the apartment that I spend most of my childhood and teenage years. This is the place where I had most of my memories before becoming an adult.
Childhood in Salmiyah
There was a big football playing field, dirt field of course, just 200 meters behind our apartment building. I loved playing football, and I was damn good at it. Another common game that I played with neighborhood friends was glass marbles. There were so many forms of marble games. There was one called “Tannab” in which we draw a circle in dirt and place the marbles in the middle in a straight row. You have to hit one from outside and drive it out of the circle, and all marbles in the circle would be yours! There was another one called “tallash” where we dig a small hole in the sand, the size of a fist. The game is to hold two marbles in your fingers, hit them inside the hole in a tactical was that makes one, and only one, bounce out of the hole. If none or both bounce out, then you have to put them in the hole for your contender to play and maybe win them. The funny thing we sometimes play this game at home, especially in very hot summer days, substituting the dirt hole with a small plastic bowl.
Iraqi invasion
By mid July 1990, we traveled to Iran, for our summer vacation. We’d go to Iran for summer vacation every 3-4 years. This was the first trip after the Iraqi/Iranian war concluded, so there was a new route. For the first time, it was by sea to Bandar Abbas. It was a long 18-hours trip by ship, then another 7 hours by car to Ahwaz.
We’d usually spend 2 weeks in Ahwaz with family of my mom’s side, and then we’d go on a road trip to Shomal (northern Iran) where there’s natural beauty, mountains, forests, and lovely weather. After spending two weeks in Ahwaz, we were about to leave it for our road trip. We got the news that shocked the world: Iraq invaded Kuwait. What do you mean “invaded”? For how long will it be? I was asking my dad. Probably shocked more than I am, he had no answers for me. My dad loved Kuwait to his core and considered it his country. It’s the place he grew up and lived since he was 11 years old.
Of course we cancelled the road trip. Screw you Saddam for ruining it, that’s we were thinking. In the days after, my dad started realizing that this invasion could prolong to months. so he started worrying about my school. I was the only one among my brothers and sisters that was going to Arabic school in Kuwait. The rest of my siblings were going to Iranian school, so they were fine continuing their education in Iran, nothing will change to them. For me, I had to learn Persian!
Displaced by war
I had around one month before school starts. My dad got me a teacher as a private tutor to teach me the basics of Persian language. I still remember the lessons he taught me using the school book of 1st grade. Me going to 7th grade, studying from 1st grade book. How in hell I’m going to make it in school? Hilarious!
School started, and I was sitting in class basically understanding nothing from teachers. Basically I’d get one word out of ten. I was barely able to reply to teachers when they ask me anything. “I come from Kuwait” was my reply to teachers. Classmates would tell the teacher “jangzade” which is a Persian phrase for “displaced by war”. They’d nod their heads understandingly with a sympathetic look on their eyes. Honestly they were considerate of my situation, and tolerated me being unable to participate in class activities. The only exception was the math class, I was already fluent in it. My math teacher was so delighted that finally someone “gets it” in his lectures.
Although the school curriculum was in Persian language, the majority of students were Arabs. Their first language is Arabic, so I had no problem communicating with them in breaks and afterclass. 35 out of 37 students in my class were Arabs. Of course they speak the Ahwazi accent, which is very similar to the Southern Iraqi accent with some “Arabized” Persian words used through out.
I have to mention that I encountered a lot of bullying in school early on, being a “Kuwaiti”. I was singled out and ridiculed as the sissy boy with the funny Kuwaiti accent coming from rich Kuwait. I think I held up pretty well during that period. Shortly, I managed to win some classmates as friends especially with my football skills. The team I’d join always wins, so all were fighting on me to join their team. With time, my classmates got used to me and my accent started matching theirs, so I managed to fit in quickly.
The Iranian school year back then was divided into three trimesters (as opposed to two semesters). By the end of the “first trimester” (solse av’val), I barely managed to succeed. My grades ranged in the 60-70% range. Except for Math, Arabic and English. I aced them of course. In the “second trimester” (solse dov’vom), my grades improved more, and in the third trimester (solse sev’vom) I did great. I graduated with a full-year average of 88% as the top of the class. I was one of three students who passed. The other two students who passed were the only two Persian natives in our class. I’ve shared my certificate containing all my grades in the Academic Excellence page.
Back to Kuwait
By February 26th, 1991 Kuwait was liberated from the Iraqi invasion. We were so very happy that we will be going back home. My dad was among the few Iranians that returned very early after the liberation, around June 1991. Thanks to our Lebanese neighbors who stayed in Kuwait during the invasion, our apartment was intact and my father found it locked as we left it a year ago.
My father said that my last year’spicture being honored by deputy minister of Education as the top of my class, helped him convince the Minister of Interior (immigration) to approve the exceptional issuance of a family visa so I don’t miss the school year. My family was one of the very first Iranians coming back to Kuwait after the invasion. We arrived back to Kuwait by September 1991 just days before the school starting day. That year, it was a 2-in-1 school year, to compensate for the lost school year during the Iraqi invasion.
Post War
During the first couple of years after Kuwait liberation, much of the Palestinians, Jordanians, and of course Iraqis were forced or pushed out of Kuwait. The grandfather of a big Palestinian family was the owner of a small mart (bakala) just next to our apartment building. His grandson, Rami, was one of my friends. They left within a year. I was sad to see him leave. Another fiend of mine, Adel, was of an Iraqi family living in the next building. They had to leave too.
Adolescence
I lost most of my pre-war friends, either because their families relocated to another area in Kuwait or because they had to leave Kuwait for good. About the same period, my dad started working a second evening job in the gold market. I used to go with him in the gold shop in Mubarakiya, and learned how to sell in a retail store for the first time.
Soon after, and just as I was entering secondary school in my 14ish year, I met a new group of guys not far from home. It started with me asking to join their game of football, of course. Nawaf the Kuwaiti, Ayman the Palestinian, Mustafa the Egyptian, Mohammad the bedoon (stateless), and Issa the Yemini. The Kuwaiti guy had an external separate room (mul’haq) in their villa house, and that’s where we used to gather. We played video games, Table football, and table tennis. That’s also where we committed our first mischiefs as teenagers like smoking cigarettes, hookah, and other stuff that do not need to be mentioned. We played outdoors as well, mainly lots of football games. I stayed with that group of friends until I finished high school, when a silly fight broke between us, and soon after I moved with my family to another area in Kuwait, Salwa. My connections to them severed since then. I saw Ayman once and chatted about the old days, years after when I was in my thirties.
