Three most unsavory characters that come to my mind during the short sojourn in Kuwait I cannot forget.
One of them was an Arab taxi driver who did not seem too well off. It seems he had made his taxi his home for every daily activity except perhaps for daily ablutions judging from the foul smell that emanated from every part of his taxi. The seats were soiled and the car as a whole bore a rundown look.
He excitedly told me that he had been to India. For Nepali girls, he explained. He had a taste for them in the red light areas of Delhi and Bombay. That was until his wife stopped his nocturnal adventures in foreign lands when she started getting a hint of what he was upto. Though I don't believe Arab men usually listen to their wives!
"I know about Gandhi", he went on. "He was a great man!" And like a lot of foreigners he believed Indira Gandhi was in some way linked to the Mahatma. I was astonished when he went on to talk about Amitabh Bachhan. This guy really picked up a lot of Indian memorabilia! And when it came to the taxi fare, his crudeness came to the fore when he demanded more than the usual rate. Because he was dressed in a flowing tunic and a turban?! (I have to admit though, I used his mobile phone to get directions to my destination when we got lost on our way.)
The other unsavory character I was in close contact was the Pakistani who ran the illegal internet telephony just a stone's throw away from my swanky quarters. Telephone calls can burn a hole in Kuwait and hence illegal internet telephony is very popular. Like the aforesaid character this guy's one room carpeted dwelling stank of urine, sweat and something very putrid I can't describe. The room he lived in was part of a larger dwelling where mostly poor Afghans, Pakistanis and Syrians dwelled. It was in a very bad state of disrepair and I feared it would fall on me any time I made that weekly visit to call home. He was always dressed in a waist coat and pajamas. When he dialled the number I gave and handed the phone to me, I could hear a taped American female voice announcing that the connection had been made. Perhaps my call made its way all the way to the US and then back home via Internet to India. But I had to agree the sound quality was not too bad though I detested coming to the place.
The most unsavory character that I met in Kuwait was no doubt my Lebanese boss. I have described enough of him, so I leave out the details. However one thing I must mention was that though he wore the same dress for days and the sweat marks were clearly visible around his armpits and neck, and probably he rarely took a bath; the fact was he arrived at office daily as fresh as a daisy! I still wonder what was the trick behind that?!
Another incident I remember was that when this shady character received a call from his native Lebanon informing him that his father had just suffered a heart attack. He just muttered, "too many cigarettes the old man smoked!" and promptly returned to his supervisory "work".
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- CuppajavaMattiz
- Matty Jacob - Avid blogger with interests in technology, travelling and writing.
When I was at Kuwait airport waiting for my flight back to India via Colombo, I found myself sitting next to someone who looked Indian. Being bored, just to wile away time, I struck up a conversation with this guy. Initially he was a bit hesitant to talk to me and he seemed to be fighting some inner turmoil.
He told me his story.
It turned out he was a Tamil Muslim from Chennai, basically a mechanical engineer, who had come to Kuwait to exploit the fortunes that promised to await him.
Alas for him, things turned out sour. His sponsor was an extremely shrewd Arab cheat who wanted the entire credit for the work done by this poor guy. Finally one fine day, he decided to call it quits and decided to flee the unfriendly country, though it meant a minimum loss of 30,000 rupees which he had borrowed from friends and realtives before leaving from Chennai, but had no qualms about it now. He had planned his exit carefully. His plan was finalized one week prior to this.
He was unsure of the status of his visa and that was his first problem. If he was on a work permit, his sponsor could stop him at the airport and gaol would be the place for him. Even if he did flee Kuwait, he would be blacklisted by the Kuwaiti government on behalf of his sponsor and would be stopped from ever returning to the country.
He could not read the arabic on the visa and he showed it to all and sundry, to find out whether his was a work permit or a visiting visa. If it was a visiting visa, then no one had the right to stop him and he would be free as a bird once he arrived at the airport. The many expatriate taxi drivers hailing from Pakistan and India assured him that it was a visiting visa, under which he had no right to work, and hence the sponsor would have no hold over him and could not hold him back under Kuwaiti rules. Confident now that he would not land in gaol if he indeed tried to flee, the guy meticulously planned his return to his native land. He borrowed his visiting visa and passport from his Arab host on the pretext that he planned to make a short trip to neighbouring Dubai to visit a friend. That done, he surreptitiously planned his exit.
His first stop was the Sri Lankan Air office in the city where he booked his return ticket. Just to be on the safe side, he showed the Sri Lankan air guys his passport and visa and asked them whether it was one of those damned work permits. But the agents feigned innocence not wanting to get involved in a legal lacuna of any sort.
On the great day, when the boss was sure to be out of office, he feigned illness and stayed away from work; packed his meagre belongings and hailed a taxi to the airport. Bu not before he was spotted by one of his co- workers. Throwing caution to the winds the Tamil guy told his countryman that he was fleeing once and for all but made him swear that he would not breathe this to a soul.
Unfortunately when he reached the airport, his Arab boss unexpectedly returned to the office and found him missing. And apparently his friend who had last seen him spilled the beans. It could be left to imagination, the state of anger the Arab would have been when he heard this.
The poor fleeing Tamil was being called on his mobile by the Arab intermittently, which he had no intention of answering.
I sensed him perspiring and calling out to Allah to save him in his hour of need.
How many hours to the flight he asked me. "15 minutes", I replied. The mobile in his hands rang once again. I could see him itching to answer the phone and maybe hurl some choice invectives at his torturer.
"Don't respond", I said, understanding the gravity of the situation.
So there he was, so near and so far from freedom. He muttered somthing to me in English that sounded like he would be having one big swig at the bottle once he got onto the Lankan flight.
Five minutes before the boarding he switched off his mobile and heaved a sigh of relief.
We proceeded to the docked airplane.
I later saw him on the plane and he said he had just come to see me one last time. I found that he was extremely relieved on being freed from his ordeal and I was all the more symapthetic to his plight and to that of so many other countrymen who face a similar ordeal in hostile Arab lands.
While at Kuwait I often wondered why the Arabs were so sullen towards immigrants and parted with money so reluctantly for work done sincerely when they are blessed with money aplenty.
I also could not comprehend how they could be so ethnocentric when people from all races surrounded them.
On contemplating a lot I think I know why and in a way I sympathize with the Arabs.
Everything in Arab land seems to be designed for the natives and things made a bit more difficult for the alien.
For example in Kuwait, landline to landline calls are free, while owning a mobile, which is of defintitely more utility to an exaptriate, would lead to exorbitant bills; even incoming calls to mobiles are charged.
The average immigrant taxi driver you talk to has the belief that Kuwait's laws are made for expatriates; laws are not applicable to the natives. The natives are a law unto themselves.
Says an exaptriate:"Ramdan is a period of penance and of self cleansing for the average Muslim.The spirit of Ramdan is self-restraint. But when they do not want others to drink or eat during the ROJA, that very spirit is broken."
An expatriate can be thrown into prison by the religious police for tempting a native by just drinking a glass of water in public during the ritual fasting periods observed during the holy muslim month of Ramdan.
Kuwaiti youth, contrary to popular belief are very promiscuous. But moves are made discreetly. An alien on the other hand can face the death penalty for committing similar acts. The Arab promiscuity is more visible in places such as Bahrain and exotic places they visit where they are not openly under the eyes of the fanatic clergy.
Corruption is not absent in Arab lands, instead it attains a higher level of sophistication. Kuwaitis practice a form of corruption called "vaasta". Vaasta allows people with influence in the government ministries and agencies to get thing done in a manner condoned by official law.
The Kuwaiti gains by every entrepreneural move of the expat. For instance expatriates can engage in business activities only under the sponsorship of an Arab.
Regard for other races is scant, that is what I meant when by Kuwaitits being ethnocentric. Women of South East Asian origin, who routinely perform housemaid duties, are known to be a horribly exploited lot, sometimes working nearly 24x7 weeks and face physical abuse at the hands of their masters too.
I think the tactic Kuwaiti Arabs are adapting is that of "Offence being the best form of defence!!" In a land where Kuwaiti Arabs (the locals) are a minority and expatriates mostly of Asian origin form upto 75 % of the population, Kuwaitis and natives of most Arab lands need to find ways to keep the expats in check, just to keep from being overrun by them. All the above mentioned practices they follow, I believe contribute to this end.
So whether you like it or not, this is the way the Arab is guaranteeing his survival in a land where he is increasingly becoming a minor minority in a land awash with his minions!
In Germany (see http://www.mattiz.blogspot.com) I found that the computer keyboards were not the ordinary types we used back home and did not follow the "qwerty" pattern.
Instead the english letters were scattered all over the keyboard and I had to relearn my typing skills once again to operate the comps. And in addition to the English letters these keyboards featured funny letters with dots on them and odd keys like the greek "beta".
The software on the comps at Kuwait too posed problems initially.
Arabic is written from right to left.
When I tried to do a copy paste on an English paragraph using what I presumed to be the customized Arabic version of Microsoft Word, I found that I had to do the selection from bottom left to top right!
Initially everthing was an experiment of sorts till I became used to things.
The work in Kuwait was interesting. Yes, let me tell you, I am a computer programmer.
What the pudgy Arab Project Manager who self professedly admitted he was managing this web based application though he had no prior experience of web programming, had as his two tools was google, a file compare tool and sheer imagination.
Firstly there was no source control repository! He randomly assigned tasks to his minions after finding something he hoped he could implement after a google search and was very strict that deadlines were met. This resulted in each co-participant in the project having his own version of the code.At the end of the working day the "boss" sat down with all the different versions of the code and using the file compare tool integrated the whole bits and pieces together.
Only one correct and updated version ever existed - on his computer!
In fact no one had any idea what was going on. The entire application as it would function in its final stage existed only in this "genius'" inner eye. No requirements, no plans, nothing. One supreme head, and to the others everything was chaos.
My very first day at the job was an insight into what I was going to face in the coming days.The "boss" said I had to implement some way so that a given computer could serve as a multicast server. The reason he said was to balance the user load once the application was in the final stages.At that stage I didn't know how the heck "multicast" came to his mind. (It was google of course)
I protested saying that I was a software programmer and not a hardware hack to come up with such a kind of thing. He insisted that it was a software job and I had to come up with proper configurations to convert a computer to a multicast server.
My negative response only strengthened his resolve. "Man, I want multicast servers!" he bellowed.
I decided to talk with the systems guy who also happened to be a Malayalee - an old hand at the firm.
The systems in charge looked me straight in the eye and said - "Of course, you can do that. In fact I have done that before", he said without blinking an eyelid!
Later I realised that this was a ploy that veteran aliens at the job did to fool the native Arabs. Yes, if the top guy wants it done, it can be done, but definitely not by me!
FYI- F*** you instead!
Desperately, I looked up the net for some stuff I could show "boss" to tell him he was wrong. The fact that multicast servers had longer than usual IP addresses was a fact I found I could use to prove him wrong.The next day I told him and pointed out that if he wanted multicast servers he had better move his ass and buy some.
He was adamant. On the phone he called the network guy and said he wanted a couple of computers to have extended IP addresses.The game was up for the network guy. That couldn't be done at all was his final reply.And so ended the quest of this Don Quixote of sorts of a boss for multicast servers. The IP addresses could not be lengthened, NO muticast servers!
During Ramdan, even the foreign ministry in Kuwait goes on a month long vacation! In plain words, you can then cannot extend your visa until Ramdan ends.
After several visa extensions, the last one came in Ramdan and we were asked to leave the country and re-enter the country through an entry point for the reasons mentioned earlier.
So it all came down to a simple entry stamp on your passport at the selected entry point.
The gameplan was this: the team closely accompanied by our Arab handler would leave Kuwait in the morning, stay overnight at Bahrain and then re-enter Kuwait the next day to gain that precious re-entry stamps on our passports.
Though this was a short foray we welcomed the idea since it would be a welcome change from drab Kuwait.
The short flight from Kuwait to Bahrain proved uneventful but we noticed drinks were not served.
It was late evening when we checked into our hotel at Bahrain, arranged at company cost of course. The hotel was a five star affair.
A quick inspection revealed belly dances in progress in at least 3 mini-bars, filled with noisy Arabs in their djellabahs smoking hookahs and drunk with wine.
We came to know that Bahrain does not have much oil resources and most of its income comes from barter and oil shipping arrangements mostly with Saudi Arabia. Arabs from restrictive Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and similarly emancipated countries make it a point to check into such kind of hotels to enjoy the belly dances, liquor (prohibhited in their native lands) and a good night's sleep.
The wine cabinets in our rooms were well stocked and when the others among us decided to throw caution to the winds, I too joined the revelry and had a cocktail of an assortment of drinks.
We also witnessed one of the less extravagant looking belly dances - it turned out the dancers were Russians- but they were singing Arab melodies in total rhapsody! I guess these poor girls had no other option but to sing to the tunes of the Arab lords for their supper.
Petrol money after all had a universal power.
Later that night when I fell into bed in a light slumber, there was a knock at the door.
An oriental-looking girl stood there.
"Anybody wants a Thai massage?" she asked primly.
I was in no mood to entertain her and off she went looking rather shocked at the way I said NO.
For a change let me describe one day working at the Kuwait office.
I get up early in the morning at 6: 30 am. Only time for tea.
Sherry, the company driver, takes us to the office about 10 km away in batches of 5 in the office Toyota convertible. Reach office in a jiffy. This is the only time when the Arab boss does not sit hawkeyed behind you. Till he comes in half an hour later. And the boss starts barking orders every 15 minutes or so to someone or the other:
"So! what is the status? I will kill somebody. I will send you to the moon!", making it a parody of a hostage-taking. His emotions he never betrays since he always speaks in a monotone making it difficult for one to know whether he is joking or talking serious.
Some of his favorite sayings, I noted :
"I will kill you...
"I am a monster, and another monster will be joining on Monday....(his Arab sidekick) ....
"Did you kill the beast?..
"I heard someone killed the beast....Did you kill the beast?
Islamic sayings? (anyway, I believe he is an atheist)
He walks up and down monitoring the work of each and every employee. His honcho is always with him -very lazy, upto nothing at all, except adding to the somber mood of the office.The boss himself is a workaholic. He even works at home after returning.
I immerse in work leaving no thought for the torture one is undergoing. Lunch from the tiffin at 1 O' clock prepared by the Sri Lankan lady at the hotel apartment.
Then back to work and slog.. slog till 10 pm in the night when Sherry again makes his appearance and we are on our way back to the apartment sweeping through empty Kuwaiti streets at terrific speeds. You are forced to use the company car, coming late to office or leaving early would entail using taxis- and these are terribly expensive.
A short taxi drive around Kuwait can cost you 3 Dinars at the minimum(@ Rs. 500).
The time one leaves office becomes later and later and soon you find yourself leaving office a 1 am in the night.
Stopping cigarettes has slightly complicated the situation and I have a heavy supper before falling like a log onto bed. Fridays and Sundays are no holidays. All days are work.Ramdan only means you cannot have food and water at proper times but you still have the same long hours.If I get some time I go down to a shanty with one of my friends where a Pakistani operates an illegal internet telephony. Sound quality is not very bad but much cheaper than a regular phone. And if I still have time, I wash some clothes in the washing machine that the hotel apartment owner provides. And ironing later with a Japanese iron that the apartment owner has so thoughtfully provided with a a couple of refrigerators thrown in for good measure - at a good price of course -our company is footing the bills.
We have air conditioning running all the time whether we are in the apartment or not. Money is not a big issue. And a dinar (@150 rupees) has the same importance as 10 rupees back home. Bath is sometimes on alternate days - you get too tired sometimes even to move yourself. Food is good. Much tastier and nutritious than back home.
Once you are in the room you have nothing to do except watch the 15-20 channels that the hotel owner provides (including malayalam channels and some other blah-blah). So in one way staying at the office is a good excuse to escape from the boredom of staying in the apartment and brooding.
There is no life outside office, the office car and the apartment. Literally!
Telephone (ISD) is expensive but local calls are free. Mobiles are expensive. Petrol is damn cheap.All the buildings you visit including the one I stay in, are filled with gizmos imported from all parts of the world - Europe, States, Japan.
Life at your apartment is king-size but you slog like a dog at work to please your Arab bosses.
Kuwait is mostly barren with only a few artifically irrigated patches where you will find some small shrubs. Buildings are blindingly lighted. You see imported cars from all over the world. I had the chance to see some Hummers parked very near to our apartment block. And there is a lot of rash driving on bikes! This place is full of Lebanese, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, SriLankans (usually house maids) not to mention the Filipinos and the cosmopolitans- Malayalees are a bit better off- others are into menial tasks, .
Kuwait does not allow even fellow Arabs from neighbouring countries to enter the country very easily. I guess after the invasion they feel very vulnerable and even a Lebanese may have to wait for months before his visa is approved. I think guys from Dubai or Qatar are the only people allowed some sort of free access. Comparitively Malayalees have a better chance - being better qualified and hardworking.
People are frightened of the religious police like hell and no one would dare to break the law as much as to steal an alpin. Religion is imposed on the people and almost every office has a place where people can do the namaz. Kuwait is a bit more free than some Arab countries and much more than Saudi where a woman is not even allowed to drive a car. Kuwaiti women can wear Jeans, T shirt and make-up to some extent. They don't have voting rights.
Arabs in general have a strong respect for female maternal figures, they being rasied by mothers during childhood, their fathers having to attend to many of his wives and his harem!
A few days after I landed in Kuwait, the Ramadan rituals started. It lasts for about a month when people don't eat, drink water let alone smoke or drink during the day hours. You could be jailed for drinking, eating or smoking in public anytime from early morning to late evening. That was the penalty for tempting the natives even though you belonged to a different race, religion or nationality.
The idea captured my mind. When the entire nation stops drinking, eating and smoking why couldn't I give a try at stopping smoking?
So I decided to give it a shot though I had made one unsuccessful attempt earlier.
I decided that to control the initial smoking pangs I would go for those nicotine patch things. I found these were plentiful in stock in Kuwaiti pharmacies. Obviously a lot of other people had the same idea as mine!
My first few days without cigarettes were not bad. But I noticed that I was making those extra trips to the coffee maker and was defintely putting on fat.
The third day I had a smoke late at night but then angrily stubbed it off before it burnt out.
Every morning I applied the nicotine patch like a shield to protect me, and removed it after bath later in the evening.
My trial lasted exactly three weeks. After the third week, pushed to the brink by the demands of non stop work, I started smoking again. I was a bit shameful when I faced my Arab boss. I had broken a resolution! And failed that test that every Muslim gives once every year, year after year, though of course his religion allows him to do whatever he pleases during the night hours.
I noticed I had put on a lot of puppy fat from that incessant coffee imbibing and wolfing down food.
Side effects of trying to stop smoking!
Soon I was back puffing away, in secret; till Ramadan ended uneventfully.
Most people sent on short term work assignments to Arab countries are usually furnished illegally with a visiting visa by their employers designating them as business dignitaries , on which they are not supposed to take up work; doing so could result in the harshest punishments under that country's law.
This topic was the subject of one popular joke making rounds of Kuwait at that time.
A lion was sunning himself in a zoo in some exotic land when he was approached by an Arab Sheikh.
"Psst", said the Sheikh, "how about coming to Kuwait? I bet you will get a better deal there!"
The lion pondered over this and considered this not a bad proposition.
Surely the Arab Sheikhs would treat him royally considering the opulence of the Middle East.
He agreed and was flown off executive class to Kuwait.
On his first day in Kuwait, the lion was given peanuts to eat.
The lion took this good humoredly, expecting to be treated with rare meats the following days.
The second and third day too, the lion was fed peanuts.
He could take it no longer.
When the zoo keeper arrived with peanuts the next day, he roared, "I am a lion, the King of The Jungle, and I wish to be treated that way. I will have peanuts no more!"
"Sorry", replied the zoo keeper evenly."You may be a lion, your honour; but you have been brought to Kuwait on a MONKEY's visa!"
This was my second trip abroad. My employers in Kuwait had booked a Sri Lankan Airlines flight for me.
Malayalees to Gulf destinations preferred Sri Lankan Airlines, since it meant economy without compromising on quality, and plentiful drinks on board of course, before one more long stint in liquor-dry Kuwait. It was early morning when the flight taxied off a wet runway at Trivandrum. I had a window seat which I had asked for in particular during baggage check-in.
As the flight neared Colombo, I was mesmerized by the dazzling landscape below with serpentine rivers making their way through hills bedecked with palm trees. Not very different from my native Kerala but a more exotic version of God's Own Land.
It saddened me to think that a land as beautiful as this was till recently ravaged by a mindless civil war from which apparently no one had to gain.
On landing at Colombo International Airport, my transit to Kuwait, I adjusted my watch to local time.
I badly needed a smoke. I found that the smoking area at the airport was a small room coated with soot with no ventilation not to speak of air-conditioning, in sharp contrast to the rest of the posh airport; smoking was apparently discouraged. As the plastic wrappers of the cigarette packs caught fire in the ash depositors, the room was filled with an acrid smell, forcing most of the smokers to puff away to glory near the entrance of the smoking den, causing inconvenience to non smokers packed just outside.
I decided that I would rather have a bout of wheezing sickness rather than give up my cigarette. As I smoked I happened to eavesdrop on a conversation between two of my own countrymen, who actually happened to be from places not far from my hometown. One of the more talkative ones was lamenting the cruel whims of his Arab boss.
I was not the only one who overheard him apparently, because a third Malayalee who was on his way to London via Colombo, picked up this converstation with me:
"It feels pathetic isn't it", he remarked as he took swigs of brandy from a metal flask he carried, "these poor guys, made to toil and suffer so much in the Gulf and when they land back home they are harassed by customs for none of their fault."
I nodded agreeingly. It seemed my Kuwaiti superiors would not be very easy to deal with.
"I move around a lot you see, since I am in the shipping industry", he added with a cunnning glint in his eye. "I was once posted to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But I threatened to put in my papers if that was to be. And when I told my wife, she said, 'Why, Saudi Arabia is the second best place in the world.' And when I asked her which was the best, she replied laughing,' Why? The rest of the world of course!' "