By Mallimalika Gupta

Staff Writer

There is just something peanut-butter-and-jelly-esque about the last week of December and partying – they go together. So when I found out that I was headed to Kuwait to visit my dad that week, I was not too happy. Not only would I not be with my friends in Bombay, I would be in a country where alcohol is illegal. This was not going to be fun, I decided. Still, I put on a pleasant face and boarded the three-hour flight from Bombay to Kuwait.

I was expecting desert. I was expecting sand. I was expecting a foreign land I would feel like an alien in. My dad, who works with Kuwait Oil Company, came to pick us up at the airport. We sat in his car, and my dad turned the radio on. “Concrete jungles where dreams are made of…”blared from the speakers. Hey, I know this. Jay-Z was an important part of my finals week playlist and it was like stepping back into that familiar time. The radio station went on to play Mariah Carey, Black Eyed Peas and soon enough, Kuwait began to resemble a “Party in the USA.”

Kuwait is a rich country. I saw that in the first ten minutes of that car ride. I looked out the window and saw every automobile lover’s dream. Even a car-illiterate person like me could appreciate the wheels on the roads.  

That was just the beginning. Kuwaitis, they live in style. The average woman in Kuwait will not step out without her Guccis and Louis Vuittons. And those are just the basics.  

Their water tanks – giant, tall structures that resemble huge mushrooms growing from the ground – are painted and decorated. Most of them were painted white with blue stripes; some of them had fairy lights for added measure.  

My father’s company, the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is celebrating its 75^th anniversary this year, and every tree, shrub, lamppost, bench, sidewalk, and railing within two kilometers of the KOC compound was adorned with strings of fairy lights.  

For someone who has seen her fair share of festival and celebratory lights (I’ve lived in India all my life), this display surpassed anything I had ever ever witnessed. It was red, blue, yellow, green, and terribly bright.  

All I could think was, how much electricity are they wasting? The irony of spending tons of energy to celebrate the last 75 years of producing energy wasn’t lost on me.  

In Kuwait I sensed a love for playing ‘dress up’ with everything – the cars, the streets, the little babies’ strollers adorned with stickers and tiny sparkly glitter. After three days in the country, I could see why. Kuwaitis balance what nature has given them and what’s in their hands: the bland, flat, huge expanse of beige sand and the bright everything else.  

Kuwait is a tiny country, smaller than New Jersey. Its citizens don’t pay taxes. But it’s also a very rich country. Every time I saw a price tag I multiplied it by 3.5 in my head to convert it to dollars from the Kuwaiti Diner, their currency. After the first two days, I stopped, because I realized I would never end up actually buying anything, which would be a shame, of course.  

The malls are a testament to the Kuwaiti penchant for spending. Every brand, the H&Ms, the Forever 21s, the Topshops, the Mangos, and the Zaras, was well represented. And there were others–Oysho, Bershka, Promod– I hadn’t even seen before. 

Although Kuwait doesn’t actively endorse tourism and gives out very few tourist visas, it is a perfect holiday destination, offering lots of attractions.   

One of my favorite memories was walking along the boardwalk next to Kuwait’s Hard Rock Café outside Marina Mall. The sky and the ocean both held a Mediterranean kind of blue. From there, we took ferries to Failaka Island, twenty kilometers off the coast of Kuwait into the Persian Gulf.  

When Kuwait went into war with Iraq in 1991, the Iraqis attacked this island first, forcing its inhabitants to flee to Kuwait City. The Iraqis mined the island, bombed it, and fired bullets. The Kuwaiti government has still not removed any of the ruins or signs of the attacks. The buildings in this island are decapitated and bullet holes riddle some of the walls. The broken glass windows remain. Rusting old tractors and cotton from insulation and couches-all still there. The old wires still jut out in strange angles, some of the enclosed casing peeling off.  

Failaka Island is mostly a weekend getaway now, with one holiday resort and few permanent inhabitants. What is striking is the beauty in the destruction, the way everything has stayed the same for the last 19 years. One of my mother’s theories was that they had people come in the middle of the night to put old, rusted bullets on the floor, add some rust touch-up, to keep it “authentic.” 

We left Failaka Island to return to Kuwait City, where I stood on a 360-degree revolving floor on 27^th floor of Kuwait Tower and saw the entire city in the nighttime. I am a sucker for night-lights.  

Kuwait is such a small country we could drove everywhere (and gas was free). We drove from Kuwait City, site of the national aquarium is, to a camp site with tents, close to the Saudi Arabian border, and back to where my dad lives all in a day.  

Sitting in a car for two hours every day with the rest of my family, being circumstantially forced to talk, laugh, and share our lives– this had only happened in Kuwait.  Also, I don’t think I will ever see a camel in labor again in my life. That, however, is another story.

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