touristing around Kuwait City

A few of us managed to go sightseeing around Kuwait City Monday. I started off in an irritable mood because many people were late or disorganized and I was tired from working the entire night before, but the day went well in the end. Our first stop was the Grand Mosque, which was the perfect place to relax.

First we waited a short while for a tour guide in an area styled as a Bedouin Diwaniyah tent. It was furnished with Sadu textiles, tea and biscuits, and Asian servers instead of slaves. Right in front of it was a very peaceful courtyard with a fountain, trees, etc. Sergeant Phelps and I spent a long time just smelling flowers and enjoying the peaceful feeling of being in a warm, humid, vegetated place. Our tour guide turned out to be a Muslim expatriate of Scottish origin, who was quite helpful. The tour had a slight proselyting twist to it, but nothing too bad considering that it was done under the aegis of the “Western Perception of Islam Centre” – the Kuwaiti Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs’ propaganda tool.

Stepping into the Grand Mosque’s main prayer hall on a regular day is like walking into a giant seashell. The structure is beautiful, vast, ornate, regular and smooth, but its emptiness and complete lack of life makes it hard to visualize its purpose. The Grand Mosque’s main prayer hall is in fact only used on Fridays and a few special holidays, and the rest of the time it is an empty receptacle for cool air. We did not see anyone there who had a purpose other than visiting or cleaning.

Whereas the main prayer hall has enough room for 10.000 men, the women’s prayer hall (located on the first floor behind a wooden latticework screen) has room for 950 women. Qur’anic writing is carved into the walls, the ceiling, the teak doors, and everything seems to be adorned with exquisite taste and the very best imported materials. The ceilings have carved Moroccan gypsum decoration; the glasswork is from France, the stone from India, etc… Just for scale: in this photo of the middle section of the main prayer hall’s southwestern wall, there are two women standing in the Mihrab (alcove which gives the Qibla, or direction to Mecca). The women, by the way, are a visitor and a tour guide – not worshippers or clerics. In the same photo, we can see the only thing I saw in the entire mosque that I thought was not harmonious: clocks! Why would anyone think to install two giant clocks in the direction of prayer?



The Amir (who is also the prime minister) has his personal room in the Grand Mosque, which is also very beautiful if diminutive in comparison to the main prayer hall. We were told that that room is only visited by the Amir during the holidays of Eid al Adha and Eid al Fitr. This photo of a part of the ceiling does its best to show the Moroccan carved gypsum decoration. The central chandelier weighs half a ton!

Yes, this all seems like a wasteful way to spend a lot of money, but Kuwait is a rich state and in fact the building’s price (about 50 million US dollars) is relatively low thanks to construction workers willing to work for almost nothing. Although the Grand Mosque is little used most of the year it is heavily used during the most important parts of the year for Muslims. Also, it is always open to everyone whether rich or poor, which cannot be said of most construction projects.

We then went to the Kuwaiti Towers, which were not terribly exciting. The most entertaining parts of being in a tourist trap 120 meters above ground are:

1 - getting used to the fact that the outside platform rotates while the inside and the windows don’t.

2 - Looking at a little girl completely covered in a black Abbayah dress and niqab face veil who is looking at pink coloring books in the gift shop (isn’t there an Islamic injunction against depicting anything that has a soul?).

3 - Wishing we could be window cleaners for one day, just to get to rappel over the outside of the towers.

The best part of the day was when we went to the Al Kut mall. The weather was great, with violent tropical lightning storms alternating with beautiful, warm and humid weather. At the mall, I bought some teas, nuts and dates, and relaxed in the coffee-shops. When it became obvious that my fellow soldiers were going to spend several hours shopping, I went over to the adjoining fishermen’s harbor. There are two main kinds of fishing boats at the harbor: wooden or brown-painted Arab-style Dhow boats with projecting bows and transoms, and open fiberglass skiffs about eighteen feet long with outboards clipped onto the stern.

Almost all of the fishermen I saw were Egyptians, like the ones in this picture. They were really friendly, especially when I told them that I was a fisherman in Alaska. I didn’t manage to explain that in fact I only used to be a fisherman, so I left it at that. When they asked me why I am here, I just lied and said I was a tourist, and they loved me all the more. I couldn’t identify any of the fish they were showing me, except for cuttlefish. Those cuttlefish they caught were the most beautiful brown-striped cuttlefish (that’s not a species name that I know of) that I have ever seen. I also ran into a really friendly juice seller who had been in Kuwait for fifteen years even though he has a wife, four sons and four daughters back in Egypt.