We arrived in Kuwait City in the darkness of the early hours of 30 January, 2010 after a bunch of delayed flights and restless sleep on the plane. A driver was waiting to take us to our temporary home – a place we did not know the exact location of (we had attempted triangulation but been unable to find it on a proper map). We had done our triangulation well – it was pretty much where we had hoped it would be – in the area of Salmiya, one street in from the water (the Arab Gulf as it is known here – the Persian Gulf as it is known elsewhere).
The sleepy security guard let us in and we had just put down our 96 kilos of luggage in our 10th floor apartment and opened the balcony door when the first calls for the morning prayer at sunrise were called out from the nearby mosque.
I stepped out on the balcony and the calls were almost drowned by the loud noise of a fancy motorcycle racing up the Gulf Road at death-defying speed. A beautiful symbol of what is surely to come – the contradictions between the extreme materialism and abundance of oil money - and strong conservative values and Islamic virtues.
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