It's been many years since we first arrived to live in Kuwait. With family in tow, we settled in a newer part of the country so that we might have more room, land, around us to adjust from living in the US in a house with a fairly large yard, to living in a city/desert.
(I am specifying city here because my first mental images of Kuwait, before coming, were of desert, with rolling dunes, expanse, date palms, and camels. This simply was not the case. No rolling dunes here, no camels- at least not nearby- mostly houses, highways, neighborhoods, city.
The adjustment took some time, to be fair. Having grown up with jays, mockingbirds, cardinals, to name but a few, outside my windows, I was accustomed to the music of the birds- the running and calling of the squirrels- the swaying leaves in the wind.
The absence of what is taken for granted can be unsettling to say the least.
The area in which we lived here first was fairly barren: houses, construction, dirt roads, baqalas (small grocery stores), and mosques. Construction was ubiquitous and frankly dangerous. One morning, after waking very early and starting my drive to work, I nearly drove off into a cavernous hole dug as a building's foundation that had not been there the day before- no warnings, no construction cones, no ropes, just an open, gaping canyon.
One must be alert here, I said to myself.
Weeks and months passed as construction sites opened, finished, reopened, closed. At one point, trenches, resembling long, linear motes, were dug separating our own dirt road from our house. Planks were set out for us to traverse the hazard.
This feels crudely and hastily wrought. But to our children, I suppose it was an adventure, a glimpse into an Arabian wild west.
Oddly, the evolution of this new neighborhood occurred almost in tandem with my own adjustment. As the houses and roads dug their heels in and settled into the dust of the environment, so too did I and we. Memories of the past made daily appearances.
Was that a jay, mockingbird, flying by my window? No, just a migrating plastic bag.
Eventually, we left this area and moved farther into the city into a more established neighborhood. But, I never forgot those days nor that growth. Those daily, and sometimes jarring, intrusions into what was familiar and known, have now become a part of me. And I see now, that even as I change and evolve, so too does Kuwait.
And frankly, this is the truth for any place on this Earth.
Kuwait is now looking to ban those same plastic impostor birds that once deceptively flew past my windows and into the anecdotes of my culture shock, to start a new chapter in their own story.
Maybe all this isn't so different after all.
