00:00I saw my son almost dying.
00:03We were in fear.
00:08Our life is shattered.
00:12On August 2nd, 1990, a big invasion happened,
00:17by surprise, to the Kuwaitis who were living peacefully at that time.
00:22It was a summer, we just came from vacation.
00:25I was a young mother of a seven-month-old son.
00:29All Kuwaitis called that day the Black Thursday.
00:32We were at home, sleeping, around 6 o'clock in the morning.
00:36People are screaming, and our balcony, where we live, in the downtown,
00:41looks over the police station.
00:44So we sneaked out from the balcony, trying to look what's going to happen.
00:48And we saw buses, transport buses, the public buses,
00:53stop in the middle of the street,
00:55and people were taken and gathered in one place.
00:58So we gathered ourselves in one apartment,
01:01trying to think what was going to happen,
01:03what was going to knock on our door.
01:05We didn't know what was going to happen.
01:06We stayed there for a few hours, and then the shooting started.
01:12When the shooting started, we had a long corridor in our house.
01:17We went there, and we stayed.
01:19We sat there, because we wanted to be away from the windows.
01:22And we sat there for a couple of hours,
01:25trying for the shootings to come down and to stop.
01:28I was already dressed up, and I was already traveling in the bus to go to my office.
01:33I reached the office, and then suddenly we came to know that the office is closed,
01:37and they have told us that Iraq has invaded Kuwait, and we all have to leave.
01:42All buses had stopped, and we had to walk all the way from Kuwait City to Salwa, my house.
01:47There was a state of terror, because we didn't know when they would attack us.
01:52At the end of the day, when they started to tell us that there was an attack,
01:58we closed the house.
02:01I have blankets at home.
02:03We closed all the entrances of the house.
02:05We buried them.
02:07We buried three entrances with blankets.
02:10We closed the chairs, because we didn't know what to do.
02:13What happened during the desert, it was the horrible thing ever.
02:17My husband was driving so fast.
02:21He was soaring.
02:23It was so sandy that many cars sank, actually, and many people even.
02:29They were lost in the desert.
02:31We were alone, actually.
02:33I remember seeing our grandmother leaving one car because it sank,
02:38leaving to another car with her feet walking on that sand, burning sand.
02:46It was one of the toughest moments.
02:48I was crying.
02:50My husband was so silent, but driving very fast,
02:55until that moment when I saw my son almost dying.
03:00He was lost.
03:01His breath was really weak.
03:04As a mother at that time, you want justice, too, to survive your son.
03:08This is his picture, the real picture in the invasion,
03:11and now this is Abdullah when he's older.
03:15For seven months, my family and I lived in Saddam.
03:19We didn't go up to Saddam.
03:21We went out, changed, washed, and slept.
03:23And for seven months, we didn't wear our sleeping clothes.
03:27We were wearing jeans and regular clothes,
03:31so that at any moment we could get caught, we could go out,
03:34something could happen to us.
03:36And the servants, of course, they all left.
03:38At that time, all the servants were in their embassies.
03:40They said, let's go.
03:44The first emotion which came to my mind was like our life is shattered.
03:50I just got married, and we didn't know what the future was going to hold us.
03:54We were very depressed, and we were going through a hard time at that time.
03:57We were in fear.
03:59It was awful.
04:00Around 10 o'clock in the morning, 11 o'clock, the planes, the firefighters,
04:03crossed over us, over the buildings in the low altitude,
04:07and it was something we never experienced before.
04:10It was a mix of not knowing what's going to happen, fear, terrified.
04:17We never left the house in days because we were afraid of these Iraqis.
04:20We don't know where they will take us.
04:22Sometimes they used to take the people and take them to Baghdad in jail.
04:26It was very scary because the Iraqi people were just coming randomly in the houses,
04:31and they were pulling things out.
04:33They were searching the house for looting and all these things.
04:36They were stealing anything, anything they can get their hands off.
04:39Even the parking lots, the streets, the coins that you put,
04:45even that thing they were breaking.
04:48They were trying to break that with the gun, trying to get the coins inside it,
04:52stealing cars.
04:53My car was stolen.
05:09We were very scared.
05:12The soldiers who were next to us were shooting at us.
05:17They were saying to my husband,
05:19give us a gun, give us a gun.
05:21In the afternoon, they wanted to kill me.
05:23My husband didn't answer them.
05:25He was silent because there was no one in the house.
05:27They left, of course.
05:28The next day, we felt it.
05:30By God, the smell of Kuwait was different.
05:33The smell of Kuwait at the time of the crisis.
05:37The smell of destruction.
05:39I don't know. It was a strange smell, not the smell of Kuwait.
05:41The situation which happened to us was very dangerous.
05:45When my brother had taken the car and he was going to the cooperative,
05:50they took his car away and they took him also,
05:53and we didn't know where he was.
05:55So we found him in many police stations,
05:58and we found him in a place where there were a lot of people who were arrested
06:03and they were kept in that area.
06:05So we went and looked for him.
06:07At least it took us a day, from morning to evening.
06:09We found him back in the evening,
06:11and we all begged them because we took one Arab guy who was Jordanian,
06:17who could speak Arabic with them,
06:19and we released him from there.
06:21Of course, everyone knows Samir and Arafi.
06:24They were arrested in the first month,
06:28when she was working in the resistance.
06:31So they arrested her.
06:33They took her from one detainee to another,
06:36and she left.
06:38Until this day, there is no news about her.
06:41They called her a lot, her poor mother,
06:43and told her, your daughter is here, your daughter is here,
06:45your daughter is in the hospital, your daughter is here.
06:48We didn't know anything about her.
06:51And she disappeared.
06:53We don't know if she died, if she became a martyr.
06:56We don't know.
06:58Two of our guys also took her.
07:02One of them was tortured,
07:05his name might not be wrong,
07:08and then they took him back.
07:12One of them was taken away,
07:14they put him in a cell,
07:16he stayed there for a long time,
07:18and then they took him back.
07:20During the time that we were going to the co-ops
07:23and the grocery shops to find food,
07:26we saw hand grenades on the floor,
07:29on the streets, thrown just like that.
07:31I don't know what was the purpose of it.
07:35I mean, I walked through a grenade in the streets next to it.
07:40When I think about it right now, it's terrible.
07:44We had to leave, we had no choice.
07:59End of October.
08:01We went from Iraq to Jordan,
08:03and from Jordan the Indian mission had arranged
08:06all the flights for us to take back to India.
08:09Since my mom couldn't stand it,
08:12we decided to take her to Syria.
08:16My mom is Syrian.
08:17We took a bus.
08:18I think we left on the 20th of September.
08:24We took a bus to Iraq.
08:27We stayed in Iraq a couple of days in a hotel.
08:30There was no same-day bus to Jordan and Syria,
08:34so we had to stay two days in a hotel in Iraq.
08:37We stayed there,
08:39and then we took another bus after 48 hours
08:42to Iraq, to Jordan, and to Syria.
08:45Of course we felt it.
08:46We didn't sleep until midnight.
08:50We would listen to the news,
08:52and then we would put up wires,
08:54and we would make a special antenna
08:58to listen to the news.
09:00We would listen to the news and they would tell us
09:02what night it was.
09:04So we were expecting a strike at any moment.
09:08Iraqi soldiers, when they left,
09:10they burned all the wells.
09:12The sky was so dark.
09:15We see layers of gasoline and dirt.
09:23We stayed like that for three, four months.
09:25We couldn't see the sun.
09:26There was no sun at all.
09:27Living during the invasion in Kuwait
09:29was a hell of an experience.
09:31God forbid it doesn't happen to anybody
09:35because it's something very awful
09:40and very scary things.
09:42It was total fear and total chaos.
09:46Kuwait is a small country, yes,
09:48but with a big heart.
09:51Its people, during the invasion,
09:53showed a big courage to really save Kuwait,
09:58to help build Kuwait after the invasion.
10:01It was seven long months that we really had to endure,
10:07but thankfully all the United Nations,
10:11all the countries helped us
10:13to go through this tragic event.
10:17It was really dramatic, but we survived.
10:21We are here to tell the stories for our children
10:24and the children and the generations to come.
Comments