Kuwait: Camel milk, Sheikhs and the story of my great-great grandfather
It’s rare these days not to hear politicians talking about immigrants. Here they power our economies while also playing the role of scapegoat for anything that goes wrong. I wonder if it is politically similar in a country like Kuwait where in 2019 immigrants made up 72.1% of the population, when it was 14.1% in the UK, 100% in the Holy See, and 0% in Cuba! I also wonder how it worked back in the 1860s when my great-great grandfather emigrated to Al-Faw (on the Iran Iraq border just below Kuwait) to work for the telegraph office. According to his autobiography he was welcomed by everyone except the Ottomans and he ended up making friends with the Sheikh of Kuwait. Could this, I wondered, be the same Sheikh of Kuwait that this week’s book Mubarak Al-Sabah: The Foundation of Kuwait, describes in 250 pages of intricate detail? On page 241 I got my answer as the author says: “He [the Sheikh] also developed a close relationship with the director of the telegraph office in Faw, who kept him informed about the content of the most important telegrams.” So it turns out my great-great grandfather was a spy! In general it was a dry and academic read, but worth it to understand some of the regional politics and to get that juicy bit of information.
Now I like a pun and I like to try new things, but this week’s drink pushed me to the limits, for the packaging may claim it is camelicious, but I am here to tell you that unless you are the sort of person who smells a camel and starts to salivate, then camel milk is not for you. On the plus side it is one of the many things I’ve tried that made me think I should really be more strict about making this blog fully vegan.
Somewhere in an alternate universe there is another version of me who chose to watch The Exchange, a Netflix series about women turning around the Kuwait stock exchange, but sadly, I plumped instead for Honeymoonish, a romantic comedy that requires you to leave logic at the door. It’s not that I mind watching an appallingly scripted, entirely unbelievable film about a couple marrying for the wrong reasons (him to please his father, her to get back at her ex), its more that I mind watching a “Kuwaiti” film only to find the unbelievable characters flying off to Lebanon after a few short minutes. Why, dear God why, did I not choose instead to watch the short stop animation loveliness of Falafel Cart, or Three Kings, the hellish black comedy about US soldiers trying to steal gold hidden by Saddam Hussein in Kuwait during the Iraqi Invasion? I guess some things are just meant to be 😊.
Although modern Kuwaiti music sounds remarkably similar to global pop music in general (at least to my untrained ears), old Kuwaiti songs have a wonderful nostalgia about them. When my great-great grandfather lived there, it would have been particularly renowned for its songs, which would have been brought in by sailors, just like Liverpool became famous for music due to sailors coming over from the US. Pre-oil, when the world was a better place and no-one ever argued, 20–30% of Kuwaitis were musicians and a startlingly large number of the rest were pearl divers. Can you imagine such a thing? What a world.
Given how Camelusting this weeks’ drink was, I was absolutely delighted when I found a Kuwait restaurant that could make amends… and so… finding myself in London I dragged a friend to Freej Swaileh Kuwaiti Food in London. There we were met with a lentil soup served in a loaf, a salad served in a fried bread and separated with oranges and NO camel milk. It was all delicious, falafel, houmous, baba ganoush and other things you may be able to work out from the photo. We finished with mint tea and a sugar soaked doughnut. Along the way I asked the waiters about life in Kuwait, and was amused to be told that not a single Kuwaiti works there — it turns out there is a tiny Kuwaiti diaspora so immigration is clearly a bigger thing than emigration.
Can Kyrgyzstan (officially the most difficult country to spell) beat my appreciation of Kuwait, we’ll have to wait until next time to find out.
