Word: two
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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During his detention at an Iraqi checkpoint, Basa shared a cell with three other Kuwaitis. Two of the three were tortured while Basa was forced to watch. "They wanted names, resistance leaders, people they could go after," he says. "One fellow had his genitals prodded with an electric rod. After that he was made to sit on a broken Pepsi bottle. Then, working very slowly, they ripped the fingernails off his right hand. He broke, of course. Who wouldn't? He gave them some names. And then they killed him. A single shot between the eyes...
Ministries that once occupied whole buildings in Kuwait function out of single rooms. One can find the Finance Ministry, for example, in Room 311. Surrounded by six chairs, two card tables in the middle of the room offer all the flat work space available. Several phones and a single fax machine connect the ministry with the rest of the world. There are two currency counters and enough calculators to ensure that Kuwait Inc. functions to the proper decimal points. A shredder sits near a large safe, opposite a small television set. But CNN, which everyone is eager to watch...
...live after her husband died. Khalifa learned English at a private academy in Cairo, and like every Kuwaiti who wanted a college education before Kuwait University was inaugurated in 1966, went abroad to study. Before being graduated with a B.A. in mathematics from San Francisco State University, Khalifa spent two years at Berkeley, where his chemistry lab partner was Mario Savio, the radical student leader who founded the Free Speech Movement. "To be at Berkeley in the '60s was wonderful," says Khalifa. "We studied a bit, attended anti-Vietnam demonstrations and listened to Joan Baez, who was always around singing...
There was something of a two-tier system among Kuwaitis themselves. Like preferred shareholders in a corporation that issues A and B stock, only males whose forebears were residents before 1920 were entitled to vote -- a mere 85,000 out of 826,500 Kuwaitis...
There are two ways to accomplish a cultural transformation of the magnitude contemplated. One is by governmental decree. The other is to let market forces play. While the goal is set -- if still unstated -- the manner of execution is not. Those planning for New Kuwait hope for fiat but are prepared for the slower course. "If, for example, the welfare system is cut back," says Fawzi al-Sultan, "if a person who has three servants, which is not unusual, suddenly has to pay the medical bills of those servants in place of the government, then that person is going...