On August 2, 1990, people all over Kuwait woke up to a changed reality. Some were woken up by gunshots, while others were woken up by their neighbours’ screams. Although each person’s experience differs, most who experienced the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait felt both shock and fear.
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Read the full story: https://bit.ly/33gv9rb
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
#Kuwait #GulfWar #Iraq
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NewsTranscript
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.