A New Look at Kuwait by Zahra Freeth

Author:Zahra Freeth [Freeth, Zahra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781351669955
Google: akMiEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-08-17T04:36:14+00:00

1. Odyssey, Bk IX. The reference occurs in a simile which forms part of the passage describing the destruction of the Cyclops’ eye.

Chapter 6

Shopping

‘Everything is available here!’ This is the proud claim of the Kuwaitis when one talks of shops in their town, a statement which may seem trite to strangers, but which expresses all the dream-come-true delight of those who enjoy the new affluence while remembering less prosperous times.

It is only twenty years since the first really modern shops began to appear in Kuwait, and now the main streets are lined with stores which in equipment and stock are totally European. To me, the interest of such shops lay in the way they reflected the changing consumer tastes in Kuwait. Fifteen years before I had not seen European-type restaurants, dry cleaners and laundries, hairdressing salons, shops full of prams and modern infants’ clothes, and women’s dress shops. Now they are all here. The dress shops even have model female figures in the window to display their goods – something so contrary to the traditional Muslim ban on representation of the human form that I found it hard to believe that such things were now accepted without a second glance.

Nevertheless, here and there one is reminded that much of this sophistication is only skin-deep. The notices in English above some shops tend to be somewhat uncertain in their spelling, and even comparatively smart shops sometimes announce their name over the door on a rough board painted with inexpert and shaky English lettering. They will have neon lighting – this is a status symbol – but show less interest in making their sign-boards attractive and accurate.

It seemed surprising to hear Kuwaitis refer to the concrete and plate-glass shopping streets as suqs. To us the word has exotic overtones, but of course to them it means only ‘shopping centre’ or ‘market’. Was there, I wondered, any part of the town where I could still find traditional oriental shops such as I had known in former times? V., of course, could be relied on to know the answer, and she took me one morning to an area reached by inconspicuous back streets, away from the smart town centre, where bazaars of the old type still exist. Needless to say, this was an ‘undeveloped’ area, and one which cannot much longer escape the town-planners’ improvement schemes. Here, leading off an open space among derelict houses, we found a row of shops which presented a wonderful brightly-coloured scene, with racks of gaudy clothes hanging above and around the small square rooms open to the street, and all the cheap-jack wares of Europe and Japan laid out in front.

Near by was a cloth market under a roofed arcade, copying the arrangement of the old covered suq of thirty years ago. But at the sight of Europeans the shopkeepers now shout ‘Come here!’ or ‘What you want?’, proud of their ill-learnt English, not realizing how rude these curt phrases sound. How uninviting to be solicited thus, instead

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