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Kuwait is a tense nation at a tough time, "a place in need of therapy," says Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Awadi, a physician who long served as his country's Health Minister and is now Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs. Everyone has witnessed an atrocity or has a tale to tell. Al-Awadi turns pale when he recalls the story of an Iraqi patrol that spotted some Kuwaiti children playing in the street. "They were told to stop, and all but one did," says al-Awadi. "That one was picked up by the hair by an Iraqi soldier -- he was still holding his soccer ball -- and shot in the head in front of the other kids." Some of Mike's friends had to cut down seven young Kuwaiti girls who had been hanged in a schoolyard after having been raped. There are several hundred women awaiting abortions, says a doctor at Mubarak al-Kabir Hospital. All were victims of gang rape.
Even when Kuwaitis try to forget the tragedies, they cannot escape reminders of the occupation. The sky is what everyone notices first each morning. When the wind blows toward Kuwait City, the sky darkens as if a storm were moving across the plain. At times, night appears at noon. The oil fires are that horrendous. There is no electricity, the result of last-minute Iraqi sabotage. Few believe the repeated assurances that at least some electricity will return "tomorrow." Too many tomorrows have passed.
Water and power were operating until shortly before the Iraqis withdrew, apparently to pacify the population and permit Iraqi looters to spot unoccupied houses. When the Iraqis visited inhabited homes, it was mostly to make their presence felt. "We left things around, watches and some jewelry," says Tariq al-Riaz. "That usually satisfied them, and their searches were perfunctory. When we did need to hide, we did so in rooms we created behind walls."
The hardest thing to do was to teach Kuwait's children to "like" Saddam, says Salah al-Awadi, manager of credit-card sales for the Gulf Bank. "When Iraqis visited us, we would serve them soft drinks. Once, my son Youssef, who is almost four, said, 'Take this glass and put it on Saddam's head.' We had to teach the kids to say good things about Saddam for fear they would be killed if they didn't."
People move more freely now, of course, but a favorite pastime, a walk on the beach, is impossible. The seaside fortifications built by the Iraqis -- four separate lines of trenches and obstacles -- "look like Normandy from the air," says a U.S. Army general. Mines are everywhere, and the minefield maps Baghdad provided the coalition are "useless," says U.S. Ambassador Edward Gnehm. The city is rocked by explosions several times a day as U.S. Army experts detonate Iraq's abandoned ordnance. Sporadic gunfire is heard throughout the day -- celebratory rounds discharged mainly by Saudi soldiers. (It is the Americans, however, who are in demand for pictures and autographs.)