(9 of 9)
Last fall those Kuwaiti officials who would hazard a guess at the optimum size of the Palestinian population put the figure at 100,000. "Now surely we can achieve that," says one minister. "We can do it either by denying ( readmission to those who left and deporting some of those who stayed -- or we can kick out some who stayed and replace them with some who left who we are fairly sure can be trusted."
As he drives through Kuwait City inspecting the damage inflicted by Iraq, Minister of State al-Awadi can barely contain his anger. "You see what they did to the museum, to the scientific center, to art in people's houses," he says. "I know it is said that the Iraqi soldiers were just following Saddam's orders, and I am sure they were. But living in a place like Iraq, with a regime like Saddam's, makes little Saddams of everyone, or brings out the Saddam in all of us. When you live in a society without principles, the rape of Kuwait is what you get. If there is a silver lining to all this, it is that we may now understand the value of having principles as we try to build a new, more democratic and merit-driven country. If people can understand that, Saddam will have done us a great good.
"I hope that will happen," adds al-Awadi as he notices the wind shift, "but I just don't know." The dark cloud is approaching rapidly, and perhaps in anticipation of its arrival, al-Awadi begins to cough the cough that many suffer whenever they are near where Kuwait burns.