Kuwait Part 7

We arrive at Camp Buehring. The buses stop and we are told to go to chow. The choices: stuffed Bell pepper or Bombay chicken. They had warned us that the food was much better here. There’s a fountain that they say came from one of Saddam’s palaces. I try to throw money in but get tangled up. My plate whisks to the edge of tray and I have to recover abruptly so as not to lose it. I did lose my spoon though. People laugh.

Kuwait Part 6

The fence disappears; we’re out in the wide open. There’s a Blackhawk on the horizon. And then another. There’s a line of fuel trucks and a sign that says Ali Al-Salem Air Base. We continue on. A dreary stretch of road: a dead sheep, a hollowed up mangled wreck of a ambulance, a dead camel, a graveyard of shredded tires, and a telephone pole chopped in half, its splinted comrade dead nearby. So it goes?

Kuwait Part 5

“Ice” is painted on the side of one truck. There are other trucks joining the “Ice” truck on the side of the road: a roadside flea market, I guess. We pass under a bridge and see that a section of the chain link fence is sagging; the sand and trash has overwhelmed it. There’s trailer house with graffiti everywhere, one cinderblock wall and a tower with a crescent. Check point: obligatory stop. The traffic barriers are short, squat cement pyramids, I can only think of Gaza.

Kuwait Part 4

There are trees, the low kind. Warning! Sand drifts, one sign says. I see a building with two towers and a golden dome surrounded by sand and hundreds of lonely high voltage towers. Amid these high voltage forests I see clusters of garish blue and white striped water towers, thin up the stem, ballooning to a bell, and flat on top; upside down they look like the world’s tackiest bell bottoms pants.
“We’re not in Fort Lewis anyone,” Lt. Col. Kevin Olson says.

Kuwait Part 3

From the freeway we see castles of houses with balconies and turrets. There's a lot of scaffolding, scaffolding and construction equipment. Kuwait is clad in the same colors as ancient Rome: pink and brown and khaki white. Then again, the desert is really the only place in the world you should be allowed to have a pink house.