The Kuwait Debates

Dear Kuwait :


It’s about my dear friend Olga from Oslo. She met this squadron leader from the Royal Kuwaiti Air Force ten months to the day today at a singles bar in Oslo. They got talking and after a few schnapps and exchange of telephone numbers he decided to drop her home. One thing led to another, and they went to bed that night. Gradually, she got to know him better and started to like him– they must have met at least a couple of nights before his exit from Norway two weeks later. She is now with child but sadly, widowed before she could get married to Zayed – the father of her unborn child.. He would call her each night to flirt with her, and whisper sweet nothings into her ear and all. Barely a month into their ( real time & online) courtship she announced they were pregnant and Zayed being the man that he was promised to marry her. A date was set and she and her family were to fly to the Omani countryside where they were to be married this fall. Unfortunately, nature had other plans. Zayed was killed in a freak skiing accident in Gstaad that summer. She was beside herself yet still decided to go ahead with the pregnancy. She is now in her third trimester and visiting Kuwait where she is put up with the in-laws in Jabreya.

And as if there weren’t enough problems in her life already there’s now a new problem that’s arisen with both Zayed’s father and his younger brother Riad taking an unhealthy interest in her. I need to point out Olga is an extremely attractive woman who used to be a super model working in Milan when she met Zayed. Both men have proposed to her in private and this is giving her sleepless nights. They claim they want to see Zayed’s child grow up in Kuwait with a proper father. While she fancies the older of the men : Zayed’s Western educated father who is 35 years her senior she feels it is improper to rush into a relationship where there are far too many imponderables to consider. Against this is Riad, a brash American University of Beirut graduate 5 years her junior who is/was in a steady relationship with a Kurdish girl until just last weekend. Last I heard from her, Riad has broken up with his girlfriend so he could prove to them both he was being serious in wanting to father his brother’s kid. She feels her presence in Kuwait would only complicate matters raising a tumult with the family matriarch, Lana and Zayed’s own mother Noura. Riad has gone a step further telling her if she chooses his father over him the extended family will make life in Kuwait very difficult for them.


What’s a girl to do? Run away with the father to Majorca or stay put in Kuwait and start afresh with the boyfriend’s brother? She feels they are being charitable to her to a fault – although I think the core issues here are of raw sensuality and lust first.


On the upside, for her, she has landed a job with a leading advertising agency in Kuwait.

I have categorically told her if she decides on not marrying either of the men then she is better off leaving Kuwait. She tells me she is wedged between a rock and a hard place. Whom should she choose – Zayed’s father, Riad, the plum advertising job in Kuwait or raise the child on her own and go back to model in Europe where she belongs?


We all of us here wouldn’t want her putting the child up for adoption while she picks up all the pieces and gets on with her life – at least, that much is decided, right?


So Kuwait, please do advise mon chere amie.