A Lebanese architect rethinks his future in Kuwait, due to the national response to the pandemic

English transcript | نسخة عربية

Nationality: Lebanese
Occupation: Architect
Date of interview: 06 July 2020
Language of interview: English

Hamza is originally Lebanese, but has lived in Kuwait since he was four years old. He is an architect and he lives with his parents, who also work here. Kuwait has provided his family with the stability that Lebanon couldn’t, even during peacetime. Growing up a third culture kid, Hamza felt a strong sense of belonging in Kuwait, as did his whole family, but the pandemic has changed this. It wasn’t because of the loss of his job - after all, construction companies and architecture firms have been badly hit all over. It was more about the way that expats were talked about in the media and amongst the local Kuwaiti population. Suddenly, he felt, they were being treated as disposable - seen merely as workers, not as people. This narrative has made residents feel unwelcome, and many in his community have decided to leave, even giving up good jobs, because they are hurt.

“So like, like we always feel like there is sense of belonging to Kuwait. And then when we, you know, when you're treated like as if we are just numbers, you feel like you are being undervalued, not just [...] as a person, as a human being in general.”

When the crisis hit, Hamza wanted to volunteer, but the opportunities he found were restricted to Kuwaiti nationals. He thinks it was a mistake not to include expats in these efforts.

‘Kuwaitis and expats together would have been… positive points… because it's more like a cooperation between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis. So this serves a country. So instead of you splitting the society, you are trying to, to merge it together in a very positive way in order to help the country...So instead of the expats becoming a burden on the government, they would have been an aid for the government… because in the end, the society is like a huge well of human beings and human resources that you can utilize…”

He was also upset that when the government or aid groups came to distribute food to laborers in Hawally, the headlines were about how these expat workers didn’t follow rules and overran the trucks. No one thought about the way the food was distributed - in a sandlot instead of to buildings - or how bad the system was, and how desperately hungry workers had become. He saw more hungry workers outside the co-op, begging for 100 fils. They sat and roamed in groups and you could see how tired they were. The barbed wire enclosing the area kept bringing images of concentration camps to Hamza’s mind, and reminded him of refugee camps back in Lebanon.

“... So for some reason when I'm driving around in Hawally, the image of that, like clustered prison, like a full area as a prison, started to come to my mind, especially after I saw the barbed wires at the edge of Hawally. And I'm like, why?”

When Hamza went walking around his neighborhood in the allotted two hours during lockdown, he thought the empty streets made it feel like a European city, but his architect’s eye also noticed the lack of public and green spaces. He also saw many more laborers, single men, where once there were families. He found out later that during the pandemic, many families relocated to Salmiya and many laborers then moved into Hawally to avoid being trapped in the outlying lockdown areas. He felt upset when they extended the lockdown in Hawally, an expat neighborhood, when Jahra and Ahmadi had more COVID cases but both remained open.

Becoming suddenly unemployed for the first time in his life, Hamza decided to treat it as an opportunity, and he applied and was accepted into graduate school. He also took online courses to upgrade his professional skills. The entire experience has made him reconsider what “stability” would look like in his future, and to rethink the role that Kuwait will play in it.

In the clip above, Hamza talks about the unfair policies and media portrayal of the expat community in Kuwait during the pandemic.

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