The culture of the divanias, or places where men gather, sometimes in comfortable pavilions attached to houses, once in large tents that I frequented before the Iraqi occupation of August 1991, set up on desert roads around the capital, to discuss everything divine and human, is the quintessence of the political environment of the State of Kuwait.
Stretched out on seats on precious rugs –luxury and distinction extend to the floor in the Orient–, men debate there during the election days that have been held since 1961, the year of independence, and they do so with tea, coffee, soft drinks, alcohol and Bedouin-style meals.
In 1961, the Gulf emirates, located on the so-called Pirate Coast, were still subject to Great Britain.
In 1971, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharyah and four other small principalities formed the federation of the Arab emirates, while the tiny archipelago of Bahrain, the former seat of His Gracious Majesty's High Representative, and the Qatar peninsula, bordering the mighty kingdom of Saudi Arabia, preferred to declare their independence separately.
That era, known in the UK as the East Suez Withdrawal, was the beginning of the affluent Arab Gulf region.
At that time, Kuwait boasted of being the most cosmopolitan and advanced principality, with a unique parliamentary regime in the region and its undoubted political influence over the embryonic Palestinian resistance. It was in Kuwait that a young engineer named Yasser Arafat founded Al Fatah and later the PLO.
The local press imitated the private and free press of Beirut and tried to encourage, or at least inform, about the illusions of the Palestinian revolution.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Kuwait undoubtedly enjoyed a certain international prestige in the so-called Arab world, and I began to visit it.
The name Kuwait means small fort, from where the emir Mubarak, founder of the Yaber dynasty, which is still in power, began his raids to dominate his opponents.
In the recent elections in October, which went completely unnoticed, the Shia and Islamist opposition groups won. They won the majority of the 50 seats in Parliament. Two of these seats will be filled by women, and alongside them will also be Ahmad Sadun, a veteran speaker of the Assembly whom I knew in the 1980s, before the ill-fated Iraqi invasion.
In the history of Kuwait, the confrontation between the legislative power and the ruling family is constant. One of its consequences has been the suspension of the Parliament in 1970, 1986 and 2006. Some Kuwaitis and foreign residents of Arab nationality consider that this parliamentary regime, with the struggle between the emir and the Assembly, hinders progress.
Kuwaiti parliamentarism, in any case, is unusual in the former British possessions of the Persian, where the other emirates are governed exclusively by feudal lords that the West blesses.
In this city-state there is a certain nostalgia for the decades when it became a political and cultural center thanks to its oil wealth.
With the restoration of dynastic authority, hundreds of thousands of foreign workers were able to return, especially Asians, who still form the majority of its population.
It is a fact that Kuwait is progressing albeit without the dazzling appeal of the United Arab Emirates. A young Lebanese doctor lamented the boring atmosphere of the city and expressed his intention to move to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, because "they offer a better life for foreigners."
Despite the good intentions announced by the Kuwaiti rulers to reduce the foreign workforce, 75 percent of the emirate's inhabitants were born outside the country.
The emir has also failed to keep his promise to resolve the serious issue of the bidun, the Arabs without nationality who live straddling Kuwait and Iraq, and who could even come from Syria and be sympathizers of Hezbollah.
The Welfare State continues to be maintained. Emir Nauaf al Ajmad al Jaber al Saba, who came to power in 2020, keeps the reins, but the opposition political groups have the resources to assert themselves.
I don't remember if in other elections men and women voted separately, in different schools, as they do now.
Before the doors of one of these centers, two compact masses, the black one in the female chador and the white one in the male dichdachas, waited a few weeks ago to vote.
In Kuwait there are women determined to organize their own women's couches. The divan, whether as a gossip, a business plaza or a place for family intrigues and political machinations, is an object of female desire. Ingrained local customs, however, do not favor their liberation efforts.
