INVASION KEPT FAMILIES FROM GOING HOME

Three Kuwaiti sisters were stranded in the U.S.

With temperatures always well above 100 degrees, many people leave Kuwait for the summer months of July and August.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, these vacationers suddenly found themselves unable to return to their homes or even communicate with their families left in Kuwait.

Children's Express spoke with three Kuwaiti sisters who were with their family vacationing in California. They are the Al-Nakib sisters: May, 20; Rania, 15; and Farah, 12. Without a way back to a home they were unsure still existed, the girls had to deal with attending a new school while they sat glued to their television for new information about the invasion and the war.

Now, they have returned to Kuwait to try to rebuild the lives that the Iraqis stole from them more than one year ago.

During the war

Rania: It was like a shock. Before the invasion, many people that I talked to didn't know where Kuwait was on the map. Then suddenly it's the issue. It's on every channel. I felt like I was just dreaming. I didn't feel like it was real at all.

Farah: It was really scary to wake up in the morning and know that you don't have a home.

Rania: During the war there were some people living (in our house)--some Kuwaitis and some foreigners.

May: There were some "guests" that were being held in our basement. There was an American family and a Scottish family that were living here at the beginning until they were allowed to leave. We didn't know they were living in our house.

We couldn't contact our family for the entire time that Kuwait was under occupation. We heard about our family members indirectly. You know, from people leaving Kuwait. They would tell us, "We heard that your family's all right."

My sister, her husband and their three kids, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles and their children were all (in Kuwait).

Rania: It was really hard. Every day we would just be in front of CNN, waiting for a phone call that wouldn't come. But we just had to have hope. For my parents it was really hard, and they would try to control their emotions because of us _ for our sake.

We would see all this stuff on the news and we would think, "That's happening right at home. All of our family's there. What's going to happen?" (Having no contact) was really hard to deal with.

May: At the beginning, the first three weeks we just watched TV. We would be crying all the time, and there was no life outside of the television set. Just watching.

We thought it would be over very quickly. We didn't think that (Saddam) was going to stay in Kuwait. So we just watched TV.

But then after the days went by, we had to start school. School helped a lot.

Rania: The students at my school were so supportive..They'd pray for me.

May: My dad was going to work in the (Persian) gulf country. He's a physician. . . . He went for a while, but he didn't feel comfortable being away from us. I think at that point when you've lost everything, you just hold on to what you have. So he came back, and we waited together.

We talked about a lot of things together. We discussed what was going on. But we didn't lose hope at all.

Walking a tightrope

May: I think that a lot of times I thought that I would rather have been in the country (Kuwait) rather than out. I mean it was hard, and what we had to go through was a nightmare.

It was incredible. But when you're outside and you're stranded, you're a refugee. That feeling is like you're walking on a tightrope with no net underneath at all. There's no point to anything because you don't know what's going to happen. There's no future. There's no hope. You are just floating on. At least here (in Kuwait) you had your land and you had something under your feet.

There was civil disobedience, and they (Kuwaitis) held together. There was a strong feeling among the Kuwaitis. Just holding together and resisting.

Farah: We all had to face the fact that our country was taken.

Returning

Rania: I think the major difference is the pollution. When we first got here...it was so bad in the day that it seemed like night. It was scary because we hadn't experienced anything like that before.

When we were flying in the airplane and we saw the oil wells burning, that was the scariest thing for me.

We all just started crying because no matter how much you look at it you just think, "That's not my country on fire like that."

When we landed in the airport it was all broken up and burned. That was another thing that was a shock.

Two days later we drove around the city, saw hotels, stores and restaurants and all that was totally demolished. We were really shocked. All the stories we heard, we knew that it was really happening, but when you actually see it with your own two eyes, it's just different.