A Mall and a Museum Shows the Kuwaiti Identity in Flux

There is a big secret inside the otherwise nondescript house in an otherwise nondescript suburb of Kuwait City. In front of the Tareq Rajab Museum was an elderly man, staring at the white walls of the small lobby while he fidgeted in boredom. When I visited, there was no one else occupying the more than 30 seats in the room. Excitedly by perhaps the first visitor in the afternoon, the man quickly ran over, a cardboard ticket in one hand and the credit card reading machine in the other. As soon as he heard the authorization "beep" of the machine, he ran into the rest of the house, turning on the lights as he went. 

As I followed behind him as the museum collection revealed itself, I immediately saw why this little nondescript house was at the top of the list of must-visits in Kuwait City that the Lonely Planet guidebook provided. Inside the maze of the basement level was a sprawling collection of historical clothing, jewelry, weapons, and books collection from across the Middle and the Far East took me a good two-and-a-half hours to get through, even though I was only cursorily glancing at the extensive descriptions diving into the backgrounds and significance of each.

Staring at the 9th-century Koran and the 15th-century muskets, I became even more curious as to where everyone else in this country would be at 6pm. In a country used to late dinners, this might be a great time for a late school trip or the early family outing for a history lesson, if not locals but at least the country's tourist and expat crowd. But just as the museum did not really "open" until I arrived, the roads outside, and indeed, the entire neighborhood were devoid of cars and pedestrians in almost perfectly moderate temperatures for a walk. 

It was only later that night that I found the crowds. At the Avenues, the largest mall in the country ("more than 1000 shops and 300 restaurants," the guidebook said), Arabs, Indians, Caucasians, and Filipinos were shoulder-to-shoulder, as they crowded into the imitated themed areas ranging from traditional souq to the European high street. As adults tacked into mountains of desserts in the indoor coffee shops, the kids were having a go in the ice skating ring, the rollercoaster, the VR games, and the colorful arcades. As far as entertainment value was concerned, the museum certainly cannot the offerings.

But there were more feelings than just that awe and shock as I gawked at perhaps the most luxurious and certainly the largest shopping center that I have ever seen in my life. Ran by a small army of Filipinos and Africans only too quick to politely address every potential customer with a "sir" or "madam" in quietly confident English, the Avenues seemed to exist in an entirely different culture than what the Tareq Rajab Museum was trying its best to portray. The Arab patrons may still address, eat, and talk like their ancestors in the mall, but the "traditional" values of simplicity and modesty were nowhere to be seen.

Unlike their ancestors, the mall patrons also showed little, at least on the surface, of the intense religious observance and tribal pride that shaped many of the exhibits at the museum. Instead, they seem to feel at ease existing in an urban, cosmopolitan, materialistic society. Perhaps somewhere inside, they also feel a sense of anxiety at the conflict that I felt as I continued to stroll through its glittering shopfronts. If modern Kuwaitis are not defined by the simplicity of the desert life, punctuated only by war and ornate decorations, but instead see the sedentary lifestyle of consuming largely Western-branded clothing and cars, then who are they?

Something of that conflict is becoming increasingly visible. Large local families walk through the Avenues, the older members speaking in Arabic and in traditional garments, while the youngsters, surely thanks to their bilingual education, converse amongst themselves in English and clothe themselves in jeans and hoodies. As the girls laugh and run past, their hairs flowing through the air without the constraints of the hajib, I am left to wonder whether the supposed “freedom” they obtained came at the cost of a lost identity, largely forgotten just like the beauty in the basement of the museum.

Wealth and globalization have brought Kuwait, the Gulf, and everywhere where modernization has brought about a more consumption-oriented Western way of living. It is worth remembering that while accommodating the change is no doubt beneficial for the kind of joyous vibrancy that the Avenues embodies, there are real costs. If global convergence becomes so thorough that everyone just speaks English, eats the same food, dresses the same clothing, and aspires to the same life goals, then where can the true diversity amidst a community that, contradictorily, Western education finds so desirous, emerge and be sustained?