Something old, something new, something Muslim, something blue

Construction is a constant in Kuwait.

The view from my second hotel room. The Arabian Gulf is lovely. (Something blue.)

This block of renovated traditional villas is rare, but becoming more fashionable.

A combination of old and new.

The mosques are one of the few visual reminders that we are in an Arab, Muslim country.

These buildings are across from my first hotel. This is gulf-front property in a fashionable district of the city.

Modern high rises dominate the cityscape.

It amazes me how quickly one becomes accustomed to one's surroundings. Five weeks into my Gulf trip, I am already yawning at the cityscapes surrounding me. They are, however, remarkable for their mix of old and new, Western and traditional. In fact, there is an old saying that refers to the Kuwaiti built environment: something old, something new, something Muslim, something blue. (Green is optional and rather expensive.)

The only catch is that, according to a presentation by Farah Alnakib, a Kuwaiti Ph.D. student in history, "old" in a relative term. She asserts that, since the discovery of oil, the Kuwait cityscape has reinvented itself every 25-30 years. She calls it an "etch-a-sketch" culture; city planners simply destroy the old buildings and start over from scratch, with a new archictural style. In fact, she explained, most of the buildings are no longer fit for habitation after 25 years. Buildings are not maintained, but simply left to decay and eventually crumble. (We noticed this phenomenon at our hotel--the Ghani Palace. Given the general state of disrepair, we thought it was an old relic. In fact, it is only ten years old!). Although Westerners tend to value Old Stuff as as monuments to the past, older Kuwaitis still remember how hard the "good old days" were and are more than happy to reject the old and embrace the comforts of the new.

More recently, though, according to Alnakib, there has begun a trend towards preserving buildings and other monuments from the past. I am attaching an example of an older villa in the traditional style that have been restored and is now used as an artsy boutique. These older restorations are few and far between, though. The cityscape is dominated by construction, shiny new buildings, and not-very-old buildings in a state of disrepair.