By Mahmoud Zakaria

Margaret Luce was the wife of Sir William Luce, the British governor and political resident in the Gulf and Aden from 1956 to 1966. He filled both positions with great distinction, winning the trust and friendship of Arab leaders in the area. Luce kept occasional personal diaries, mostly documenting trips to outlying places in the region. In January 1962, she began her journey to Kuwait, traveling between the city and Ahmadi. Here are some interesting excerpts from her memoirs:

January 26, 1962

The oil transformation scene here has been more rapid and on a larger scale than anywhere else. Oil was originally found before the war, and the oil revenue is now about 3.5 million a week, with an average of 250 tankers loading each month. Ten years ago, Kuwait was a small desert pearl-trading country with no particular natural advantages. The Kuwaitis were seafaring or camel-owning Bedouins.

Margaret Luce (left) with Diana Richmond in Violet Dickson's home garden.

The pale yellow desert turns faintly green with soft grass after the rain, making it look a little like Salisbury Plain. The real development has occurred in the last five years; Kuwait City is now about five miles across, apart from further suburbs and outskirts with the largest traffic roundabout in the world. Old streets have been swept away by bulldozers, making way for new shops, hotels, cafes and private villas. Most of the architecture is Egyptian or Lebanese.

At the Museum

In the afternoon, we walked over to see the museum, which has been enterprisingly started by a Kuwaiti. It features lovely models of various types of Arab dhows, rooms on pearl diving, undersea life, birds and the excavations of an island once occupied by the Greeks. There are also exhibits on education, the old and new ways of life in Kuwait, old and new buildings and beautifully illuminated Qurans.

Houses for oil company staff in Ahmadi.

It was family day, and I noticed many young Arab women casually unveiled, strolling hand in hand with their partners. Many of these visitors were probably Jordanians, Palestinians and Egyptians. My companion, Diana Richmond, mentioned that the influx of wealth has recently encouraged many women to emerge from purdah, a trend that I believe will spread fairly quickly to the rest of the Gulf.

Dickson and the Bedouins

We returned to have elevenses with Violet Dickson. Her husband was originally the political agent here, then he stayed on, wrote a book on Kuwait and passed away two years ago. Dickson has taken a job with an oil company, managing guests and showing them around. She lives in their old Arab house on the edge of the sea and is a splendid character — large, weather-beaten, slightly shy, and likely to know more about Kuwait than almost anyone else.

Dame Violet Dickson in her car

Often, she spends weekends in the desert by herself; she had just returned from a few days in southern Kuwait with the Bedouins, leaving her white tent with them. I asked how she found them again, given their nomadic lifestyle. She simply drove her Land Rover around until she came across her friends with the tent. She is not formidable; she looks gentle and is a great personal friend of the ruler and all the leading Arabs here. She published a book on desert wildflowers. I loved her house with its veranda and garden filled with desert flowers, home to six cats. She also has a grey horse that she still rides around Kuwait each morning, regardless of the heavy traffic.

Dinner with the Amir

The night we dined with the ruler, Amir Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem, everyone was in good spirits, despite the absence of alcohol and sleepiness. The Amir’s palace is a single-storey building, surrounded by rows of trees and lights that make the carriage sweep look like a garden. Guards line the steps to the front door in scarlet jackets. The Amir, dressed in a plain cream dishdasha, meets everyone personally at the top of the steps, exuding a casual simplicity amid immense wealth. He is one of the richest men in the world but firmly believes in not squandering his newfound fortune, preferring to invest in hospitals, schools, roads and airports.

A mosque adjacent to shops.

The dinner was a delightful compromise between Arab and European cuisines, with European table settings and unostentatious, delicious Arab food. Violet Dickson interpreted for us before and after dinner, with helpful comments from Diana Richmond. As we left, the Amir, with easy dignity, came out onto the steps to bid us farewell, expressing that my first visit to Kuwait was a happy occasion and hoping for many more.

To Ahmadi

The next morning, we drove out to Ahmadi, where the oil company was hosting lunch. They gathered for lunch rather disconcertingly at twelve o’clock. We were going to stay at the Ahmadi guest house, each of us having a flat with a large sitting room and a fridge stocked with every imaginable kind of drink and snacks. At the lunch party next door, everyone I met seemed very happy with life in Ahmadi and had opportunities to pursue their varied talents. Among the guests were a musician, a painter, an actor, a writer and several athletes, and none of them complained of a frustrated life. Ahmadi is filled with trees and gardens.

Employees of British Oil Company in Ahmadi meet to follow up on the implementation of some recreational activities for workers.