The Family Bookshop, one of the oldest and most popular English bookshops in Kuwait closed down for good eight years ago. Just before they closed down I passed by and took photos of the place. I shared some of the photos back then but since it was National Bookshop Day a few days ago, I wanted to re-upload all the photos I took that day. The photos below are in higher resolution than the previous ones I had published and I’m also sharing all the photos I took that day, not just some of them. So check them out below.
I have a series of old posts called “Life in Kuwait back in the 1950s” that still attracts some of the most amazing comments today by people who used to live in Ahmadi in the 50s. I’ve even previously posted about how a bunch of kids who grew up in Ahmadi together were able to reconnect after 60 years in the comments of one of these posts and now someone left another very interesting comment. Mike Green grew up in Kuwait in the early 50s and he converted some of his parents old 8mm film to digital and uploaded the footage to youtube. Below is his story along with the videos:
My Dad (Cliff Green) arrived in Kuwait in 1953, and the rest of the family left rainy Manchester in a Dakota the following year. My final time in Ahmadi was 1968 when I started work in the UK, and Dad left in 1971. I have converted some old Standard 8 film to digital and that along with some interspersed photos and modern film I have posted on YouTube.
Many of the “second generation” along with now very few older generation meet each year for an Ahmadi reunion which has been running now for nearly 50 years. In 2010 my sister and I visited Ahmadi on our way to Dubai and it was very strange to see the old haunts still there but there have been many changes to the housing (etc).
The Hubara Club has been renovated but there are still some remnants of the old days which were not destroyed during the invasion. Particularly (and how strange is this memory) the power socket on the outdoor stage is still the same one I used back in 1966 with Chris & Glyn Gustar, and Kerry Scott as our “holiday band” got into full swing – supporting, if I remember “The Twisters” I must consider putting down on paper more of the life we had as “privileged kids” during the 1950’s and early 60’s.
When the Thunayan Al Ghanim Building was constructed back in 1954, it was considered to be one of the most advanced buildings in Kuwait at the time and one of the first to have an elevator. There are many stories on bedouins coming in from the desert to watch “the flying horse” that can go up and down. Back then the Thunayan Al Ghanim building housed the original KOC offices, the British Consulate, the first English bookshop in Kuwait, and later on the Rolls Royce dealership.
The building was originally designed to be 10 floors tall but during construction, the Kuwait City municipality changed the law and set that buildings in that area to be no higher than 4 floors since they wanted to spread out the city instead of having highrises with everyone located in a smaller area.
Below are some photos of the building from the 60s compared with photos taken last week.
Not sure what I was searching for on eBay but I ended up finding a 35mm slide of Kuwait for sale taken back in 1961. My curiosity kicked in so I decided to see if there were more 35mm slides of Kuwait and ended up finding a few for sale and a whole lot that had previously sold. I saved all the ones I found, they’re 32 photos to be exact and I’ve shared them below.
All these photos were sold by the same person on eBay and they all date back to 1961. The interesting part is that all these slides were sold individually and each one had multiple bids on them. Some ended up selling for over KD40 (per slide) and some quick poking around made me realize most were purchased by the same person.
Whoever is buying up all these slides, email me!
Check out all the photos below, there are some great shots of Kuwait I hadn’t seen before.
Al Qabas newspaper launched a new service recently called Al Qabas Premium where they’ve digitized all their issues going back to 1972 and made them available online.
This is such a cool thing and I’m so surprised they did this. Previously the only way I could access their archive is by going to the National Library and having to flip through large and heavy books, so this is way more convenient.
Al Qabas Premium isn’t free, it costs $60 a year but you can sign up to a monthly package ($6) if you want as well. They do have some free content available and I just found the picture on top of Cinema Salmiya dating back to 1972 as part of their free content. But, $6 is pretty reasonable so I’ll be signing up to their monthly package.
Al Qabas Premium is in Arabic and if you want to check it out then click here.
Thanks Omar!
Update: Here is a video they just published about Al Qabas Premium
I just realized I had some more pictures I had taken from the KOC archive and hadn’t shared yet. This one is of the Ahmadi Market taken in the early 60s. If you want to check out more pictures from the KOC archive, click here.
Found this photo on a twitter account with the caption “First elephant in Kuwait for the zoo – Kuwait 1952”. I’m not sure which zoo though since the current one opened up in 1968, so could be some other zoo that was open back then (did Ahmadi have a zoo?) or maybe it was part of a traveling circus? Still cute though.
Update: Supposedly there was a zoo called the Salwa Garden, and it was the first zoo in Kuwait and the GCC. Trying to get more info on this now.
Update2: Check out the snippet below
Not many visitors to the Zoo at Omariya know that Kuwait was the first country in the Gulf where a zoo was established، in 1955. And even less people will remember that it was Shaikh Jabir Al Abdullah Al Jabir Al Sabah who set up the region’s first zoo known as Salwa garden، after which the place Salwa was so named subsequently. He purchased animals، with his own money and eventually transferred his collection in 1965 to form the nucleus of Umariya Zoo.
The long and moving story has been told in the book titled “Salwa Garden: the first zoo in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf” written and published by his daughter Shaikha Mona Jabir Al Abdullah Al Jabir Al Sabah، Assistant Undersecretary of Al Diwan Al Amiri and author of several research-oriented books on Kuwait and the Gulf. Source
Update3: How am I just finding out about this? The picture below is of the entrance to the zoo and you can see a couple of more photos here.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 1990 Kuwait Invasion, and every year on the anniversary, I like to share some links related to the war. This year though I noticed two of my favorite websites related to the invasion are no longer up and running, Free Kuwait and The Evidence.
Both those website contained a large archive of photos related to the invasion and I’m pretty upset that they’re both no longer working. I’ve already emailed the people behind those two websites to see what the issue is, hopefully, it’s just a technical hiccup but in any case, below are the rest of the links.
Free Kuwait
This is a website that focuses on the campaign that was led by Kuwaitis in exile and is loaded with photos and information.
Kuwait Invasion – The Evidence
This is a website that contains over 1,200 pictures taken right after the 1990 invasion as photographic evidence to all the destruction caused by Iraq.
Short movie: Hearts of Palm
Hearts of Palm is a short movie set in August 2nd 1990 and deals with Kuwaiti students living in Miami Florida during the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait.
The Class of 1990
This is a short documentary about reuniting class mates years after the 1990 Iraqi invasion.
Politics of Wor
A tumblr account with some not so commonly seen photos from the Gulf War. (Warning some are graphic)
Magnum Photos
A gallery of images taken during the Gulf War by some great photographers. (Warning some are graphic)
BBC Documentary: The Last Flight to Kuwait
A series of documentaries on Iraq begins with a look at the fate of British Airways flight BA149 to the Far East in 1990. As the plane landed in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein invaded, capturing its crew and passengers.
Photos in this post are by Bruno Barbey
Update: I just bought a hard copy of the books The Evidence and Evidence II which is what the website The Evidence is based off. Now looking for “A Testimony from London” which the Free Kuwait website is based on. If you know where I can find it let me know.
While at the National Library recently, I found a few newspaper clippings related to James Brown when he visited Kuwait back in 1978. I was hoping to find more coverage in the papers but I searched through 1 month worth of AlQabas newspapers and only found a few ads and one article. I’m gonna go back and try to look for more in other newspapers but for now, I’m gonna share the ones I found. One is on top and the rest are below. If only the library didn’t have the most impractical opening hours…
Over the weekend a video started making its round via social media of a bullfight that took place in Kuwait back in 1972. The video was fairly low quality and the audio was completely broken so I did a bit of research and turns out the original video is actually owned by Reuters and you can watch the longer and much better version on their website.
According to Reuters, the bulls were imported from Spain for this event which was the first ever bullfighting show in Kuwait. The video is from the show that took place on Thursday April 6, 1972 but there were two other shows that took place on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th of April. Below are some more details:
A Spanish bull faced Spanish matadors in Kuwait on Thursday. It was the first time the Arabian Gulf state has seen a bull-fight. The event was organized by the Salmiya Sports Club and sponsored by the Kuwaiti Minister of the Interior and Defence, Shaikh Sa’ad Al-Abdalla As-Sabah.
A large crowd of spectators packed into the arena to see the novel exhibition of bullfighting skills and physical courage. Among those watching were the Speaker of the Kuwaiti National Assembly and other Assembly members. The event was much enjoyed by the spectators.
Aficionados in Spain may know more about the technicalities, but in Kuwait the crowd understood well enough the perfect judgment needed to plant these darts in just the right place.
The show had opened with the playing of the Kuwaiti and Spanish national anthems and the grand entrance of all the bullfighters. There was no doubting the success of this first bullfighting spectacle in Kuwait. Other shows were scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
I recently found out that it’s the British School of Kuwait’s 40 year anniversary. What not everyone knows is the little fun fact the school used to be called Sunshine School when it first opened in the late 70s up until 1990. I was in Sunshine School from 1980 to 1990 and I was part of the last class to graduate from it before the Iraqi invasion, after that, things got a bit messy and I ended up bouncing a lot from school to school and country to country until I finally graduated high school.
Because of the 40th anniversary, the school is publishing a small book and asked me if I had any photos to contribute since I’ve previously shared photos on the blog. I did of course and so had my sister mail me all the Sunshine School photos we had stored in our family home in Lebanon so I could scan them.
What’s cool is I posted some of my karate club photos taken in the early 80s and one of my followers recognized the karate instructor and sent me a link to his Facebook account. Turns out up until recently, he was still teaching karate in Kuwait.
There are 58 pictures and you can check them out after the link below. If you want the hi-res scan they’re also available to download on Flickr.
If you recognize yourself in any of the photos let me know!
This is a long shot but does anyone have a copy of the book “State of Excitement” by James Bond creator Ian Fleming?
The Kuwait Oil Company commissioned Fleming to write this short book about Kuwait. However, the Kuwaiti Goverment disapproved of the final manuscript, which they found condescending, and the book was never published, despite repeated overtures to the Kuwaiti Goverment over the years.
The frontispiece to Fleming`s copy of the book reads: This is the only bound copy of a short book I wrote on Kuwait in December 1960. It was a condition of my obtaining facilities to visit Kuwait and write the book that the text should have the approval of the Kuwait Oil Company, whose guest I was.
The Oil Company expressed approval of the book but felt it their duty to submit the typescript to members of the Kuwait Government for their approval. The Sheiks concerned found unpalatable certain mild comments and criticism and particularly the passages referring to the adventurous past of the country which now wishes to be “civilised” in every respect and forget its romantic origins.
Here is a review of the book as well where they highlight some reasons the book might have been banned including this one:
A second rather humorous story the author relates revolve around an invitation he received to dine at one of the Sheikh’s numerous palaces. It seems that this palace located somewhere along the Persian Gulf coast had a very long dock which extended out far from land and at its end was a beautiful building where the Sheihk invited Fleming and other guests. In grand fashion the guests were carried from the shore in a stretch limousine out along the dock to the mini-palace. He noticed that after the guests had been dropped off, the driver had to back up the entire length of the dock, turn around and then back up the entire length of the dock once again. Fleming surmised that the driver was instructed to do this so that when the dinner was finished, the Sheikh and his guests could get back into the car on the ‘correct’ side and drive “forward” back to the shore. Fleming, almost snidely relates that even with all that money at his disposal the Sheikh couldn’t design and build a dock with a wide enough turn around. In other words, in this little vignette Fleming is mocking his host’s design and thereby his intelligence.
If you have a copy can you please accidentally leak it to me from an anonymous email address? Thank you!
Back in 2016 I bought a 1973 Datsun 240z. I used to really love that car and fixed it up so I could daily drive it and I was doing so until I decided to buy my first Lotus. I ended up selling the 240Z to a friend of mine so I wouldn’t feel too guilty about spending so much money on the Lotus, and I always regretted it. What’s worse is that he offered to sell it back to me at the end of last year, but I said no because I was in between jobs and that wouldn’t have been the responsible thing to do. By the time I realized my mistake, the car was sold off to another friend of ours who sent it to Bahrain where it’s getting a full restoration job.
I really needed a classic car in my life and I tried to find something interesting locally but couldn’t, so I started looking outside of Kuwait. I eventually ended up finding a beautiful red 1970 Alfa Romeo GTV in Holland and bought it back in April. But that car is still in the process of getting registered for export in and then needs around a month to get to Kuwait. So while waiting for it I kept my eye open for a 240z and a couple of weeks ago I finally found a good one that was located in Sulaibiya. It was blue like my dad’s Datsun in the 70s, and the guy was asking a reasonable price for so I went and checked it out.
At first glance, the car didn’t look like much, and I think that’s what might have scared other buyers off. The seats were ripped, the interior had been fully carpeted by the owner covering up all the original diamond stitched vinyl that covers the interior, and the original engine was swapped out with a 280z engine. But, the dashboard with all the dials and knobs was super clean! It was in much better condition than the one in my older Datsun and it’s actually the most expensive thing to restore in the car. Everything else like the seat covers, interior vinyl trimming, carpets, plastic panels etc.. are readily available and not for much. But a new dashboard without any of the dials and different buttons on it? That would easily cost you a third of the price of the car. The whole dashboard and center console area looked like it was refurbished or swapped out with a new one by one of the previous owners, so I quickly realized this was the car to get. Even the fact that the engine was off a 280z was a good thing for me because it meant I could install air conditioning and more engine parts were available for it.
So now I’m a proud owner of a 1972 blue Datsun 240z. I spent the weekend ordering a whole bunch of parts for it and I already scheduled an appointment with my mechanic to start work on it. By the time I’m done it should hopefully look similar to the 240z pictured above which was featured on Petrolicious. I’m super excited!
This is going to be a fairly long post but trust me, if you love nostalgic Kuwait related posts you’re going to want to read this because it’s just so random and really interesting.
A couple of weeks ago I was over at the Australian ambassador’s house (Jonathan) who is a music buff and while there he showed me a record which he knew I’d be interested in. The album was called “Jazz, Jazz, Jazz” by a Sudanese band called The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr and inside there was an interview with the band members. Turns out the band used to perform in Kuwait back in the 70s at different venues including the Hilton Hotel, the Sheraton Hotel, and the Marriott Hotel. Check out the clipping below:
And can you tell me about your journey to Kuwait?
We went by ourselves and without visa but with the help of our friend Saif (who was also our singer during that stay). And we went there without instruments or anything. At the airport we arrived and waited for Saif to pick us up. Of course, they asked us at the airport for our visas and who we were, but we replied not to have any. Saif wanted to help us to get in, so he called the son of the Prince who liked our music. Saif and him were friends. Following, the son of the Prince came in person and said “These are my guests, give them visas”. This way, we entered the country and made a contract with the television. We went to the shops to buy instruments and from there straight to the TV. After getting paid by TV we went back to the shops to also pay the instruments. That was our first time in Kuwait. But we went once more. The second time we also had a contract with the Marriot Hotel; to us it looked like a ship. This time we had a visa and stayed for a long time. We had an organ player from Jordan and a guitar player from France.
That KTV performance is actually online and you can check it out below:
So this is where things get even cooler. I get all excited about this and start taking photos of the record album and posting them on my Instagram account. A couple of hours later I get a message from a follower saying:
This is so weird. Saif is a colleague of mine and seeing this and reading it, it just seems like it’s another dimension. We knew that he was a part of some band, we just didn’t know to what extent. Where can I get this record/Cd?
Saif was still in Kuwait?? I quickly shared the message with Jonathan who suggested we invite him to dinner. So I had Saif’s colleague talk to Saif and see if he would be interested to meet. I ended up getting his contact information and Jonathan set up the dinner for us.
Me with Saif
A few days later we got to meet Saif and he was just full of interesting stories. Saif was never meant to come to Kuwait, when he turned 18 he decided to leave Sudan and head to Germany. So he headed to Lebanon first so that he could take the train to Germany. Once he got to Lebanon he met a girl and so decided to stay there for a month, he needed the money anyway and he figured he could earn money performing music while there. He then left Lebanon and headed to Syria and from there he got convinced to head to Kuwait and try and earn money there.
Once in Kuwait he met up with an old friend of his called Adam who used to play football for Qadsia club. Adam hooked Saif up with a job as an English teacher for air traffic controllers and as a side gig, he would perform music on Kuwait TV talk show. One day one of the guys at KTV comes up to him and asks him if he could put a band together because he wanted to record a performance for the station. Saif tells him he could and called up his friends in Sudan whom he used to perform with called The Scorpions. That’s basically how the whole story with that KTV broadcast came to be.
The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr Performing at KTV
But that’s not the end of it. Saif used to perform for a Kuwaiti event organizer back then called Hussein Abul. Hussein was the guy who brought the likes of Boney M, Demis Roussos, James Brown and Santa Esmeralda to perform in Kuwait. When James Brown came to Kuwait, Hussein gave Saif the job of driving James Brown around since Saif spoke both English and Arabic. Since Saif spent a lot of time with James Brown, a friend of his told him to ask James Brown if he could perform the track Super Bad at his events. The first two nights James Brown performed he didn’t play Super Bad but it was a really popular song with the locals and so a lot of people were requesting it. So Saif explained that to James Brown who said he didn’t mind. During rehearsal that day, James Brown tells his band that he wanted to play Super Bad but, one of the two bassists in the band didn’t know how to play it. James Brown tried to help him out by humming the rhythm he wanted but the bassist couldn’t get it right. Out of frustration James Brown asked his band if anyone else knew how to play the bass on Super Bad, and Saif who was sitting there watching the whole thing said he knew how to play it. James Brown was like are you sure you know how to play it? Saif and his band used to perform covers all the time and he used to practically play Super Bad every night at hotels. So even though he was under pressure now to perform in front of James Brown, he knew the song inside out. He ended up playing for James Brown who was so impressed that he asked Saif to perform the song with the band over the remaining events in Kuwait.
One interesting fact I found out, Hussein had also supposedly signed a contract with Michael Jackson to come to Kuwait. But before Michael Jackson’s event, he had scheduled the popular band Osibisa to come to Kuwait as well. But Islamists caused an uproar over one of Osibisa’s tracks because it contained an Islamic verse or something like that, and Hussein was banned from organizing events ever again. Hussein supposedly ended up leaving to Brazil where he now lives permanently.
Saif with Pele in Kuwait
Anyway, Saif eventually ended up leaving Kuwait to study but then came back once he was done. He’s been in Kuwait ever since and currently still teaches English at a local aviation school but still performs in Sudan every now and then with his old band. He lost most of his old photos during the 1990 Iraq invasion but I shared two remaining ones in this post, the Pele photo above and the band performing at KTV above that. Jonathan the Australian Ambassador is also gonna try and bring the band together again to perform in Kuwait and once that happens I’ll let you guys know.
