**Survival During Gulf War**Life of one Family in Kuwait During Iraqi Invasion and Occupation**

Prologue

I MUST ADMIT FROM THE beginning that I am not a professional writer. This memoir is my attempt to describe one family’s life – my family – who faced the first shots fired by Saddam Hussein’s notorious Iraqi Army on the first day of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990 and survived under his regime during his short occupation of Kuwait. My family, my wife Ila, daughter Trusha, and son, Veeral, spent a few months experiencing the war first hand after Saddam Hussein proclaimed Kuwait as one of Iraq’s states soon after he forcefully invaded and occupied the country.

I decided to write this memoir soon after I escaped from Kuwait with my friends and rejoined my family in London. My initial purpose was to leave a historical record of what transpired during the invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraq, and how we survived, for our present and future generation. Being more ambitious, my children and wife kept suggesting that this memoir should be published to give people beyond the family a glimpse of our life and struggles to survive in a country forcefully occupied by a tyrant like Saddam Hussein.

I wrote a draft memoir three months after my friends and I escaped from Kuwait in 1990. I was back in London, our home before we moved to Kuwait, and started writing the memoir while the facts were still fresh in my mind. But, since we lost everything in the war, we had to restart our life from the beginning. My first priority was to stabilize my family and our lives. I ended up filing away the incomplete memoir for 25 years.

I retired in 2014, followed by my wife Ila in 2016. We had decided to spend our retired life in Texas, where we moved in September, 2017. In November of 2016 we began spring cleaning to prepare for our move to Texas. As I was cleaning out my office, I came across the incomplete draft of the memoir. A few weeks later, over Thanksgiving holidays, my son, Veeral, found the incomplete draft and read through it in one sitting. He then told my daughter, Trusha, about the draft. Once they both read it, they, along with my wife, insisted that I give it the full attention it deserved. All of them were aware of our life in Kuwait during the invasion, and subsequently in occupied Kuwait, but neither knew I had documented our story – the details of difficulties we had to face and obstacles to surpass for our survival.

This memoir comes with a thanks to my family, who kept on prodding me to get off my backside and finish it.

IRAQ’S INVASION AND occupation of Kuwait took place over 25 years ago. This memoir recalls my family facing the onslaught of the Iraqi Army from the first day of the invasion and survival during the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq.

When I reflect on those days in Kuwait I think of the innocent families, especially children, in other war-torn regions of the world. There is a parallel to the dangerous situation families are currently facing in places like Mosul and Raqqa and the situations we faced.

Perhaps what we faced daily, during and after invasion – being trapped inside our house for long periods of time, the shortage of food supplies, the constant fear of being harassed by Iraqi Military Police (MP) or picked up by the Iraqi Army as hostages and being placed at nearby military bases or other sensitive areas as human shields, and experiencing the act of war first hand, was nearly as devastating as what people in cities like Mosul and Raqqa are facing today, if not more.

I hope that this memoir – from the broadest to minute details – presents a glimpse into the atrocities of war and how innocent people trapped in this quagmire suffer the disturbing consequences of war.

This memoir is based on the facts as I remember them. Our gratitude goes to those people without whose help our escape from Kuwait and Baghdad could have been in jeopardy. One such instance involves a kind, helpful young lady at the offices of Iraq Airways in Baghdad – I will call her as Aisha since I cannot recall her real name. Same with alternative names for young couple Annie and Rajinikanth, who helped us tremendously by giving my friends and me shelter when we were hiding from Iraqi soldiers in the suburb of Salmiya after women and children were evacuated from Kuwait under diplomatic protection. Our thanks go to the unknown shop owner whose help was invaluable in the process of forging our identity Cards (ID), the cards issued to us when we first arrived in Kuwait in 1984 and which identified us as British nationals. Carrying the original ID card was just too risky in case we were stopped at a military check point. The MPs would have picked us up as hostages if our nationality, which was British, was exposed.

Lastly, I hope this memoir demonstrates how people survive when their country is invaded and occupied by a more powerful neighboring country, and the difficult conditions that innocent citizens face when trapped in their own country because of the conflict between two opposing factions, like in present day Syria and Somalia.

I pray that no one has to go through what my family endured in Kuwait, or experience what innocent people are enduring now in places like Mosul and Raqqa.

Acknowledgements

I AM GRATEFUL TO HAVE such a supportive and understanding family who constantly encouraged me to sit down and work on the manuscript. Thank you, Ila, Trusha and Veeral for your unconditional support.

To our family in the United States and England, thank you for being there for us and supporting us over the past couple of decades. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your unconditional love, support, and ensuring our safety.

My heartfelt gratitude, and a big thank you, goes to Amanda Sydloski, a writer and Trusha’s friend from college who was excited about giving this manuscript an editor’s touch! As I mentioned, I am not a professional writer and I can imagine it could be a nightmare for someone to edit a manuscript written by an amateur, but Amanda took on the challenge! Rest is history. Amanda polished up the manuscript from being a boring long essay to a gripping story.

Amanda, a big thank you to you for transforming my unprofessional manuscript into a gripping story and for giving it a life of its own. Thank you for all of the hours you put into this. We are incredibly grateful to you. I also want to thank your husband Kit Sydloski for his support and patience as you took on this project.

Lastly, I would like to thank our friends who helped us during our days of hiding in Kuwait during the days of occupation of Kuwait. Special thank you to Dilip Shah and Rudra Trivedi, our life line to the outside world during our days when we were house bound at the University Campus. Most importantly, a heartfelt thanks to Naresh Trivedi and his family, who took in our family after we had to leave our home at the University Campus. You welcomed us with open arms and provided us with safety and shelter. These are the families who were there with us from the first bomb fired by Iraqi tanks to our last goodbye in Kuwait. You will all forever be a big part of our lives.

PART 1

The Beginning

August 1, 1990

MY NAME IS KIRIT HARIPRASAD Bhatt. I transplanted to Kuwait from London in mid-1984 with my wife Ila and daughter Trusha to join Kuwait University’s Faculty of Medicine in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. My son Veeral was born in October 1989 in London, UK.

For the previous 5 years, my family would take a 3-month vacation when the University closed for the summer. We would travel back home to London, take road trip through Europe, or visit our family in the United States. However, we had decided to stay in Kuwait this particular summer of 1990. Only if we had not done so...

It was a hot day in Kuwait on Wednesday August 1, 1990, which was nothing new in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. The local radio and TV stations had issued a heat advisory and suggested people not venture outside, especially children, until evening when the temperature would drop to tolerable levels. Following today’s advisory, we spent the day indoors, but planned a late-evening picnic at the oceanfront on Gulf Road with some of our family friends.

We had learned to take the heat advisories seriously. I suffered my first consequences of exposure to extremely hot, dry temperatures of this desert country during our first year in Kuwait. Unaware of the consequences, I spent a few hours outside to run some errands. By the time I got back home I had a headache, stomach cramps and felt dizzy from dehydration. Lesson learned.

KUWAIT CITY WAS BUBBLING with normal life that day of August 1, 1990. It was a Wednesday – the day before the weekend (Thursday and Friday in Middle Eastern countries) and unknowingly to the residents of Kuwait, the day before the Iraqi invasion. Vendors in the Old Souk, a marketplace still maintaining traditions dating back hundreds of years before the British occupation, were setting up their shops for a busy day ahead. The Souk, surrounded by modern Kuwait City architecture, represented the old ways of life. Outside the Souk the city was waking up for another busy day as well, no one aware of the drastic turn the country would face within the next few hours. Life was good. We had planned to spend the evening with our friends at the beach on Gulf Road.

We arrived at the beach late in the evening and joined our friends.  The children were let loose to play in the sand and paddle about in the water. It was a beautiful evening with the moon reflecting in the calm waters of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait Towers, the famous landmark of Kuwait City, shimmered bright under the moonlight. The air was filled with delicious flavors of kebabs and steaks cooking on grills, and the laughter of children. We were in paradise on a beach on Gulf Road in Kuwait. What else could one ask for?

It was a serene, relaxing evening with cool temperatures. A number of families were scattered across the beach. We could see some dhows returning to a nearby harbor, with still some dhows leaving the harbor. A number of Bedouin boys were offering camel rides while some were selling trinkets.

We packed up the picnic around midnight and headed home. We were completely unaware that while we were enjoying a serene evening at the beach, the Iraqi Army was firing up its massive tanks, armored vehicles and troop carriers and mobilizing its forces in preparation to invade Kuwait. By early morning the next day, our life will have been turned upside-down by Saddam Hussein and his notorious Iraqi Army.

WE LIVED ON THE KUWAIT University campus in Shuwaikh, the northern suburb of Kuwait City. Ila, Trusha and Veeral had gone to sleep after the exhaustive evening at the beach. I stayed awake to catch up with late-night news on British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio’s 24hour service. According to the newscaster, everything was normal in the world except for a few skirmishes in Africa and some Middle Eastern regions. I went to sleep, most likely the time when the Iraqi forces would just have crossed the border with Kuwait near Basra, on their march south toward the northern region of Kuwait.

I DID NOT EXPECT TO wake up from a peaceful sleep to face an invading army at our doorstep. It is predawn, about 4:00 am, and I’m in a deep early-morning sleep. I hear some indistinguishable noises, ignore them, but this is not a dream.

I get out of the bed and peer outside of my third-floor apartment window of a twelve-story-high apartment complex. What’s outside is surreal. I see monstrous tanks rolling by, firing salvos of shells spewing out flames and smoke. I see armored vehicles and Hummers chasing Kuwaiti police cars across the vast expanse of open grounds of the campus firing mounted machine guns. I feel windows and floors of the apartment shaking with each firing of the tanks. Then I see soldiers advancing from behind trees and buildings finding their targets, the retreating Kuwaiti forces.

I saw impossible turn into possible. I saw an Iraqi flag on the antenna of a tank rumbling through the open grounds of the University campus. Saddam Hussein’s army was inside Kuwait. It was the beginning of our existence in Kuwait under Iraqi rule. Our saga of survival under the Iraqi flag had just begun.

I SHOOK ILA TO WAKE her up. I told her that Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Suddenly we felt a jarring shock. A thunderous roar of an Iraqi tank, firing shells at a Kuwaiti government training facility across the street from our campus, was followed by a tremendous rumbling and aftershock, rattling the windows.

Both of us just stood by the window, looking outside. We realized we were witnessing and experiencing a historical event. At the time we did not realize that this event would culminate to the point where several countries of the world would join hands, for the first time after World War II, to liberate Kuwait which Saddam Hussein would proclaim to be Iraq’s 19th State. Saddam Hussein would also appoint one of his top ministers as a Governor of the newly annexed state.

After watching the drama evolving outside for a few more minutes, Ila suggested we wake up Trusha to let her know what was happening. We were not sure whether she would understand the implications – she was just 7 years old, and Veeral just 9 months old.

The early morning was just breaking through. I turned on the radio and tuned in to the BBC Overseas service broadcast. I had hoped that Reuters or another international reporting agency had picked up the news of the invasion.

I heard the newscaster announcing that there were sketchy reports that Iraqi forces had invaded Kuwait and had advanced in the vicinity of the northern suburbs of Kuwait City. I then tuned in to Voice of America (VOA). The newscaster was reporting political news when he suddenly broke in with breaking news that reports were just in saying that Iraqi forces had invaded Kuwait.

Since the invading forces were advancing through the north side of Kuwait, I calculated it would take most of the morning for them to break into the hub of the city. I sat down to make a series of calls to our friends – Naresh Trivedi, Dilip Shah, Anil Shah and some others, who lived farther south of us to let them know what was happening in our part of the city. I told them they still had a few hours to prepare – get to bank ATMs to withdraw as much money as they could and stockpile groceries, diapers, baby formula, first aid kits, antibiotic creams, and children’s pain medicines. I told them we were caught by surprise by the invasion and would be trapped in our apartment for some time.

ILA WALKED INTO THE family room while I was on the phone, Trusha tagging along behind her, half asleep. It struck me that I needed to call our families in London before Iraqi forces took control of telecommunication services and stopped international communication lines.

The time now was around 5:00 am. I dialed the first number of one