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Articles by Jamie Etheridge
Wolfing Me - Identity Theory
Photo by Mike Beaumont on Unsplash He waits until everyone is asleep. Only, I am awake, sleepless in the middle of the night. He lights a cigarette. I hear the scratch of the matchstick, the quick flare of flame jumping in the darkness and just as quickly pinched out. I can smell the sulfur, acrid and chemical, and the smoke is tinged with something sweet, maybe cardamom or seaweed. And there, in the liquid black, glares a red eye.
How to report on the big business of Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras is big business. The first known celebration was held in 1702 in the newly established Mobile, a port city settled by two French explorers, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Sieur de Bienville. Today, Mardi Gras parades and parties now happen in cities and towns stretching across the Gulf Coast, from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama all the way down into the Florida Panhandle.
When We Saw Sparks
He used to say that Adel was so close to hell you could see sparks. So that’s where we buried him, in Sparks, in the cemetery behind the church with the rich, red Georgia clay piled on top of his silver bullet coffin and his face like wax. I was fourteen and didn’t realize when I kissed his cheek at the wake that it wouldn’t be soft, warm, flesh but something cold and hard, arctic where once summer bloomed. I can feel it still, that frozen flesh, the death of my childhood.
Desire Lines - Compressed
Jamie Etheridge’s creative writing can be read in X-R-A-Y Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, JMWW Journal, (mac)ro(mic), Bending Genres, Emerge Lit, Essay Daily and Rejection Letters, among others. She is currently working on a memoir about her fugitive father and her childhood on the road. Jamie tweets @LeScribbler and you can visit her website at LeScribbler.com. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Desire Lines”?
A witness to Kuwait's history in the making
By Jamie Etheridge I came to Kuwait in 2004 to serve as the managing editor of Kuwait Times. At that time, there was great optimism here due to the ouster of the Saddam regime in Iraq. Everywhere I went, people predicted that Kuwait would soon flourish like neighboring Dubai, grow a booming economy and open to the world after years under the sword of Damocles posed by its northern neighbor. The period of optimism quickly morphed, however, into a period of political transition and upheaval.
We don't know what we don't know
By Jamie Etheridge This week in the office we had a discussion about the dangers of swimming in the sea. I asked how many people here could swim and how many visited the beach. A show of hands survey revealed that around a quarter of our staff don’t know how to swim but still might sometimes wade into the water at the shore of the beach. I then asked another question: How many people know about rip currents and water safety. Only one of my 20+ colleagues raised their hand.
Summer time dread and mantras to counter it
By Jamie Etheridge The prospect of spending the entire summer hiding from Kuwait’s 55C+ heat fills me with anxiety. I have two children who recently completed the school year and all they want is to have some fun, travel and get a break from the last year and half of pandemic isolating. I hated to tell them that we would not be traveling and that we would stay in Kuwait the entire summer.
The walking hours
By Jamie Etheridge The breeze feels cool and lifts the branches of trees as we pass beneath them. The night is quiet, most people in their homes, cars parked, the end of the day. We’re out for our evening stroll, enjoying the new walking hours. Earlier this week the Cabinet adjusted the partial curfew to allow an extra hour at the end of the day for people to get home for work and added two hours – from 6 pm to 8 pm – for people to walk outside.
The island of opportunity
By Jamie Etheridge The events that took place in America’s capital on Wednesday have shocked the world. The storming of the Capital Hill building (the seat of the US Congress) by violent terrorists could not be more despicable. These people do not represent or reflect a civilized, advanced society but are a throwback to the worst of what humanity can become due to fear, ignorance and hate.
The year of the plague
By Jamie Etheridge The end of the calendar year is often a time for reflection. People look back on the previous twelve months, reviewing the highlights, the accomplishments and achievements they’ve attained. This year, the year of the plague, has been a disruptor for many of us. Rather than traveling to explore new countries or setting up a new business, most of us have spent the past year simply trying to survive.
Why I'm choosing to vaccinate
By Jamie Etheridge Kuwait is now gearing up for a nationwide vaccine campaign, the recently approved Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for SARS-COVID-19. The Ministry of Health has already begun registration on its website, where anyone in Kuwait can register. Most likely frontliners and other at-risk groups will be the first to receive the vaccine but both my husband and I have registered and will take the vaccine as soon as it becomes available.
Us vs them
By Jamie Etheridge Writing opinions or editorials about life in Kuwait as an expatriate can be tricky business. On the one hand, we earn our bread and butter here. Most of us have chosen to be here, boarded a flight, taken a job, built a life. We owe our livelihoods and in some cases our families and friends to Kuwait. On the other hand, Kuwait is no easy place for expatriates. Over the last several years, the government has grown more unwelcoming.
Anticipating November
By Jamie Etheridge This week the government made two important announcements about November. First, the ministry of interior extended all expired visas for three more months until November 30. Second, the ministry of education confirmed virtual learning for all schools until November. Kuwait will also see parliamentary polls in the later part of the month. November is worrisome for another reason also.
Pandemic fatigue and the gap year 2020
By Jamie Etheridge On February 25, I planned to take my daughters to see the Al-Farsi kite festival in Bnaider. We go almost every year and spend the day playing games, flying kites and enjoying the desert winter weather and the colorful kites. Unfortunately, the coronavirus showed up in Kuwait just before the holiday and we ended up heeding the government’s advice to stay at home and avoid going out. Nearly six months later, we continue to follow this guidance.
‘They want us to leave’ — foreign workers under pressure in the Gulf
Ashraf, an Egyptian working in Kuwait, lost all his income as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
US lobbies for extension of arms embargo against Iran
KUWAIT: Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah receives US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook yesterday. – KUNA By Jamie Etheridge KUWAIT: Failure to extend a UN arms embargo on Iran could result in an intensification of conflicts in the region, a US envoy warned while on a diplomatic tour of the Gulf yesterday.
Americans in Kuwait: US Ambassador discusses how embassy serves US citizens in Gulf state
US Ambassador to Kuwait Alina L Romanowski By Jamie Etheridge KUWAIT: There are around 30,000 American citizens living and working in Kuwait, yet many are unaware of the services their embassy provides. In an interview with US Ambassador to Kuwait Alina L Romanowski, Kuwait Times asks about the services Americans can avail and what they can do for more information in times of crisis. Kuwait Times: What is the US Embassy’s duty of care toward US citizens in Kuwait?
The coming school year and parental concerns
By Jamie Etheridge Summer may be in full swing in Kuwait but most parents are already talking about what to expect for the coming school year. Around the world, schools closed in February and March or shifted to online virtual learning to close out the year. When schools were shut here in late February and didn’t reopen, my kids eventually shifted to online learning and completed the year. My oldest daughter, who started sixth grade last fall, loved the experience of online/virtual learning.
Quilting through a pandemic
The completed quilt with some of the quilters. – Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat By Jamie Etheridge Quilting is a communal activity, one that takes time, patience and collaboration. During the lockdown period, members of the US Embassy in Kuwait community came together to create a beautiful handstitched quilt. The aim: to commemorate the pandemic, to remind all those who visit that during the crisis, people could still come together to create something beautiful and lasting.
Stuck abroad: Children and parents separated due to closure of Kuwait
Francesco with his father. – Photo courtesy Francesca Rodz By Jamie Etheridge Francesco is a happy, smiling preschooler doted on by his parents. He is also a child with autism. Diagnosed last year, his parents struggled to find affordable and accessible support for him in Kuwait, and so traveled to India during the February national holidays to seek help. They had enrolled Francesco in autism, occupation and speech therapy in Mumbai. Then the global pandemic upended everything.
Pandemic Diaries: Inside the whale
By Jamie Etheridge Yesterday, Kuwait entered a total lockdown, 24-hour curfew for the next 20 days. We are now inside the whale – with no choice but to endure, to passively accept the circumstances as they are and to try and make the best of them. The loss of control over our own lives can be difficult to swallow. It would be a challenge under normal circumstances and these are far from normal times.
Pandemic Diaries: Kuwait’s 20-day challenge
By Jamie Etheridge The Cabinet decided Friday night to place Kuwait on total curfew for the next 20 days – starting from Sunday at 4 pm until Saturday, May 30. The total curfew means no one may leave their home except for appointments to grocery shop or for a two-hour window from 4:30-6:30 pm daily, where we may walk in our neighborhoods.
Pandemic Diaries: Cabin Fever
By Jamie Etheridge Over the last few days we’ve seen the numbers of curfew breakers grow, as many as 23 people arrested in one night for being outside their homes during the curfew hours. As the Health Minister Sheikh Dr Basel Al-Sabah has warned, staying home is an absolute necessity and especially in this critical period when the infection rate is spiking. At the same time, we are now completing our ninth week of ‘stay at home’.
Pandemic Diaries: Judge not
By Jamie Etheridge The riots at the amnesty shelters in Kuwait over the weekend triggered a firestorm of comments across social media. Some people supported the protestors and others were quick to condemn them. I was surprised at the quick judgments and harsh comments many people made. Don’t get me wrong, I do not condone violence or unrest in any form. But I also don’t think it is fair or right for those not in that situation to judge the actions of those who are living through such a nightmare.
Pandemic Diaries: The deaths
By Jamie Etheridge As of Sunday morning, Kuwait has recorded 33 deaths from the coronavirus. The number is low, less than 1 percent of active cases. In some ways, this is great news for all of us here, because it means the government’s efforts to provide care for those who get sick is working. At the same time, each of those 33 people who died left behind family and friends. They were grandmothers and grandfathers, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, moms and dads.
Pandemic Diaries: Human trafficking
By Jamie Etheridge The government amnesty offered to residency violators living in Kuwait illegally wrapped up registrations on Thursday, with unofficial counts indicating that more than 23,000 individuals signed up to be deported. Around 20,000 of these people remain in detention camps in Kuwait, their home countries refusing to allow them to return home. Imagine wanting to go home but being prevented from doing so.
Pandemic Diaries: Coronavirus changing Kuwait
By Jamie Etheridge Kuwaitis can now conduct a variety of transactions for social security online via a new website launched by the Public Institution for Social Security this week. Everyone can book appointments to visit the co-ops during the curfew to shop for groceries. The Public Authority for Civil Information has also launched an app to carry your civil ID on your smartphone. And the interior ministry has launched website options for renewing iqamas.
Pandemic Diaries: Collective hands
By Jamie Etheridge Yesterday, Minister of Health Sheikh Dr Basel Al-Sabah posted a thank you message on his official Twitter account: “To all my colleagues on the front lines. You have made incredible sacrifices, leaving your families, working tirelessly, and showing us the true meaning of resilience and sacrifice. You are combatting this pandemic, to give life to our collective health and prosperity.
Pandemic Diaries: Absurd questions
By Jamie Etheridge Can drinking disinfectant or standing in sunlight kill the coronavirus? The short answer is no. Despite persist fake news online and unscientific claims by politicians, scientists in several countries have reported no findings that confirm these wild theories. Not sunlight. Not drinking disinfectant. Not drinking turmeric or lemon water or lots of water. Not drinking bleach. In fact, there is NOTHING proven by science that will prevent anyone 100 percent from getting coronavirus.
Pandemic Diaries: Locked-in syndrome
By Jamie Etheridge On Monday night, the Cabinet decided to extend the public holiday until the end of Ramadan and the partial curfew from 4 pm to 8 am – effectively giving us all a clear timeline for how this next month will play out. For many, the continuation of the curfew and closures will be difficult to take. Many people spend the month going to the mosque, gathering with family and friends for iftar, attending ghabqas and enjoying the many night-time activities of the month.
Pandemic Diaries: Missing the great outdoors
By Jamie Etheridge The Spanish government has announced that it will allow children to leave their homes from April 27, five weeks after the country was placed on lockdown as part of the government’s efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus there. In Kuwait, most of our kids have been kept at home since the National Day holiday week, when the first coronavirus cases were confirmed.
Pandemic Diaries: Protect them all
By Jamie Etheridge Sometimes reality is so shocking, so impossibly unjust, that it’s hard to even believe. That is how I felt when I read the news this week that 10 nurses in Santa Monica, California had been suspended for refusing to work with COVID-19 patients without being provided N95 masks.
Pandemic Diaries: Resilience and hope for tomorrow
By Jamie Etheridge Yesterday I read an interesting article in Vox.com on flower resilience by author Brian Resnick. The article discusses research recently published in the scientific journal, New Phytologist on the ways flowers recover from injuries. Ecologists Scott Armbruster and Nathan Muchhala spent years collecting data from all over the world that examines how some flowers will reorient their petals after an injury to ensure they may be pollinated by bees.
Pandemic Diaries: A day of ‘staying at home’
By Jamie Etheridge 6 am: Wake up and make coffee. Start breakfast and check the news. Nearly 2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world, almost half a million recoveries. 126,000+ deaths. I try not to think about their families, the ones who died. The dads and moms with little ones at home. The breadwinners who supported their families. 7 am: Start work from home. Get online. Read and respond to emails. Check the news again for latest updates and get going. Write the column, talk with reporters.
Pandemic Diaries: Returning home
By Jamie Etheridge This week Kuwait will begin the process of bringing home the more than 40,000+ citizens stranded abroad. Many of these are students or young professionals, but there are also those who were on holiday when all this started and others who had work commitments or family outside Kuwait. That the government is organizing such a massive airlift is admirable and commendable.
Pandemic Diaries: Be careful
By Jamie Etheridge When we were kids, after my father died and left us broke and bereft in Alabama, my mother took on the role of family worrier. Each time one of her seven children left the house to go to school or work or even just up the street to the corner market or over to a friend’s house, she’d call out “Be careful” as we walked out the door. Wrapped inside her plea were also all the words that she didn’t say: “Stay safe. Come home. I love you.” She worried that the worst might happen.
Pandemic Diaries: The power of memory
By Jamie Etheridge I’m standing beneath a massive Scots pine in the middle of Lake Abant Park, a nature reserve in Bolu province, Turkey. The view is magnificent: The sun glimmers off the gentle waves of the lake, which serves as the focal point for the park. A two-lane blacktop road encircles the lake but is shrouded on nearly all sides by the canopy of trees, pines, beeches, tamarisks, juniper, willows and hornbeams that cover the slow, rolling hills up to a clear and cloudless blue sky.
Pandemic Diaries: Shhhhh… silent victims
By Jamie Etheridge We‘re all aware now of the call by governments to stay home, stay safe. For most of us this is great advice. Our homes are our sanctuaries – the place where we are safest, most relaxed and, well, ‘at home’. But for one category of people, primarily women, home is the most dangerous place of all. Across the globe, authorities are reporting an increase in domestic violence cases triggered by the ‘stay at home’ directives from authorities.
Pandemic Diaries: 10 good things to think about today
By Jamie Etheridge Some days it is necessary to look past the negative and focus on the good. Today is one of those days. Air quality in many cities around the globe has improved as a result of the pandemic and stay at home measures. There is more time to take naps. Scientific studies have shown that adults who take daytime naps once or twice a week live longer, are less prone to strokes and heart attacks and manage stress better.
Pandemic Diaries: The middle miles
By Jamie Etheridge On Monday night the government announced an extension of the public holiday until April 23, an extension of the partial curfew by two hours, now from 5 pm to 6 am, and the lockdown of two densely-populated areas – Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh and Mahboula. The news left many people terrified, and it’s still unclear how the lockdowns will work. Residents in those areas are understandably worried about what the next two weeks will hold.
Pandemic Diaries:Panic. Don’t panic.
By Jamie Etheridge Late last night we got the news that the interior minister will likely begin locking down certain areas in Kuwait, starting with Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, Farwaniya and Mahboula. The news sent a shock of fear through me. Just the idea of quarantining an entire area, with hundreds of thousands of residents, is terrifying. Imagine how difficult this will be and how scary for all the residents living in those areas?
Pandemic Diaries: Lemon squares
By Jamie Etheridge Yesterday I made lemon squares. I rarely cook and never bake, but it was after the curfew and I had a craving for something lemony and tart. So I searched online and found what seemed like a no-fail, easy recipe. I collected the ingredients and with the help of my eight-year-old daughter, whipped up the eggs, sugar, lemon and butter into a frothy, gooey yellow filling and poured this over some crushed cookies in a pan.
Pandemic Diaries: The eye of the storm
By Jamie Etheridge It has now been nearly two weeks since Kuwait imposed a partial curfew. When this all began in late February, I don’t think most of us had any clue how bad or how far reaching it might get. Across the globe, we now have more than one million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and likely hundreds of thousands of more asymptomatic and unconfirmed cases. In the eye of the storm, it may seem calm and quiet – the silence of the streets of Kuwait after the 5 pm curfew starts.
Curfew Diaries: Fake news virus
By Jamie Etheridge Since we started seeing the first coronavirus cases in late February, a parallel phenomenon of fake news has been thriving alongside. As the government battled to organize a response and communicate the necessary news and information to the public, fake news rose in tandem, spreading fear and panic faster than the virus itself. Fake news may seem harmless, but in some instances it can be fatal.
Curfew Diaries: Good vs evil
By Jamie Etheridge Kuwait’s banks have announced that all clients – citizens and expats – would have their installment and credit card payments deferred for six months with no interest, fines or penalties. The announcement sent shockwaves through the expatriate community, many of whom have recently lost their jobs, had their salaries cut or otherwise lost the income that provides for themselves and their families.
Curfew Diaries - The wish jar
By Jamie Etheridge Yesterday a friend posted this really cool idea on Facebook. Set up a wish jar with a stack of Post-it notes and a pen in your house. Each time someone in your family wishes they could go shopping at the mall, meet up with friends for a night out, go to a restaurant and have a meal, take a short holiday abroad or anything else currently made impossibly by the global pandemic, write the idea on a note and drop it into the wish jar.
Weekend Edition: Prisoner’s dilemma
By Jamie Etheridge I learned about the prisoner’s dilemma in college. The story explains a paradox of decision making. It goes like this: Two men commit a bank robbery. They are caught and interrogated by the police. Beforehand, they both agreed to remain silent and never admit to the crime. The police offer both the same deal: Admit the crime, rat on your accomplice and you get a lesser sentence. The men are in separate rooms.
Curfew Diaries Day 3: Fish need water
By Jamie Etheridge Over the last two nights thousands of people in Kuwait stood in their apartment windows or balconies shouting out Allahu Akbar (God is Great) just before Isha prayer. This happened in Khaitan, Mahboula, Hawally and Salmiya. The purpose behind the event is unclear. Those who organized or spread the message to call out Allahu Akbar after the curfew began may have merely wanted to remind us all to pray and thank God during these times of crisis.
Curfew Diaries: Day 2 - Recycle, reduce, reuse and replenish
By Jamie Etheridge On the way to the office this morning, I stopped at the mini jamiya (co-op) in Nuzha to pick up some necessities (chocolate chip cookies count, right?). In front of the shop were the usual gathering of delivery trucks, mostly young men in trousers and t-shirts unloading boxes and crates full of bread, chips, milk, rice, canned goods and other items.
Curfew Diaries: Day 1
By Jamie Etheridge The sky was a brilliant glowing orange and rosy pink at 5 pm yesterday, just as the sun began sinking toward the horizon. We sat on our small balcony, awaiting the siren that would mark the start of Kuwait’s nationwide curfew, a first experience for me and my family. But at 5 pm we heard only the garble of someone speaking in Arabic through a loudspeaker, incomprehensible and far away.
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