Chapter 1

Son of the Desert

There is a sandstorm in Kuwait City the day I arrive.

The early winter winds have sent clouds of fine grit swirling around the city. I can taste it and feel it stinging my eyes the minute I step off the plane with a group of European soldiers in desert camouflage. The arrivals board at Kuwait International Airport lists the inbound flights from London, Mumbai, Colombo, Delhi and Chennai that import the foreign laborers and professionals who account for almost two-thirds of Kuwait’s population, and the Western soldiers bound for the hell of Iraq.

The highway to Kuwait City has six smooth lanes, packed with Jaguars and BMWs. My taxi is a Mercedes. The cabbie wears a navy blue uniform with gold epaulettes. Along the edge of the highway, sprinklers are performing life-support on patches of yellow and orange flowers. Perfectly squared hedges line the road and chilly gusts bend the palms. A road sign suspended from an overpass proclaims, like the voice of God, “Young man, your freedom ends where you start to bother other people.”

Beyond that, I can see nothing but blowing sand.

“Dust,” complains the taxi driver, a Bangladeshi. “Very dust.”

The Liberation Tower soon comes into focus through the beige haze. The Kuwait cityscape consists of sharp projectiles stabbing at the sky: the space-age Kuwait Towers, which look like they belong at Disneyland; the minarets of the city’s eight hundred mosques; and the construction cranes busily erecting a modern city out of the remnants of a Bedouin trading post. There is not much left of historic Kuwait. The old city is being bulldozed block by block to make way for the new Kuwait—gleaming office towers, shopping malls, beaches and elegant boulevards.

Driving through Kuwait City, it is easy to forget that an hour to the north, an ugly war is being fought. It is also easy to forget that, not long ago, Kuwait was itself invaded, plundered and torched by Saddam Hussein’s army, only to be liberated by the U.S.-led coalition after seven months of occupation. Kuwait’s expression of gratitude to the Gulf War coalition is painted on the face of a building near the seaside Royal Palace. Beneath a giant Kuwaiti flag, it reads: “Thanks Allies.”

There is another conflict brewing to the West, in Saudi Arabia, where jihadists are waging a terrorist campaign against Westerners and the House of Saud. Compared to its neighbors, Kuwait is an oasis of calm, but still, the borders have not stopped the influences of Iraqi or Saudi unrest from spilling into Kuwait. For all its brand-name shops and shiny SUVs, its Starbucks and Virgin Records, Kuwait is no more than a tiny patch of inhospitable land in a bad neighborhood. It is peaceful and modern, but the desert is rough and resilient, and every now and then you can see that there is a struggle going on between the city and the forces of nature that are determined to return this place to its natural state, which is sand.

In my hotel room, I am greeted by a glossy coffee-table book called Welcome to Kuwait, which features portraits of the royal family and a lengthy tract on the true meaning of jihad, which it says may bring to mind “images of fanaticism and bloodshed” but actually refers to “the constant struggle to submit to the will of God, and to make the principles of Islam the guiding factors in the life of the individuals, family and community.”

I look out the window and see a country dominated by two types of structures: refineries and minarets. The former are the source of Kuwait’s material wealth; the latter are the source of its spiritual wealth. The mosques are said to be arrayed so that, no matter where you are in the city, you can always hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, five times a day, seven days a week.

Kuwait, the land of oil and Islam.

Sheikh Mansour bin Nazem bin Jabarah bin Saqr Al Abousi arrives at the Sheraton Hotel in a cherry-red Chevrolet Lumina. He hands the keys to the valet and steps through the metal detector positioned at the front door as a pretext to security. His wife Souad Al Mazidi, a lawyer, follows close behind, a scarf draped over her head.

Mansour is tall. He jogs to stay in shape, and it shows. He is slim and agile. He is well groomed, with a short, trimmed beard. He is a handsome man, with a long nose and fine features, and he is dashing in his white gutra headscarf and agal, the black ring of braided rope that secures it to his head. He wears a brown winter dishdasha, the loose robe that is the national costume of Kuwait. His smile is serene, and I notice that he holds his chin high, with pride. Under his arm, he cradles a bundle of worn scrapbooks.

The Jabarahs sit on a couch in the sunlit lobby, order coffee and leaf through their photo albums, remembering happier times.

There’s their son Mohammed as a toddler, standing at the front door of the house with his older brother Abdul Rahman, both in striped shirts and brown short pants. Their dad is kneeling beside the boys with his arm curled protectively around Mohammed’s waist.

Mansour turns the page.

There’s Mohammed, a little older now, a broad smile on his face, riding a green amusement park dragon, the kind that goes around and around on a moat of stagnant brown water. Mohammed’s hands clasp the wooden seat in front.

Mansour turns the page.

The three Jabarah boys are posing on the grass outside their house in Kuwait City, wearing identical dress shirts, black pants and belts. Abdul Rahman has his arm slung around Mohammed’s neck.

Mansour and Souad have not seen Mohammed, their third-born, since he left their home in Canada in June 2000. They have tried to follow his case, but that has not been easy since the court proceedings in the case, United States of America v. Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, have been held behind closed doors. In fact, the U.S. Department of Justice will not publicly acknowledge it is holding Mohammed. Mansour and Souad keep abreast of developments through Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, but consular officials can only do so much.

The Mohammed described by Mansour is a son any father would be proud of—a bright student, faithful to his religion, well regarded by his community, destined for a career as a doctor, or maybe an engineer.

“Mohammed never lied to others. Mohammed did not ever drink,” Mansour says.

“He’s like almost an angel person.”

The same goes for Mohammed’s big brother Abdul Rahman, he says.

“Since they were kids, they were the most honest people. They were always open with me and their mom. They were very clever; they were very smart. All of the people who knew them in St. Catharines, they said very good things about our family.”

The message Mansour is trying to convey is that Mohammed is a good boy, from a good family. The Jabarahs want me to know they raised their sons right, gave them a good life and taught them the virtues of obedience, faith and pride. To his parents, Mohammed has done no wrong.

“He did nothing. What he did?” Mansour asks.

“Well, he trained in the camps of bin Laden in Afghanistan,” I reply.

“So?” Mansour says. “Thousands of people trained over there in Afghanistan.”

They return to their photo albums.

There’s Mohammed in a strawberry field with Abdullah his eldest brother; they’re helping their father fill a basket. There’s Mohammed standing in front of a statue of a sphinx in Cairo, posing after Koranic school and smiling for his school portrait. Mansour shows me photos of Mohammed hugging his little brother Youssef at a playground; posing in his soccer uniform with Abdul Rahman; holidaying in Saudi Arabia; standing on the driveway outside their house in Canada wearing a toque; smiling for his high school yearbook portrait, gawky and thin. Mohammed has a broad smile, like his father, and sharp, dark eyes. He looks like a young gentleman.

One of the pictures shows Mohammed wearing the costume of a Bedouin warrior. “Look,” Mansour says, “how he dresses like his hero, Antara.”

Antara Ibn Shaddad, Mansour explains, is an Arab folk hero from pre-Islamic times. He was the son of an Ethiopian black slave named Zabiba and the Bedouin king Shaddad. Because of Antara’s mixed race, his father would not acknowledge him as his son, and the tribe, the Banu Abs, treated him as an outcast. He was a slave and he was aghribat al-arab, a “raven of the Arabs.”

“His father did not want to tell others, ‘He’s my true son,’” Mansour says. “Antara fought for several years just to prove himself as a regular son to his father.”

The story of Antara is well known in the Arab world. It was one of the favorite Arabian odes told and retold through the ages by the desert Bedouins. One common version says that Antara was tormented because he loved his niece Abla, but as he was a slave, he could not marry her. When robbers made off with the tribe’s camel herds, Antara’s father offered him freedom if he would catch the thieves. He refused at first, saying, “The slave is not for fighting; he is only needed to milk the camels and tie up their udders.” He obeyed his father, however, and was emancipated.

Antara went on to fight in an 11-year war that started when a rival tribe accused the Banu Abs of cheating in a horse race. Antara proved himself on the battlefield through his heroics and went on to become a roaming hero on horseback, leading the Banu Abs on conquests of Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Persia. In one battle, he was credited with killing 1,200 knights. “I am Antara ibn Shaddad, the mightiest of the Arabs in zeal and the firmest in resolve,” he says in The Adventures of Antar. “No tongue can describe me and my noble deeds. I am the mine of valor and pride, unique in this age. I have attained every goal that I have sought . . . My foe has been slain, his blood scattered in drops.”

The desert people of Antara’s time held three virtues in high regard: generosity, fighting skills and language. Poetry was revered among the Arabs, and so when stories of Antara’s heroics began to circulate, they were woven into first-person ballads that were carried across the desert. The Poem of Antara was so popular it was put on display at the Kaaba in Mecca. Antara became one of the seven “suspended poets,” whose words were left hanging in Arabia’s most important religious shrine.

And surely I recollected you,
Even when the lances were drinking my blood,
And bright swords of Indian make were dripping with my blood.
I wished to kiss the swords,
For they shone as bright as the flash of the foretooth of your smiling mouth.
If you lower your veil over yourself in front of me,
Of what use will it be for I am expert in capturing the mailed horseman.
Praise me for the qualities which you know I possess,
For when I am not ill-treated,
I am gentle to associate with.
And if I am ill-treated,
Then my tyranny is severe,
Very bitter is the taste of it,
As the taste of the colocynth.

Scholars believe the story of Antara originated with long lost folk tales that grew and changed as they drifted across Arabia, from campsite to campsite. Antara was the embodiment of desert pride and chivalry, but perhaps most importantly he was a pan-Arab hero for the emerging followers of Islam. He was immortalized in a statue erected in Byzantium. Painters imagined scenes from his life. Even the Prophet Muhammad was said to have mentioned that there was only one Bedouin he wanted to meet, and that was Antara. In Europe, Antara inspired a symphony and an opera.

There are as many versions of his death as there are dunes in the desert. One has him falling from his horse in battle and unable to climb back on because of his advanced age. Another has him going off into the desert to collect a camel and getting trapped in a summer sand storm that ripped him to shreds. In another telling, he is struck by a poison arrow while urinating. But even at death’s door, Antara achieves a final victory. The archer is tracked down and killed, and his body presented to the dying Antara so that he can have the final satisfaction of outliving his enemy.

Mohammed Jabarah knew these stories well. The Jabarahs are Al Abousis, members of Antara’s tribe, and regard themselves as the proud descendents of the legendary warrior. It was part of the family folklore, told and retold through the generations. Mohammed was proud to share the Al Abousi name with Antara. To be the descendant of a great Arab warrior was a rare honor.

“Sometimes we shared it, this kind of information during our gatherings. Even this story has been taught in schools because Antara Ibn Shaddad is a very famous person in Arab culture,” Mansour says.

“We belong to a family that has been established since maybe two, three thousand years ago, from both sides, from his father and his mother. The Al Mazidi family, they belong to a very, very historical, big family, either in Kuwait or Iraq.”

“Everybody has to be proud of themselves. It’s important for everybody, not [just] for Mohammed, even important for myself. If you stick with your roots, you are like proud, you can talk about yourself, ‘I am so and so, I belong to this and that.’”

As a child, Mohammed dressed up like Antara, and wrote poetry like his great ancestor. “Mohammed has a very strong confidence about his self, about his background, about his name,” Mansour tells me.

“Always he has been proud of his name.”

Kuwait was, until recently, little more than a trading post on the edge of the desert, where merchants would buy and sell frankincense, myrrh, dates and pearls. It was a port where the camel caravans that crossed Arabia would meet up with the boats that ferried cargo between the Persian Gulf, East Africa and India. The city of Kuwait was not founded until 1710, when a group of families trekked east in search of water. They built a walled city out of mud, and in 1756 Abd Rahim became sheikh of the new outpost. His Al Sabah family has ruled Kuwait ever since. In 1899, the Al Sabahs allied themselves with Britain to keep out the Germans and Ottomans, and the country became a British protectorate. But Kuwait’s history really began in the 1930s with the Kuwaiti Oil Company.

When oil production soared after the Second World War, Arabs flooded in from surrounding countries to find work. With a tenth of the world’s oil reserves, Kuwaitis grew so wealthy they could afford to fly in outsiders to build their nation for them. They brought in so many foreigners that out of Kuwait’s 2.6 million inhabitants, fewer than one million are actual Kuwaitis. The rest are Indians, Filipinos, and non-Kuwaiti Arabs such as Egyptians and Iraqis. “In Kuwait, all the hard-working people are Indian and Bangladeshi,” my cab driver tells me. “Kuwaiti people just have nice cars and do telephone talking.” Too often, apparently, they do both simultaneously and at high speed. Crushed luxury vehicles lie abandoned at the roadsides like broken toys. No problem. The car dealers are well stocked. Why Kuwaitis bother to drive so fast is a mystery; the country is only 170 kilometers from north to south, and a little less from east to west. Even at a moderate speed, you can get anywhere in a few hours. Maybe the breakneck pace of their country’s development has left Kuwaitis addicted to speed. Maybe they’re just bored.

Among those who moved to Kuwait during the boom days was Mansour Jabarah’s father, who came from the Iraqi city of Basra. A commercial city which once boasted more than five hundred types of dates, Basra is sometimes called the Venice of the Orient because of its canal network. It was also at the heart of Islamic civilization, having been founded in the 7th century by a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. In the 18th century, a young theologian named Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab worked as a teacher in Basra, before founding the puritanical Wahhabi reform movement, which seeks to restore Islam to its former magnificence by purifying the faith from outside influences and innovations, and directing followers to live according to the original teachings of the prophet. Today such thinking forms the basis of Sunni Islamic extremist movements worldwide.

When Mansour Jabarah’s mother went into labor, she was closer to the hospital in Basra than the one in Kuwaiti City, so, by circumstance, Mansour was born in Iraq. The family lived in downtown Kuwait City, in one of the many neighborhoods that has since been demolished by the government to make way for modern office towers. Just before its independence, Kuwait conducted a national citizenship campaign, inviting residents to apply to become Kuwaitis. The Jabarahs’ neighbors encouraged Mansour’s father to submit his paperwork, but he considered himself an Iraqi, from the cradle of civilization. What was Kuwait by comparison? Just an oasis in the desert with no history. Why would he want to become a Kuwaiti? He never got around to submitting his citizenship papers and the deadline passed. He would remain forever an Iraqi foreigner, and so would his children and their children.

“This is his destiny,” Mansour shrugs.

Mansour married Souad, a lawyer from the Al Mazidi clan, which is part of the Bin Assad tribe. Souad’s family had also migrated from Iraq, although they had done so two centuries ago and were well established in Kuwait. Her father, Mansour Bin Moussa Al Mazidi, had started out as a trader of food, carpets, blankets and textiles. He later owned a printing press. At independence in 1961 he nominated himself for a seat on the committee that was establishing the new nation of Kuwait, and he won. He helped draft the Kuwaiti constitution, as well as its criminal and commercial laws. Although he resigned his seat after one term, in a show of respect, his resignation was not accepted and he went on to serve a second term. During the Algerian independence war against France, he collected money for Algerian fighters, and following the Suez Crisis, he raised money to educate the children of Egyptian “martyrs.” He also collected money for the Palestinian cause.

The Jabarahs’ first-born was Abdullah, who was followed soon after by Abdul Rahman. Mohammed was born two years later at Kuwait City’s Al Sabah Hospital on December 21, 1981. The family lived in Al Qadsiya, a suburb of well-kept, block-shaped houses and neatly trimmed trees. There is a mall with a Burger King there now. The Jabarah photo albums show the family playing at the beach, swimming in the indoor pool at their home and vacationing in London, Paris and Switzerland. Mansour had a blue van and in the summer, when the Arabian heat was reaching its inferno highs, he would take the boys to Cairo and Saudi Arabia. Mohammed “grew up with a very normal life. He had lots of friends; he had lots of family. He had a very nice living, luxury life. And I used to take them, especially during the winter time, the summer time, to different places,” Mansour says.

Mansour wanted his sons to have an Islamic education. Mohammed attended Al Najat school in Salmiya from grades one to six. “His friends liked him too much,” Mansour laughs. Mohammed was a little comedian. “Even if he is gathering with us and our family, he has to make jokes with his brothers, with his uncles, aunts, friends.” His teacher likewise noted in a report card that he liked to have fun.

Al Najat is a Koranic school, where students memorize the Muslim holy book line by line by reciting it in a monotone rap while bobbing their heads to the rhythm of the words. The school is a collection of two-storey buildings enclosed behind green walls. There is a dusty soccer field outside, beside the parking lot where parents driving Range Rovers pull up to fetch their kids after school. The classrooms surround a large courtyard, in which the 99 names of God are written on wooden signs. “God, The Merciful, The Most Compassionate . . .” The hallways are decorated with painted images of mosque domes and minarets. A poster advertises the annual Koranic memorization competition sponsored by the emir. There are cash prizes totaling 100,000 Dinars, but Mohammed would have been ineligible. It is for Kuwaiti citizens only.

Mohammed’s report cards describe a student who was both bright and sociable. “The child is tidy and clean, he eats well, has got good appetite,” his report card from Al Basha’er Nursery School says. “We wish him progress and success in the future.” In elementary school he had perfect scores in Arabic, Math and Science. The only core subject in which he did not score 20 out of 20 was Islamic Education. He got 19 out of 20. Throughout grade school he achieved an overall score of “excellent” in every term. “He likes to listen to stories,” his teacher noted at the end of the 1986-87 school year. Among the stories told in Kuwait’s schools was that of Antara the Black Knight, the slave who became a prince.

And many a husband of beautiful women,
I have left prostrate on the ground,
With his shoulders hissing,
Like the side of the mouth of one with a slit lip,
My two hands preceded him with a hasty blow,
Striking him before he could strike me;
And with the drops of blood from a penetrating stroke,
Red like the color of Brazil wood.

Antara’s life begins and ends in the desert, and in between there are times of disillusionment, enlightenment, self-doubt, perseverance and victory. “I conquered kings in both the east and west,” he says, “and I destroyed courageous equals in the day of rout.” Who can say what impact family folklore has on children, but the moral of the story of Antara is not difficult to decipher: An outcast can exact his revenge; he can win acceptance and power through bravery in battle, by confronting the enemies of the tribe.