There are few septuagenarians who have her energy and spirit with a perpetual smile and bubbling enthusiasm. Her house in Qadsiya reflects, quite literally with its mirror works, her verve to challenge conventions and strike a unique path throughout her life. From Italy, the place of her birth and upbringing, her journey to her adopted home, Kuwait, is fraught with twists of fate, each of which she controlled with a dint of will, often running the risk of being misread as impudence. Find out more about her artistic interests and her scholarly insights into Kuwait’s political and cultural history.

Q: You seem to have a passion for Kuwait. How did it start?
A: My interest in Kuwait began when I came to Kuwait in 1959. Kuwait at that time was simple and people were pure and genuine. They respected fellow humans, and did not have prejudice against anyone. When I came here I felt immediately at home, for the people were warm and welcoming. They did not see me as an alien. I fell in love with Kuwait. Their warmth and affection enticed me. People didn’t have masks.

Q: How did you feel about leaving your home country and adopting Kuwait as your new home?
A: For me the world is my country. When I was a small child, I didn’t have any roots because my father was a merchant. In a span of 8 years, we changed about 12 houses in Italy. So I had no roots. At 8 I went to a boarding school. I was a black sheep there. I always did things which I was asked not to do. One particular nun was very angry with me. I would often make her angry and I enjoyed it.
Once she sent me to the kitchen to clean the plates as a punishment. I dropped a plate deliberately and broke it. So she took me out of the kitchen and put me where the shoe rack was. The shoe rack had numbered boxes in which the girls put their shoes. I took all the shoes from the boxes and flung them in a pile in one corner. When the nun came to check on me, she was surprised to see the shoes piled up. She asked me to put them back, but as I didn’t know which pair of shoes belonged to which box, I mixed them up and the girls had a tough time sorting them out.

So, the nun was very livid and grabbed me by my collar and took me to the dormitory. I was a very puny child and she could lift me up in the air by my collar. I would scream just to make her feel that I hated it. But I just enjoyed the ride. I loved it when she lifted me up like that.
This school was in Venice, Italy, but I have never seen that beautiful place, because the nuns never let me go out. They never took me out, because I was always serving some punishment.
Once, something happened at the school that made me hate the school. My father was coming to see me. I was with my sister in the school. My parents brought us cakes. That particular time, I was feeling very excited about seeing my father. And so I behaved very well that whole week. I was an angel. The nuns gave us marks for our behavior and we needed to score above 8 to be permitted to see our parents. However, that Sunday, when my parents came to see me, the mother superior just gave me 7, and I couldn’t see my parents. I missed my father especially. This was treachery on the part of the nuns, because I was a very sweet child that whole week.

They were getting back at me for what I did earlier. I was very upset. I felt wronged. I was only 8. You know how kids are. It hurts them deeply and stays on in their minds. After 3 months, my mother came alone, and I asked her about father. My mother looked at the nuns. My father had died in a car accident, and I never got to see him. He died soon after he came to see me the previous time when the nuns disallowed me to meet him. From that time onwards I bore a grudge against the school.
That’s when I emotionally left Catholicism. I thought they are all hypocrites. From then on I never went to the church. When I finished school I came out without a religion. I believed in God, but not any institutionalized religion. I became a teacher. I was in the school till 16. I came out. By then we were bankrupt. I looked for a job. Once I saw in a newspaper an ad for a student nurse in England.
I applied for it without telling anyone. I sent my credentials to England.

Less than a month later, I received a letter from England with my ticket and other papers enclosed. I was overjoyed. Meanwhile, I made all preparations for travel, without telling anyone.
However, as I was only 16, I needed my mother’s signature to travel. So I told her and she said no. But I was adamant. Then she took me to a family friend, who was a judge.
The judge advised me not to go. He tried to scare me saying the new place could be bad. I reasoned with him. I said I will learn a new language, a new trade and it will be good for me. He said I could bring harm unto myself in a new surrounding. But the truth was that I was in danger in Italy, because I had to pass a very shady street every day where I lived. One day I was nearly killed, when someone tried to mug me from the back. I escaped because I was puny. I could slip from his grasp and run fast.
The judge then offered me a good job in Italy. I asked what job. He said “a teaching job.” I said put it in writing. He was shocked. You don’t trust me, he asked. I said no.

My mother then took me to the bishop. He said he has never seen me in church. I said it’s because I have to earn my bread. He said that I shouldn’t go to England. I said I am going to work in a hospital and it can’t be bad for me. He said he will find a place for me in Italy, and I repeated the same condition I put to the judge. I said give it to me in writing. He panicked like the judge. Ask them to give it in black and white and they back out immediately.
So I went to England, because my mother was forced to give me a signature. I was very happy in England. I felt I was living a new life. That’s where I felt free for the first time.

Q: How did you then come to Kuwait?
A: I met Khalifa Al-Qattan in England. He was in the college of art and technology. He came to take a test in English, where I had come for the same purpose. It was a room. I wanted to read a book to brush up my grammar but there was very little light. I couldn’t see anybody in the room because of the darkness. I was looking around; there was this man in front of me. I asked him which country he was from. He said Kuwait. I had never heard of that place. I said where? Kuwait. I said okay.
I like geography but I had never heard of Kuwait that time. He asked me where I was from. I said Italy. He said, “Oh, the land of culture and art.” I felt impressed. I was very flattered.

We were quiet after that. A little while later, he asked me if he can wait for me after his test. I said okay. They called me in, and I was very nervous. They just asked me some questions about Italy. I spoke about culture in Italy. It was just like a friendly chat. I asked my examiner when my test would start. She said it’s over. It was only about talking and comprehension. Khalifa was waiting for me. We talked. Our English was not so good, yet we managed to communicate, and we could understand. He invited me to a film. It was ‘A star is born,’ a musical. I wanted to go out, because ever since I came to England I was fully occupied with work and studies.
I had a pocket dictionary and when I heard a word I would write it down immediately and I would consult my colleagues, who would show the word to me in my dictionary. This way I picked up my vocabulary and after a few months I could speak well.
In 1958, Khalifa graduated. Then he proposed to me. He said he wants to marry me. I said okay. So we got engaged. Before marriage we went to meet my mother to get her consent. She had no problem with my decision. We traveled together to Italy to meet my mom. I stayed there for a while. In 1959, I came to Kuwait.

Q: Was the Kuwaiti society open then?
A: Of course yes. I came to Kuwait wearing a dress without sleeves and a short skirt. Nobody seemed to have a problem. The people were very open. Women used to have the beehive hairstyle. They were very fashionable. I once interviewed the man who brought this fashion in Kuwait. Abdulla Rashid Al-Rashid. He was a designer.
Starting from 1979 this freedom began to wane in Kuwait. The society became very restrictive. When I came, only old ladies wore the Abaya. Young girls wore fashionable clothes. They wore mini skirts. Till 1963, even liquor and pork were permitted in Kuwait. After the parliament was set up many changes took place.

Q: How did this change happen? You mentioned 1979... did the Iranian revolution have something to do with this change?
A: No. It was Wahabbism. Most of the people of desert came from Saudi Arabia and carried Wahabbi ideas. They were very conservative. They forced women to wear Abaya. They infiltrated schools and media. They became very powerful.

Q: How did you feel coming from a country like Italy, the center of art and culture, and then experiencing philistinism in Kuwait?
A: Personally, I am very free and positive. Nothing affects me. I am lucky to have married a man who treated me as an equal. He encouraged me to write and try my hand at painting. In 1962, there was a spring exhibition and he asked me to join.

Q: Can you tell us something about your artistic interests?
A: I first began as a writer on Khalifa’s works. I felt so much power in Circulism. Circulism is a philosophy that is inspired from the cyclic nature of life. It’s based on the reality of life. Khalifa’s paintings have a lot of drama. My style is also Circulism, but it’s more poetic. It’s about the poetry of colors. I am very optimistic.

Q: What about Khalifa’s works? Are they not very optimistic?
A: It’s very tragic.

Q: How did you progress as an artist?
A: When Khalifa went on foreign tours, I used to change the house around. Once, I tried to paint a cabinet, and I ended up inlaying broken mirror pieces on it. When Khalifa returned, he liked it.
When we had to give our daughter a room, I thought of doing a similar thing. I did mirror-work murals in the room using carpentry tools and wooden panels. That’s how my passion for mirror-work murals began.
From there onwards, I changed all the rooms. In 1981 there was heavy rain. The kind that destroys all the houses. In 1951 there was a similar thunderstorm, and that’s when the government made new areas like Qadsiya and so on. Anyway, that day there was a lot of rain.

So I went to fetch my galosh and found a big hole on the shelf. I took the shelf away, and I saw something 20 cm high, a little mound. I called my husband. He said those were termites.
Oh, boy! I felt a shiver. Termites in the house. I cleaned the entire place with kerosene and moth balls, but I discovered that our entire house was infested with termites. Even the bathroom ledge was saturated with termite colonies. It was very difficult to go in there. I used kerosene, but as the place was closed, it suffocated me and kerosene gave me itches. That was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.
And similarly on the floor in between the cracks they were there. Qadsiya was built in the 60s, when the materials were not good. The sand brick was indeed sand. I had termites coming from the wall.

Q: Other than writing on art, you are also a bold critic of politics in Kuwait? What do you have to say about the political situation in Kuwait?
A: We are lucky to have a man like Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed as our Amir. He is a smart man like his father. His father was very shrewd; he knew how to deal with the fundamentalists. At the time of his father, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Jaber, Kuwait underwent a transformation. There was intellectual freedom in Kuwait. That’s how Kuwait reached the top in the region. In 1924, Kuwait had its first intellectual club. Sheikh Abdulla Al-Jaber, the cousin of the ruler, also played an important part in this transformation. The ruler gave him a free hand. He brought modern culture to Kuwait. He introduced arts and sports in schools. In 1936, we had a new curriculum at schools. That’s when boys began to wear half trousers to school. The fundamentalists were flabbergasted. They said, “Why are we sending our children naked to school?” But the kids were happy.

The movement of intellectual freedom began from the schools. Earlier there was no art. And so a big festival of art and culture was organized every year at schools. The schools competed for the trophy named after Abdulla Al-Jaber. The most important highlight of the festival was the theater. The plays were very famous and Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed and Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah had taken part in these plays when they were students.
Starting from 50’s, the scripts of these plays were put into writing. In the 50s, the society was changing. So the plays became satirical and lampooned politicians and officials. It was very scathing in some cases, and as a result even led to the resignations of some officials.

Q: Were school plays that popular?
A: Yes. In the late 50s, these theaters were separated from schools. There were many theater groups. The stage was very rudimentary consisting of just a raised platform and a bulb or two sticking out. However, they were very popular, because the artists were very smart. They improvised on stage according to the reactions of the audiences. People used to laugh their heads off.
Nowadays, Kuwait has become very stifling. That intellectual freedom is gone. We don’t have that freedom. In the 60s Kuwait was the torch of the Gulf; they called it the pearl of the Gulf. We also helped others. United Arab Emirates was a very poor country then, and Kuwait used to send aid packages to develop places like Sharjah and so on, to build schools and hospitals. It was a gift to them. Also to Yemen, Oman and other countries. Because they had nothing at that time. Now Kuwait is lagging behind.
Sheikh Abdullah Salem had a very broad vision. He said that we have to think of our neighbors also, because by helping them we are helping ourselves. When the area develops we benefit.

Now Kuwait is a modern democracy. In the olden days, the system was old fashioned, yet democratic in its own right. The elite merchant class supported the rulers. The rulers did everything by consulting others. The merchant class was the backbone of the Kuwaiti economy. They had a good relationship with the rulers. The merchants provided what the country needed. People at that time were poor, everybody worked.
For about nine months in a year most men would be out of their homes. Because they had to go on voyages for trade. They used to buy dates from Basra, and go to Karachi and Bombay. They sell their goods and buy other things. It was a commercial trip. And finally they returned with lot of merchandise. The merchants did not pay the sailors or skippers. They simply got a cut from the profit.
If a ship sank, the merchants would pool in money and help the owner of the ship. They also gave him money to buy goods to help him continue the trade. Many families would get affected if a ship sank.

In 1950, Sheikh Abdullah Salem came to power and had a big dream. He is the father of modern democracy in Kuwait. He said the wealth of the country belongs to its people and laid the foundations for democracy. At this time Kuwaitis were very open minded, and were not divided. We had a very substantial middle class. If you have a broad middle class base, you can make a lot of improvement in a country. By the time Abdullah Salem died Kuwait had the full potential to become a modern state.

biography

Lidia Qattan was born in Northern Italy and married renowned Kuwaiti artist Khalifa Ali Hussein Al Qattan. She completed her higher education at Ferrara, Italy, and studied Nursing at Leicester in England. Her artistic career began in Kuwait when she took part in the Second Spring Exhibition in 1960, and has been a regular at all the subsequent exhibitions. She became member of KFAS in 1975. Her greatest art achievement is the conversion of her house into an art piece, full of mirror mosaics.

Lidia Qattan is also a writer with many books and articles to her credit. She has been writing cultural programs for Kuwait Radio. For Kuwait Television she wrote the scenario and script for the film “Failaka.” In 1992, she wrote and co-directed two special films sponsored by the Ministry of Information. She has published six books including Circulism of Life, Prophesy of Khalifa Qattan, Rulers of Kuwait and others.

By Valiya S. Sajjad
Arab Times Staff