Stories 1

Gulzar has a little kitchen, with a stove, a gas cylinder, and an ice box. Inside his portable home that is less than a km from the highway, he doesn’t have air conditioning or bathroom facilities.

When he first arrived, there used to be a portable toilet. But young kids, who drove into the desert for fun, would frequently use it and leave it trashed. Gulzar ended up having to clean after them. His employer couldn’t find a solution to prevent this, and so one time when it got broken, Gulzar decided to ask his employer to have it fully removed.

Stories 2

Mohammed came to Kuwait as a young man and used to work as a domestic worker initially. He has a good relationship with his employer who visits him on the weekends.

In winters, his employer has gatherings with his friends, and Mohammed serves them gahwa and snacks while they sit outside.

Mohammed would also like to meet his friends and go to the City, but a round trip - from his home in the desert to Kuwait City and back - would cost him KD 25 that he cannot afford.

Stories 3

As we were leaving, Prabhu told us what a pleasure it was to get to speak to someone in Hindi after so long. Ravi who lives and works nearby speaks Hindi but they rarely get to meet, what with both being busy with their daily tasks on the farm.

Besides, he says, his employer doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to socialize with fellow Hindi speakers — he thinks they might be a corrupting (kharaab) influence on him.

Stories 4

Ahmad, like many Kuwaitis his age, used to visit his farm and flock in the desert every weekend. About 10-15 years ago, he decided to permanently embrace the wild and adopt desert living with his employee. Now he gets to see his family in the city on the weekends and his friends visit him often.

Their jakhoor runs nearly entirely on solar power, he said. He talks sadly about the impact oil has had on the environment and climate, especially here in the desert.

Stories 5

Ali and Usman are twins aged 40 who work on the same farm. Every day they wake up at 5 AM to look after their sheep and chickens, finishing with their work by 7-8 PM.

Going out on weekends means spending money that they would rather save and so they only venture downtown when they need to send money back home. They don’t have their passports or phones with them.

Stories 6

One day Sameer was beaten up because his employer’s driver complained about not being served food like Sameer does for the employer. Sameer himself eats what is left over from his employer’s meals.

He has not been paid his salary for 3 months, because of that time when he couldn’t answer his phone and his boss, who’s 60 years old, got angry. He tells him the money has been transferred but when Sameer asks his wife back home to check at the bank, she says there was nothing in the account yet.