Kuwait City

SINCE COMING TO KUWAIT, I, like many others, have turned into a gold-plated insomniac. If it’s not the missile warning sirens keeping you awake, it’s the Muslim calls to worship, beamed in via loudspeaker each morning at 4:15. After a while, the former stops being so nerve-wracking (no one has been killed, as of yet), though it does have a triple-espresso effect on the adrenal gland, making sustained slumber all but impossible. With the latter, it is suddenly obvious to me why so many Muslims around these parts live in a constant state of agitation. You’d be cranky too if you never slept in. I dashed off an e-mail the other day to various family, friends, and detractors, telling them that the missile alerts appeared to have subsided. We hadn’t had one in over 12 hours. The moment I sent it, the bell in my room sounded again. And again and again–8 times in one 24-hour period.

Much as you can tell the age of an oak tree by cutting it in half and counting its trunk rings, you can tell the reporters who’ve been at the Kuwait Hilton longest by their level of gas-mask fatigue. Upon first arriving, you live in a constant state of preparedness. You wear your JSList suit like a pair of pajamas, and keep your gas mask on your night-stand, in order to immediately locate it in the dark–if you’re foolish enough to sleep with the lights off. Any sound–the wind whistling through your sliding glass door, the high whine of the golf cart wheels that the Indian room-service boys use to shuttle grub out to the chalets–fools you into hearing a warning siren.