To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?

I was resistant at first. I didn’t want to be a guinea pig. I worried that it would affect my ability to have healthy children one day. I don’t trust big pharma.

I don’t trust anyone in power, anymore, really.

Kuwait moved fast when the Pfizer vaccine was announced, ordering one million doses right off the bat. We also got 200,000 doses of AstraZeneca, the Oxford vaccine.

When it comes to corona vaccines, there’s a myriad of reasons to resist taking one. Of course, there’s the paranoia that Bill Gates really does want to implant us all with microchips. Once you reason your way through that one, as well as the big fear of being injected with mRNA, it just seems too soon to take a vaccine — it essentially has only been a year that we’ve been dealing with corona on a global scale. And most vaccines in history have taken years and even decades to be approved, not months. There have been some scary failures when it comes to vaccines, notably by Pfizer themselves. And let’s not get started on the new British and South African strains and how resistant they may or may not be to the existing vaccines available.

All that being said, my mom signed me up for the Kuwait government’s vaccination program (I had been planning on waiting at least six months to see if there any issues or glaring side effects). I received a text message informing me of my appointment for Tuesday, February 16th, 2021, and I found myself facing a dilemma. Here were my personal reasons for and against taking the vaccines:

FOR

• Um, so that corona doesn’t make me super sick if I am to get it.

• It’s a responsible thing to do (and even a socialist one as a friend suggested) in order to minimize the spread of the virus to others (although you can still spread corona after you’ve been vaccinated, the degree is lessened).

• To have an easier time traveling in the future if there is such thing as an immunity passport or whatever.

• Being vaccinated against Covid-19 can help keep other strains from developing.

AGAINST

• Humans corrupt everything, and even the way we vaccinate is absolutely abhorrent. Kuwait is absolutely inexcusable for its classist policies, whereby nationals were vaccinated before expats.

  Read more about Vaccinationalism throughout the world, and Cuba’s approach, which is pretty interesting.

• Given that these vaccines are not as effective as we’d hope, why not wait until there’s a more effective one?

• Immunity passports have the potential to be super, super invasive of privacy.

So, I still decided to get vaccinated because my appointment was assigned before it was announced that Kuwait would prioritize nationality over need. It was a super-efficient process but my reaction was pretty severe. Thankfully, I didn’t have the terrible headaches most of my friends complained of, but I did have: a fever that came and went for 24 hours, body aches, and body-wracking chills that were unlike any I’ve ever had.

Here’s the weird part. On Sunday night (the sixth night after I got vaccinated), I was woken up by fiery itchiness in my legs. I was convinced there was a family of spiders feasting on my skin. Sure enough, I found a pretty intense rash the next day, and internet research showed me that hives and rashes are a common side effect of corona (and the corona vaccine). There’s even something called covid toes! And a really scary inflammatory response in children. I took an anti-histamine and it cleared right up.

Now that the physical reaction has faded, I have the opportunity to unpack my psychological one. First of all, I felt immense empathy with people who have had full-blown covid. The virus feels like a really unrelenting bully hopped up on ego and otherworldly powers. It really didn’t feel anything like any flu I’ve ever had before.

Second, I have a mixed reaction between feeling optimistic and pessimistic. Optimistic because I feel like my immune system has been upgraded (the first shot gives me 64% protection against corona). Pessimistic because, according to that same article, we should have actually been given half a dose to reach 90% efficacy. That intense first full dose will actually only lead to 70% efficacy once both shots have been administered. All of this research is constantly changing, so let’s see how it all plays out. For now, nothing has really changed. I’m still susceptible to both catching and spreading the disease.

It feels like what I truly need is a strong shot of patience.

From my journal in the early hours of February 17:

Up in the middle of the night after being vaccinated! Woke up shivering — took Panadol and added blankets and sweater. I’m warm now. Still alert though. Strange to be inviting this virus into my body, to have a physical representation of what we’ve been going through mentally. It’s like there’s a speed bump unlike any other people have collectively seen in this lifetime (although I’d argue that sexism and racism are just a big a speed bump)…

Corona is such a big bump that we can’t see over the top of it. And the vaccine reaction, whilst much more finite, is still your body slowing down, much like what’s happening in the world.

All in all, I feel positive that we’ve begun to give our bodies some tools for overcoming this insane worldwide hurdle. Keep climbing, wherever you are, however you can!

IMAGE: Tarek Al Ghoussein

Kuwait’s residents have no shortage of complaints about their home - its lack of entertainment options, the impossibly high cost of real estate, its deeply engrained structural racism, its ‘beigeness’ - are all thorns in our feet. Liberals think it’s too conservative and conservatives think it’s too liberal. The government sector is a running joke, even to those who run it. Kuwait’s once-renowned freedom of press is wearing thin, too - with crackdowns on writers and journalists in newspapers and on Twitter abounding (although there’s some good news, too).

Given our world-class status at bitching and moaning, why is art criticism in Kuwait so lagging?

A few years ago I was standing with friends outside a pop-up restaurant, and of course in our small town we found ourselves saying hi and catching up to scores of people, one of them was a woman who had recently put on a performance that we’d attended.

“So good to see you!” my friend said, “I loved your performance!”

“Thanks so much habibti, I’m so glad you came,” the woman responded. The rest of us smized silently - we don’t know the woman personally - and continued talking. We chatted amongst ourselves, interrupting each other to say our hellos to our various acquaintances, friends, cousins, colleagues, teachers, students, classmates, frenemies and thankfully, no ex-boyfriends, until we were seated.

All night I was haunted by this white lie.

The three of us had attended said woman’s performance - gripping our seats and trying not to cringe visibly at how cheesy it was. Afterward we’d agreed, the acting was too literal and the writing was chockfull of bad puns and entendres, all that was missing from the presentation was someone trailing a tear with their finger as it rolled down their cheek.

Why couldn’t my friend have said the work was brave? Or that the format was fresh? If she specified her praise, and saved her criticisms until they were solicited, then she would have participated in a much more honest exchange. Instead, she did what many of us in Kuwait do after facing the creator of a bad piece of art - lie.

Or, as we say in Arabic - injaamil - we give exaggerated praise, often in the form of platitudes. 

We do this because we want to be liked. Because we live in a small town, in even smaller circles, and we don’t want to be the one with offensive opinions. But doesn’t our art suffer as a result?

I’ve lived in places like Beirut that have the opposite problem (though the town is just as small). The critique each other’s work TO DEATH. But you know what? Their work gets exported. It goes places, it travels the world…because it’s workshopped constantly by the artist’s friends, family, peers, predecessors, and like, the Uber driver that picks you up from the exhibit opening.

Kuwait could learn to give - and take - criticism. So this year, I started doing a roundup of what art was being created around town and gathering opinions on it. Hence, THE REVIEW was born. You can find all the episodes on the Abaih World IGTV and YouTube channels.

Enjoy! And of course, feel free to give me your raw, honest opinion in the comments section below.

I sat down to do some work today but was heavily distracted- the internet is SO LOUD and I’m SO PROUD. It’s exhausting to sift through the terrible state of humanity and to engage with people we disagree with, but the time is now. Corona has taken us all the way down to our survival instincts, and it’s time to reprogram some old beliefs that are keeping us from progressing as a race.

A race. One, single race. Although many people like to deny it, we all come from Africa. Everything we do and say is cultural and can be changed - no behavior is inherent in your genes. I knew racism was bad in the Middle East, and that blackness is punished as it is everywhere else…what I hadn’t realized was that people in the region commonly DENY the existence of racism. That they really think racism isn’t actually racism if it’s “just a joke.”

I received an uninformed DM saying that “‘slavery’ ended when the prophet Mohamad came…he ended slavery in the Muslim world…We don’t have racism against black [people].”

Honestly, the first thing I felt was sadness. Here’s a fully grown person who has clearly been underexposed to reality. Who was told something, assumed it was true, and never experienced enough of the world around them to see otherwise.

Sadly, slavery is alive and well in the Muslim world.

Just last year in Kuwait, there was huge uproar regarding human trafficking on Instagram and a 2015 article by The Guardian titled “Women from Sierra Leone 'sold like slaves' into domestic work in Kuwait” presents some of the horrifying abuse that workers suffer. The article cites a Human Rights Watch report on the abuse of domestic workers in Kuwaiti households,

“The sense of having ‘paid for’ or having ‘bought’ a worker makes some employers feel entitled to treat the worker however they wish.”

I found a book titled “Speaking with Their Own Voices: The Stories of Slaves in the Persian Gulf in the 20th Century” by Jerzy Zdanowski…just the introduction BLEW MY MIND and woke me up to my own ignorance and naïveté. There are entire chapters and firsthand accounts of different CATEGORIES of slavery in the GCC, including:

• Africans and their children who were kidnapped on pilgrimage to Mecca

• Yemenis kidnapped by Bedouins

• Slaves born into slavery, usually into households

• Male slaves who were usually laborers and specifically pearl divers (side note: many free pearl divers lied and said they were slaves to avoid paying debts to merchants)

• “Makrani” slaves from the slave trade that were taken from East Africa to Pakistan via Oman in the 1650’s, and from Pakistan through Persia to the GCC AS LATE AS THE 1930’s. Mind. Blown. (side note: “today many Pakistani of African descent are referred to as Makrani, whether or not they live there. On the coast they are also variously referred to as dada, sheedi and syah (all meaning black), or alternatively, gulam (slave) or naukar (servant). The children of Sindhi Muslim men and sidiyani (female Africans) are called gaddo—as in half-caste.” Source)

• And finally, female slaves. My previously mentioned conversant also mentioned, “in the Arab world…rich families had nannies with dark skin who were treated like a mother…and even take those families’ last names. They lived with them, traveled with them, raised their kids.” She meant to say that this was not slavery, that this was love and care. However, it is clear that female slaves were taken as concubines and free domestic labor. In her article “Confronting anti-black racism in the Arab world,” Susan Abulhawa writes that the Arab slave trade,

“targeted women, who became members of harems and whose children were full heirs to their father's names, legacies and fortunes, without regard to their physical features. The enslaved were not bought and sold as chattel the way we understand the slave trade here, but were captured in warfare, or kidnapped outright and hauled across the Sahara.”

What’s most shocking to me is not that women were enslaved, but that I am surrounded by people who insist that it was a form of kindness to incorporate female slaves into your family. Writes Zdanowski, there is

“proof that [female slaves] were beaten, divorced against their will and separated from their children. Separation from their children was the main cause of female slaves absconding.”

On top of dealing with the ignorance of others, I have to come face to face with my own. Not only was I unaware of how extensive the slave trade was in the Gulf, I also didn’t know about recent happenings such as hundreds of Zimbabwean women being sexually trafficked to Kuwait or why the word “khal” is offensive (not that I ever have or ever will use it!). It can be overwhelming to come face to face with your own shortcomings…but we have to start somewhere.

In addition to educating yourself and speaking more sensitively, what else can we do? (FYI, pictured is a woman discovering that blackface is offensive, but admitting she was wrong.)

Put your money (and your time) where your mouth is. Start by donating to Social Work Society (SWS Kuwait).

Among their many activities, they hire legal help and counseling support for abused workers, support to women at the Migrant Shelter, and help trapped workers get back home (particularly those from African nations that do not have embassies in Kuwait).

They’re also currently feeding over 10,000 people. You can donate money through Faye Sultan or take the following supplies to the Evangelical Church:

• 1 to 2 litres of cooking oil

• 500 to 750 ml of tomato paste

• 5 kilos basmati rice

• 500g to 1 kilo lentils

• eggs

• cans of chunk Tuna in olive oil

• cans of fava beans/chickpeas/foul

• cheese

• chocolate bars

• a kilo of potato

• a box of cucumber

• some garlic

• some onion

• half kilo of sugar

• box of tea

• box of coffee

I’m also offering tarot readings in exchange for charity donations. If you have any additions, comments, edits, or suggestions please chime in….let’s do this, fam!

P.S. It was hard but I think the person who DMed me eventually started to see that there was a lot more to learn. I thank them for being patient with themselves as they shift their perspective in the most important way!