Living through the nightmare

KOCHI: "Crackers still remind me of the sound of fighter aircrafts and thundering gunfire and it terrifies me even today, twenty long years after the event,” recollects Mathew Jose, general manager of The Avenue Regent.Kuwait War started on August 2, 1990 at the stroke of midnight and Mathew Jose, an employee at Hotel Hilton, now Kuwait International Hotel, was planning to leave for Kerala for good. Though he planned to leave two days earlier, later he decided to stay for two more days to train the new employees, on the request of his chief.The flight was scheduled for early morning and, as he was about to fall asleep, loud sounds of gunfire were heard. As he had already packed off his goods to India in a cargo ship, he had no access to the outside world. So he approached the neighbours and when they switched on the BBC channel, the news was out, that Kuwait was invaded. Thus started the seven-month-long Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.Mathew Jose still quivers as he narrates the incidents that followed. Hotel Hilton was adjacent to the US Embassy and on the other side was the sea.“We stayed in the hotel for two days. Shells bombarded from the ships at sea and the roads were packed with soldiers. We took asylum in the basement of the hotel for nearly two days.”“We painted ‘red crescent’ on our T-shirts, intending to volunteer help to the needy. There was two days of intense combat. On the second day of the war, the soldiers surrounded the hotel and started firing. One shell got stuck on the 22nd floor glass. The hotel was surrendered to the soldiers who readily looted its possessions. “Kuwait soon became a war zone. We left the hotel and for the next two months lead a ragged life. Law and order in the state went haywire and the life of people turned drastic without food and shelter.”The Government of India agreed to evacuate the Indians staying in Kuwait. Since it is safe to travel through Jordan, Mathew Jose and many others set off to Jordan through Baghdad. “The tiring  journey through the desert and the three-day stay in the tent as a refugee were  heart-throbbing experiences”, he said.  There were five aircraft and more than 20,000 refugees. They waited in the queue for more than two days and finally set foot in India after two months of tumult. As a parting shot Mathew says that though his warfare experiences mayn’t be shocking to people after all these years, it he still shudders at the thought of those two dark months.

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