Lulua a women’s rights champion
First Kuwaiti girl to study abroad
This is the first in a series of articles on Lulua Abdul Wahab Isa Al Qatami, a pioneer of women’s movement in Kuwait and in the Arab Gulf countries. – Editor
Abdul-Wahab Isa Al Qatami is one of the most outstanding ladies in the women’s movement in Kuwait. She was the first Kuwaiti girl to be sent abroad by her father to complete her higher education; after graduation she spent the best years of her life championing women’s rights in Kuwait and in the Arabian Gulf.
Lulua’s father, Abdul Wahab was an intellectual with modern ideas especially on women’s education; he treated his numerous children – ten daughters and one son, equally; he was affectionate and kind but firm. In his younger days he was a skillful sea-captain, later he became a government high- official and a merchant. Lulua’s strong admiration for her father guided her thoughts and shaped her destiny.
Lulua Al Qatami was born in the eve of the Second World War in comfortable family surrounding hence her childhood was unmarred by the effects of that war.
Her schooling began in Kuwait, when in 1938 her father had to leave the country and start a new life in Basra she continued her education in a French Convent run by nuns; that was the only place in which she could have had a good education. At graduation from high school she was fluent in French language and had a good knowledge of English.
Education
To complete her high education her father sent her to south of England in a boarding school run by French nuns from Tour. She was the only Arabian Muslim girl there, hence she was feeling quite lonely, but found consolation writing long letters to her father, pinning all her feelings and emotions while giving an account of her school-days and commenting on what was going-on around her.
In a charming auto-biography entitled “Bint Al Nokheda” (The daughter of the skipper ) Lulua reveals her emotional state when she was told she was to leave home and go to England on the next day with her brother Abdul Latif. It was the first time she was leaving home and for her it was both an exciting and frightening thought. Contradicting feelings were playing havoc in her mind; for although she had been nurtured on the idea that in the West women were being held with greater consideration than in the East and they enjoyed a greater freedom of action, she could not understand why her father did not choose Cairo or Beirut instead, where she had relatives and friends, and she would have been more happy among people of her own culture.
Obviously in matter of education her father knew what was best for her; he dimmed important that his children should get acquainted with Western languages and cultures in order for them to gain a broader outlook on life and on the world.
In sending Lulua abroad Abdul Wahab Al Qatami had no antecedents in Kuwait and in the whole of the Arabian peninsula, no father before him had dared sending his daughter to a Western country afraid of the consequence, but Abdul Wahab, having brought up his children on mutual trust and understanding, felt confident in his girls. However his action shocked even his relatives who for sometime were refusing even to speak to him.
Up to the time he sent Lulua abroad, girls in Kuwait were confined to their home after completing their high-school education. Lulua proved worth of her father’s trust and his example was later followed by some enlightened fathers; Sheikha Rasha Al Sabah was the second girl leaving Kuwait.
In 1956 the Kuwait Education Authorities headed by Sheikh Abdullah Al Jaber, the man who spurred education for women in Kuwait by opening the first schools for girls in 1937, sent the first group of seven girl students to the Cairo University, Egypt.
Traumatized
Incidentally some terrifying events during the Second World War in south of Iraq left Lulua so traumatized that she was afraid of flying, eventually she overcame her phobia.
In a passage of her book Lulua gives a lively description of her journey to England which in the early fifties which normally lasted up to 36 hours, due to numerous stops on the way; however she and her brother reached their destination after few days because of some unexpected adventures on the way.
England was still recovering from the aftermath of the Great War when Lulua entered the boarding school in 1953; she was a sixteen years old girl with a cultural background quite different from the one she came to, the contrast was sharpened by the austerity of life in the convent run by Roman Catholic nuns.
From the moment she entered she was missing the warmth of her family, the customs of her people and the rituals of her religion. Though she was trying to accommodate to her new surrounding she always felt something unnatural and ominous in it and that prevented her from settling down and make friends.
Memories
While the other girls were leaving the school on weekends to spend their time with their people and going to parties, she remained alone among her books and memories.
The stories she heard from the girls at their return often astonished her, for going out with a boy-friend or dancing was something unheard of in her country, that made her feel more detached from them. In the long letters she was sending to her father, confiding in him she was mentioning what was going on around her. Incidentally through those letters she was maintaining the purity of her Arabic; for each letter she sent home was sent back to her with corrections in red-ink underlining spelling and grammar mistakes, along with notes of encouragement and advise; any foreign word she included in her writing, such as “weekend “was crossed-off.
At the same time answering to her questions her father was lending her the moral support she needed.
The happiest time she had in England were the weekends she spent with her brother in London. When she was with him time stood still, everything was forgotten. Bathing in the glow of his affection she could forget the world. They had always been very close, but being in a foreign land far from home made them yet closer. She could confide in him totally and with open heart, sharing whatever she felt in her soul; simply talking to him she felt that inward peace and joy and the reassurance she craved for.
Writing of her experience with her brother in London Lulua reveals a humorous vein in her writing. In one of the chapters she writes about the pigeons of Trafalgar Square which some friends brought to her brother’s flat. After the feast they had to pay the penalty; for when they finished eating two policemen were at the door with the evidence of their deed, making everyone embarrassed to say the least.
At the local police station they were faced with the charge of stealing the Queen’s birds and they were heavily fined.
In another chapter Lulua writes of the day she picked an apple from the tree in the school orchard and ate it. The punishment for her deed she was made to swallow a dose of castor oil, then she was locked in the attics where the nuns stored the apples and let to spend the day there feeling miserable. When on the next weekend Lulua met her brother and told him of her ordeal, he immediately bought a big basket of apples and presented it to the nuns, reproaching them for the severity of the punishment for such a trivial offence.