Um Saleh’s golden chair
I belong to the old generation who suffered from high expenses of marriage when the state only gave KD 2,000 as marriage allowance, half of which as a gift and the other as a loan to be collected through KD 10 installments. At that time, most expenses went to precious items a groom had to purchase such as six large pieces of golden jewelry and a piece of furniture known as “Jaber’s Chair,” which was very comfortable especially to the back. Yet, that golden chair usually broke the backs of newly wedded grooms due to its cost.
Thanks be to Allah, I have a very wise and cooperative wife who is worth all the costs I paid for our marriage. She never hesitated to allow me to sell a piece of those precious jewelry I had bought her whenever I needed money. The last of those precious items I had to sell was the same one that broke my back when we first got married. I promised to make it up to her when days got better and since then, my poor wife has been waiting for that day to come for years now. “Am I not enough compensation for you,” I always tell her whenever she inquires about her golden chair.
That chair came to my mind while I was reading a statement made by Hamad Al-Humaidhi, Director of the Public Institute for Social Security, saying that MPs’ suggestions to reduce the maximum age of retirement would cost the state budget around KD 4 billion. I know for sure that lawmakers who made such proposals are seeking voters’ satisfaction which would keep them in their offices and protect their parliamentary ‘seats’.
I only wish they had asked themselves if maintaining their own seats was worth costing the budget losses worth billions of dinars. They ought to learn a lesson from my story with Um Saleh’s golden chair as she sacrificed it in order to keep our life together. May Allah save those who would give up their positions for public interest and not those who would sacrifice Kuwait for the sake of a seat or chair. —Translated by Kuwait Times
“Lawmakers who made such proposals are seeking voters’ satisfaction