War & the Desert

The desert slowly takes back the land...

We ventured out of the city this weekend. We headed northwest toward Iraq and ended up just miles from the border at a deserted Kuwaiti communication station. It had been hit by Iraqi military in ’91.

The old abandoned buildings were bombed out shells of their former glory. They were riddled with bullet holes and filled with sand, drifts so high they literally brushed the roof.

The floors of the buildings still had turquoise and red tile in some places but giant rotted out holes in others. Pieces of rebar stuck up the floor and down from the ceiling. Windows were long gone and shards of glass and stone were scattered throughout the floor and the desert.

Bullet holes and graffiti was scattered throughout. Shotgun and machine gun splatter was discernible across the pot-marked walls. In one building we were able to climb clear to the roof and walk across it to look out on the desert and miles of nothingness stretching in every direction.

It was eerie to be there. It was sad to walk through the buildings and know people had died and been wounded in the very places we stood. It was scary to think that I was alive when it happened. That these very buildings, quickly being erased by sand, had stood just a decade ago full of people with ideas and plans.

It was an awakening to the reality of war and conflict. I hear about what goes on in the desert, in the war, in far away places, but I have no idea what it is to have a war happen where I live, where I call home.

I still don’t, thankfully. But I am a lot closer to people who do and I hope they never have to again.

and the complex disappears.