Now, I don’t know how true this is but apparently, because of all that is going on in Kuwait, the roles of woman have changed completely. This is how I heard the story.

A prominent journalist had filed a report on gender roles in Kuwait some years prior to the first Gulf War. She had noted at the time that in traditional Islamic fashion the women used to walk a few paces behind their husbands.  After returning to Kuwait recently she observed that the men now walked several paces behind the wives. She was shocked and went up to a Kuwaiti woman to see if she could get an explanation for the change of custom.

“This is marvellous,” she says to the woman, “why is it that women now get to walk in front of the men?”

To which the Kuwaiti woman replied, “Land mines.”