Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel

Fayeq Mohammed Al-Ayadhi ( Arabic فائق محمد علي العياضي; * May 5, 1948 in Kuwait City ; † after 1990), better known under his pseudonym Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel ( Arabic فائق عبدالجليل), was a Kuwaiti poet , playwright, and lyric poet whose works are known throughout the Arab world.

He was captured by Iraqi troops during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait . He was the most famous of the more than 600 Kuwaiti civilians taken as prisoners of war by Saddam Hussein's regime. His remains were exhumed in the Iraqi desert in 2004. The time and circumstances of his death are unclear.

Life and work

Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel was born in Kuwait City and initially devoted himself to painting before becoming famous at the age of 19 with a collection of poems called Wasmiah and the Stems of Childhood (1967). He published other books and poems as well as lyrics for a number of songs that became very popular in the Arab world. He has worked with singers such as Mohammed Abdu (Abaad, Layla, Layla, Filjaw Ghaim), Talal Maddah and Abu Baker Salem, as well as many other well-known performers. He also wrote various plays that were performed in his home country, including for Kuwait's first puppet theater (1974). He was also active in the management of the Kuwaiti National Theater.

He wrote his works in Arabic. The style positions itself in the middle between a formalism of the classical language and the melodic dialect spoken in its region.

He saw poetry as something political, as an engine for social change. "Poetry", he wrote in a verse from 1968, "is a grain of wheat that gets into the ovens and bakeries to feed all people". His poetry also reflected a deep belonging to Kuwait itself and a vague perception of what his own fate would bring him. For this reason, he has often been compared to Federico García Lorca , the great poet of the era of the Spanish Civil War .

Abdul-Jaleel earned his living working in the city council of Kuwait City. He also served as an arts lawyer for the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information. This function led him to frequent trips within the Arab world. He also ran his own advertising agency . In 1967 he married his cousin Salma Al-Abdi. The couple had five children: Gadah (born 1971), Fares (1972), Raja (1978), Sara (1983) and Nouf (1985).

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

When Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Abdul-Jaleel was captured in Kuwait City with his wife and four-year-old daughter Nouf. The other children were in the country at this summer time of year. During a high-risk, adventurous journey through the desert, he brought his wife and child to the Saudi Arabian border. However, he decided to let the two go alone. He told his wife that he still had a few things to do before reuniting with his family abroad. In the end it was not possible for him to leave the country as well. He communicated this to his loved ones in a letter that was found on the family's kitchen table in 1991 after the end of the Gulf War.

Instead, he joined a civilian resistance group that also included a handful of writers and musicians . Together they wrote poems and recorded pieces of music. Their intention was to use these works to move the Kuwaiti population to resist the invaders. They set up a complete system and organized, among other things, a network of women who hid tapes with the recordings in the folds of their abayahs - long dresses that are typical of the Gulf region . So the tapes got from house to house.

However, they fell victim to their own success. Everyone was talking about the action, because the Kuwait people talked so much about the poems and songs that the Iraqis got wind of it. They found out who was responsible and arrested many of them on January 3, 1991.

Imprisonment and death

The fate of the Kuwaiti prisoners has never been clearly established. The US government believes that all of them must have been executed soon after the Gulf War ended. Before the invasion in 2003, however, the Americans took another position. In fact, the return of the prisoners was seen as one of the - secondary - reasons for the invasion to begin in the first place.

During the 1990s, the Arabic-language media reported occasionally that Abdul-Jaleel and other prisoners had been seen in one locality or another.

In July 2004, his remains were exhumed from a shallow mass grave located in the desert near the city of Karbala . The body could be identified by an undamaged label sewn into his Kuwaiti robe. On this the name was Schneider of Fayeq Abdul-Jaeel to read. A series of DNA tests also confirmed his identity. According to his death certificate , issued by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health in June 2006, he had been dead for more than ten years when his remains were found.

The DNA test, which was carried out by the Home Office and obtained from Abdul-Jaleel's family, found that the remains must have come from a man who must have been around 50 years old. This would have been Abdul-Jaleel's age during the invasion around 2003.

June 20, 2006. The ceremony for Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel at the Sulaibikat Cemetery in Kuwait.

Abdul-Jaleel's son, Fares Al-Ayadhi, conducted several interviews with people who stated that they had seen the father in recent years. Among them was a man who claimed guards at the prison from Basra to have been where Al-Ayadhi had been detained. This information, which was neither confirmed nor denied by the Kuwaiti authorities, confirms that Abdul-Jaleel and other prisoners must have been of great importance to the Saddam regime and that they had lived there for several years.

Al-Ayadhi believes that his father was first held in Mosul , then transferred to Baghdad, and finally to a prison near Basra. According to the man, who pretended to be one of the father's last prison guards, he and the other surviving Kuwaiti prisoners were sentenced to death just before US forces marched in in March 2003. They are said to have been taken to the desert and shot there.

Abdul-Jaleel's body was brought back to Kuwait, where he was buried on June 20, 2006 in Al-Sulaibikhat Cemetery in Kuwait City. The ceremony was attended by the Deputy Prime Minister , Defense Minister, Acting Interior Minister and various other government officials.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ alqabas.com.kw ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ aawsat.com
3. ↑ alwatan.com.kw ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ aawsat.com
5. ↑ aawsat.com ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ youtube.com
7. ↑ aawsat.com ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ alriyadh.com
9. ↑ aawsat.com ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.