I made the mistake of arriving at the Fahaheel fish market at seven in the morning, which meant I had missed the spectacle but caught the aftermath: concrete floors still wet from the hosing-down, the smell of the Gulf saturating everything within two hundred meters, a handful of vendors selling what hadn’t moved to restaurants yet, and one old man sitting on a plastic stool at the edge of the dock drinking tea from a glass and looking at the water with the expression of someone who has nothing left to prove. I bought a bag of small prawns from the last stall standing, and the vendor seemed genuinely surprised, as if the idea of a sale this late in the morning hadn’t occurred to him. He threw in an extra handful anyway.
Fahaheel sits about 35 kilometers south of Kuwait City, and it is one of the places in Kuwait that predates oil — a fishing and pearl-diving settlement that has been working this section of Gulf coast for longer than the modern state has existed. The main waterfront promenade is lined with traditional dhow-style wooden fishing boats tied up along the pier, bobbing in the gentle Gulf swell, their paint faded to the colors of salt and sun. Walking this strip in the morning, before the heat builds, with the boats on one side and low-rise buildings on the other and almost nobody around, is as close as Kuwait gets to a certain kind of unglamorous coastal quiet that feels honest.
The old part of Fahaheel — back from the waterfront, away from the new developments — has held onto more of its original character than most of Kuwait City. The buildings are lower, the streets narrower, the shops more specific in what they sell. There is a workshop on a back street where a man repairs fishing nets with a patience that suggests it is not a job he particularly wishes to hurry. There are restaurants in converted houses where the menus don’t exist because the menu is whatever the boats brought in this morning. I ate hamour — the Gulf grouper — grilled with turmeric and black lime, and it tasted like something that had been alive four hours earlier, which it had.
The juxtaposition that catches you in Fahaheel is The Avenues — Kuwait’s colossal mall, one of the largest in the world — visible from the waterfront like a statement about where the country has chosen to put its energy. The old town and the new town exist within a few kilometers of each other and seem to inhabit entirely different centuries. I don’t think this tension has been resolved, and I’m not sure it needs to be. Fahaheel’s fishing community still wakes before dawn. The mall opens at ten. For now, both fit.
When to go: November through March for the most pleasant weather. Arrive at the fish market by 5:30am if you want to see the full morning action — by 7am the best is over. The waterfront promenade is good at any time of day in the cooler months, and the seafood restaurants along the waterfront serve lunch and dinner with whatever came in that morning.