Quality of Life

They were gathered on the porch, all nine of them. They had been sitting there for the past three hours, talking about nothing and everything. The sun was up now, two by two they would come and go from and to their prayers.

It wasn't really winter but given that the sea was ten meters away, if that, made them all slowly go back inside the shalaih, get their coats, and come back outside. Sport coats to be exact, and shorts as opposed to pants ofcourse. The official Kuwaiti shalaih dress code when it's chilly. One by one, the smokers of the bunch would reach for their cigarette boxes, and pat them before taking one out. They would also gather next to each other so as to share the ashtrays.

The main topic now was graduating college. A few of them had already graduated this semester or the one before. Some had been working for the past year. It didn't take 15 minutes for the whole discussion to shift to jobs now. Five minutes later, it was about salaries. Before you knew it, it was about Vitamin-W.

It was pretty amazing actually, how one sentence would change the whole course of the conversation of nine. Two of them were up now asking, or rather interrupting, to see what the others wanted for breakfast from Bnaider. When they left, the seven remaining spared no time to come up with a prank to pull off on them when they're back.

As the discussions continued, now to more serious matters, one of them started drifting in thought. In the background, he could hear something about the at-the-time allied invasion of Iraq. When he looked at the waves, he could actually hear the faint sound of the clashes over the guys' conversation. As he looked up, he directly faced the sun. He raised his hand to cover his eyes from the blinding brightness, and looked away over to the tied jet skis.

The world around him slowed down, as he looked over at his friends, he could see them move and make gestures in slow motion. Their speech mumbled and slow as a turtle, as if rewinding a record.

Didn't know it at the time, but he probably should've taken it all in. He slowly turned his head to see what appeared to be a four year old running and playing with the sand from the shalaih next door. He could hear exactly what the mother was whispering, but he couldn't make sense of the constant noise of his friends a meter away.

Looking back at his friends, they were still going in slow motion. They were more than seven by now. Guys who were asleep, or who were "milking their girlfriends" all night joined them. Still, the sounds mumbled. He should've freezed that moment in time.

He just stared at the endless sea, guessing how much would he cover if he swam all the way before he drowned. He thought he heard something from behind, so he looked over his shoulders and leaned on his chest to get the driveway of the shalaih in view.

Behind the parked Porsches, Aston Martins, Ferraris and AMGs, he could see the Lamborghini and Corvette putting on a show just behind the volleyball court. The guys got up and started walking towards the court laughing and cheering. He just smiled facing the opposite direction.

He knew that if they were all stripped from this big shalaih, those sports cars, those designer sports coats, their degrees, even their family names. Whatever it was, they would have still enjoyed each other's company just as much.

He knew that every single one of them knew what he knew. He knew that there were a bunch of unwritten rules that bonded them all together. He also knew that now he was hearing his name. "3laiwi, 3laiwi o yahad inshalla.. Hey ent, na7no hona!". He looked over, two of his friends were walking towards him telling him to come join them. "Yaaykom, yaaykom" he said. Now it all became clear, he made sense of it all.

They were all about heart.