For Now, They Fight With Words Alone : Politics: As the Mideast crisis escalates, the Kuwaiti ambassador and his son present a brave front as they strive to impress others with the plight their homeland faces.

The Kuwaiti ambassador has just set down the phone receiver, and his hand, although clammy and cool, smells sweetly of after-shave.

Sheik Saud al Nasir al Sabah, 45, descendant of a family that has ruled Kuwait for 256 years, is part of a clan of 1,000 cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces, who, until seven days ago, controlled the tiny sheikdom perched on the Persian Gulf.

Saud’s uncle is the emir; his cousin is the crown prince; his son-in-law is the emir’s son.

And despite the reports of terror and chaos in their occupied country, Saud is not about to crumble and let the family down.

While commanding the phone, watching the Cable News Network broadcasts and reading dispatches, Saud, wearing a fine British-tailored suit and red Jacquard silk tie, poises on a burgundy velvet banquette in what is usually the ballroom of his diplomatic residence.

For the time being, the room has been turned into Kuwait’s American mobilization headquarters. Vast and airy, this space is a fantasy of Middle Eastern decor with blue and yellow tiles covering what seems like acres of floor. There is a small fountain in the center of the room; it reflects latticed woodwork on the ceiling and tall silk floral arrangements nearby.

But amid this splendor are signs of crisis: a giant map of the Middle East on an easel; an enormous color television with the sound turned down; two telephones; a coffee percolator; a platter of fresh fruit; several U.S. agents hanging around, trying to look discreet.

Since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait last week, Saud has barely slept, he says.

Day and night, he says, he has been laboring to make Americans understand the injustices he says the invading Iraqis have inflicted on his oil-rich homeland.

He has been in constant contact with the White House; he translated for President Bush in a call with the emir, who escaped to Saudi Arabia.

Saud has appeared on the “Today” show and “Nightline”; he has conducted two press conferences in the Embassy. On Monday, he went to Capitol Hill to talk to Republican and Democratic leaders.

The phones have become his preoccupation.

“Just now, that call . . . was from Saudi Arabia,” he says, pointing to the white multibutton telephone console as if it’s a time bomb about to explode. “The calls don’t stop.”

He says Kuwaiti government officials have been taken to Baghdad and executed; several government buildings in Kuwait have been blown up. “They’re destroying everything, everything but the oil equipment,” Saud says, his voice intensifying.

But then, as if a wave comes over him, he summons up his Brahmin bearing and lowers his voice. “You see,” he says softly, “they want to annex Kuwait. They want to make it their country.”

At this, his son, Nawaf, a sophomore at Princeton University who has not left his father’s side since their world turned upside down last week, sits up straight.

Nawaf is by Saud’s side again, this time answering the phone while his father talks to a reporter.

But earlier, in an anteroom, Nawaf, decked out in a double-breasted navy blazer, had explained that all he wants to do is return to his country. He says he will fight and die if need be for Kuwait, the way the emir’s brother did during the Iraqi invasion.

“It’s a question of my instincts,” he declares in an adolescent’s breaking voice. “Without a country, I am not a man.”

Saud refused to discuss the whereabouts of his wife, Awatif, and three of his five children who were in Kuwait during the invasion. “You cannot mention where they are,” he demands. “They could be in danger.”

Nawaf has made a similar demand, explaining only that some of his family--meaning his immediate relatives--were safe, although others were not.

Two weeks ago, the ambassador and his family were in New York, en route to Kuwait for a month’s vacation. But Saud decided at the last minute to stay behind. He had read a harsh memo from the foreign minister of Iraq, accusing Kuwait of stealing Iraqi land.

Nawaf and his 8-year-old brother, Sabah, returned to Washington with the ambassador; a week later, the invasion occurred.

Nawaf was with his father when he got the late-night call that troops were three kilometers from the emir’s palace. “My father just shook his head and called the State Department,” Nawaf says.

Saud has been Kuwait’s envoy to the United States for a decade. He also has served as ambassador to Britain and has worked at the United Nations in New York. Educated in British schools and trained as a lawyer in Kuwait, Saud has worked and lived in his native land only intermittenly.

Like his father, Nawaf also has lived most of his life away from home. He is studying international diplomacy and had hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps, joining the Kuwaiti foreign service after graduation from Princeton.

But now, the son says he would be willing to return to Kuwait and never leave.

“I have many friends there,” he says. “Every time I go back, I make new ones. Every time I go back, I meet another cousin my age. Our family is just like an extension of the whole country. We are all one family, one unit. You cannot break us apart.”

But in the meantime, Nawaf has relied on support from other Kuwaitis in America and his American friends from St. Albans, an exclusive Washington prep school that is his alma mater. His friends have called the embassy daily; some of them attended a rally Monday in front of the White House.

Nawaf says his father put him in charge of fielding calls from the 2,000 or so Kuwaiti students in the United States, many in California.

“Father has told them not to worry about their families--that everyone will be all right,” he says.

Nawaf, as if by merely raising the possibility that they somehow will not be all right and that he might somehow appear disloyal, suddenly turns the conversation to Americans and their support of Kuwait.

He produces a letter that has just arrived over the embassy fax machine from a Kentuckian, who writes that Americans love freedom and understand the Kuwaitis’ plight.

“The whole world supports us,” Nawaf says brightly.

But he darkens when asked about “brother countries” in the Arab world and their support.

“People refer to the ‘brother country’ in Iraq,” he observes. “I have no relatives there. Right now, I am against all this brotherhood. I think we have been betrayed by many of the Arab countries who have not come to our defense.”

But his father’s diplomatic view is that there are “brother countries who will come to our defense. I feel confident that Saudi Arabia will support us,” Saud says later.

In the midst of the crisis, it is clear father and son have learned to lean more than ever on each other.

“I have always felt close to my father,” Nawaf says, sounding more boyish as his voice softens and he talks of his father and their tennis matches in quieter times. “Right now, our relationship has taken on extreme poignancy.”

As if on cue, a member of the embassy staff interrupts Nawaf to say that his father needs to see him. The son promises to return but explains of his relationship with his dad: “When he’s here, I’m usually always with him. I’m always by his side.”

KUWAIT AT A GLANCE

* Size: 6,880 square miles

* Neighbors: Iraq, Saudi Arabia

* Rulers: Sheiks of Sabah family. Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah now in self-exile.

* Population: 2 million, fewer than 1 million of whom are Kuwaitis; others are foreign workers, who fill eight of 10 jobs.

* History: Kuwaitis are descendants of Bedouin clan that sailed up Persian Gulf from southwestern quarter of Arabian Peninsula in late 17th Century. They have undergone periods of Turkish and British tutelage. Oil, whose revenues helped support wealthy, welfare state, found in 1938.

* Religion: Strongly Muslim.

* Culture: Kuwaiti life is male-dominated with passion for action. Women have restrained, modest lots in life, in keeping with Islamic modesty. Society marked by extended families, emphasis on honor, responsibility.

Times Staff Writer Robin Wright contributed to this story.