Touched by History : Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait has jolted families, jobs and hopes. : CAIRO : ‘I Was Living in Horror’: Kuwaiti Can’t Bear to Watch, Opts for Exile

Abdullah Moussawr was driving to work on the morning of Aug. 2 when he came upon a crowd in downtown Kuwait city. Suddenly, he realized that cars along the road were not parked, but abandoned. The street in front of him was blocked. He saw Iraqi soldiers.

A soldier approached Moussawr, 34, and ordered him out of his car, but he stepped on the gas instead. The soldier shouted, “Stop,” and fired a rifle into the air, but Moussawr sped over the center divider in a U-turn and escaped.

“I was shocked. I was scared. I couldn’t believe we’d been invaded, and by a brother country,” he said.

Over the next 10 days, Moussawr left home only to buy food. As they had no telephone in their new house, he was afraid to leave his family alone. He would take his wife and five children to be with relatives while he waited in the growing food lines.

“The army began to spread out and block streets. . . . They began to search houses. I started to fear for my honor and my wife’s. I was living in horror,” Moussawr said.

He decided to leave. He and his wife, Zahra, gathered the family’s clothes, passports, birth certificates and school documents. They locked the house, piled into the car and took off in a caravan of 23 automobiles toward Saudi Arabia.

Iraqi soldiers had the border crossings barricaded so they drove through the desert. The trip was just 2 1/2 hours, but only 11 of the cars made it. Some had turned back in fear as soldiers shot at them; others got stuck in the sand.

From Saudi Arabia, the family made its way first to the United Arab Emirates and then to Egypt, where they found Zahra’s sisters and families in Cairo.

Now, the Moussawr family lives in one room of the Europa Hotel, which is filled with Kuwaiti exiles. In the lobby, hand-painted posters protest the invasion. A newspaper tacked to a wall lists those who have fled to Saudi Arabia; men and women scan it anxiously.

Moussawr, a medical clinic administrator, has almost no money. The Kuwaiti Embassy is covering his hotel expenses and will pay for him to rent a modest apartment, at least for now. The Egyptian government has said that Kuwaiti children may enroll in school.

“I never imagined I could be in exile,” Moussawr said, rolling his worry beads between a thumb and forefinger. “We can’t sleep. . . . No matter how well we are treated here, it’s never like home.”