Chula Vista Woman Fears for Her Kuwaiti Husband

It would be too much to hope for, Claudia Ledesma says, to catch a glimpse of her husband’s face among the throngs of beaming Kuwaitis shown on television, celebrating the liberation of their homeland.

And it’s too much to fear, she says, that her Kuwaiti husband--a political and social commentator for a daily newspaper there--may now be in Baghdad, taken as human bounty by fleeing Iraqi soldiers.

But that’s the mix of emotions confronting Ledesma these days as she huddles with the couple’s four young sons in Chula Vista.

“I am very happy for the liberation of Kuwait,” she said Thursday. “And I am very hopeful that my husband is safe. But I still don’t discard the possibility that maybe he’s one of the ones who were taken” by the retreating Iraqi troops.

“I can’t be too naive,” she said.

Ledesma, 27, said her husband, whom she would only partly identify as Ahmad Mohamad because she is so fearful for his safety, was a popular writer for a Kuwaiti City political newspaper--one that is read as well in London, Paris and, yes, Baghdad.

So, if Iraqi soldiers had happened across their family home, located roughly between the waterfront downtown and the international airport, and if they recognized who he was--a prominent journalist--they may well have considered him a fine prize.

Ledesma feels confident that he was not tortured or killed. It was his style, she said, to lay low, to not be troublesome, and he likely did not participate in any resistance fighting.

Still, he was proud to have remained behind as his country fell into enemy hands and suggested his distress with Kuwaiti men who left.

In a cassette audio tape that was smuggled by a family friend out of Kuwait, via Iraq, and delivered to Ledesma in Chula Vista, Mohamad said on Jan. 15:

“Please take care of yourself. I love you too much, really. I want to tell you something. I am not the one who leaves this country. I had chance many times to leave. I will not do this. I am Kuwaiti. I love Kuwait. I will stay.”

He promised to return to Chula Vista when the war was over, reunite with his family and return to his homeland, together.

That’s the last she’s heard of her 38-year-old husband of eight years, whom she met while the two were students in San Diego years earlier. The couple moved to Kuwait in 1984.

Ledesma and the boys were sent home by her husband Sept. 7, five weeks after Iraqis stormed the small country.

“I’ll stay here in my homeland and ride this out,” he told them. “But you must get out while you can, for the boys’ sake.” Twins had been born just days earlier--even as the bullets pinged off the sides of buildings while she was in labor.

Ledesma came here, to live with her Mexican parents, and gave up most hope of hearing from her husband until the war was resolved.

Despite reports of atrocities in Kuwait, Ledesma remained confident that her husband--and his family, who had banded together in the one house--were not meeting violence. “Even while I was there in August and early September, they never came to our house,” she said.

She watched the first television reports Tuesday from Kuwait City. She recognized the buildings and the highway. “They’re close to my house,” she said of the television news crew. “We used that highway a lot. Now it looks very dirty, like an old street. But it is a very good, very new highway.”

With every panning over Kuwaiti faces on the television screen, her eyes would search for a familiar one. But she recognized no one.

That’s OK, she said. “I wish, why can’t he be among them? But, there are thousands of people there, not just the ones we see on TV.”

She knows she is not alone in her wait.

“Half the population of Kuwait is outside. Families have been separated, like us. Part of them stayed there, the other part is all over the world.

“Imagine,” she said, “the anguish from all of us who are outside. I hope to hear by telephone, or by telegram or by mail, anything to let me know that he is safe.

“Then, I’ll be ready to celebrate. But not now.”