For 3,000 Kuwaitis Moved to U.S., It’s Been Tough, Too : Displaced persons: They are elated that their country is again free, yet frustrated that they cannot rejoin their families. And the living’s been hard.

Cindy Quabazard seems to have plenty of reason for cheer these days. Yet day after day, she keeps hearing bad news mixed with the good.

This week, it was word that at the end of May the Kuwaiti government may halt the assistance payments that have represented most of her family’s income since they were evacuated to the United States after Iraq’s invasion of their country.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if they cut it off,” said the American-born Quabazard, who is temporarily living with her husband and three children in Mill Valley, Calif. “A lot of us can’t survive on the money we brought with us.”

The dilemma illustrates the kind of life now led by many of the 3,000-odd Kuwaitis who were displaced to this country after the Iraqi takeover. Their country has been liberated, and most of their immediate families are safe. Yet the end of the Persian Gulf War has brought them anything but peace.

They are elated that Kuwait is again free, yet frustrated that most of them cannot yet rejoin the rest of their families and start rebuilding their lives. They are grateful that their government has offered financial aid, yet many are angry that it has seemed so incompetent in failing to provide adequate food, water or electricity back home.

Many are reluctant to return because they fear the health effects of the burning oil fields on their children. And many say that they are struggling with the psychological effects of their long ordeal.

“We prayed so long for Kuwait to be freed,” said Quabazard. But when it was, “we realized there was still a lot ahead of us.”

Many of the Kuwaitis now in the United States had American-born spouses and were eligible to be evacuated by the U.S. government after the Iraqi invasion. Others happened to be in the United States because of work or vacations.

Since last August, many have stayed closely in touch through a toll-free telephone number and a monthly newsletter, “Kuwaiting for News,” that kept them current on other Kuwaitis in the United States.

Six weeks after the Iraqi invasion, Cindy Quabazard, her two sons and daughter were evacuated by U.S. officials. Her husband, Fadel, later sneaked out of the country through Iran using fake identification papers.

The family still had a home in Marin County’s Mill Valley, but almost all their money remains in Kuwait. Their Kuwaiti bank accounts are still frozen.

As a result, “it’s now getting very hard,” said Quabazard, who is still hopeful that the Kuwaiti government will decide to continue the aid.

She may need it after May, because like many other Kuwaitis here, she believes that the pollution and breakdown in basic services may make it unwise to return home before fall.

For a family of two, the government has been providing monthly checks of $1,350 and larger sums for larger families. Last winter, the government threw in a clothing allowance, which came to $2,100 for the five Quabazards.

Although the government is allowing few to re-enter the country until basic services are restored, Fadel Quabazard hopes to return in a few weeks to help care for his mother, who has a heart problem, and his seven sisters. Cindy Quabazard has heard frightening tales of her in-laws’ life with little food, water or electricity.

“They’re just surviving,” she said.

All family members apparently survived the war, although one of her husband’s cousins is missing. But her 10-year-old son has been deeply worried that more of his cousins in Kuwait might be hurt.

“He’s sure that with all that fighting, one of them has to be dead,” Quabazard said.

The trials of Brenda Abdul Husain began last September, when her husband told her that he wanted to remain in Kuwait and send her and their three children to America. The American-born Husain, who was pregnant at the time, found the idea very hard to accept.

“I told him, ‘I can’t make it without you.’ ” She kept asking herself what was more important to her husband--his family or his country. “But I couldn’t say it out loud. I knew the answer.”

She soon had moved to a two-bedroom apartment in her home town of Binghamton, N.Y. But the experience took a toll.

She has been seeing a psychiatrist, and her 5-year-old child also has had counseling. A second child, 21 months old, begins crying whenever Husain leaves to go upstairs. Her children have suffered from insomnia and nightmares.

She’s eager to go back, but worried, too. The family home was destroyed by the Iraqis, who lived in it. And her eldest child has asthma that she fears will be aggravated by the heavy smoke from the oil well fires.

But Husain is hopeful that she and her children will feel better when her husband arrives for a long visit.

Lelani Marasie, who writes “Kuwaiting for News,” is grateful for the government’s efforts on behalf of those like her but is exasperated at their apparent lack of planning for the reconstruction.

“They had eight months to prepare, but they’re disorganized even in the best of times,” she said.

As tough as these lives have been, there are signs that many Kuwaiti nationals have had it easier in this country than many others displaced by the war, including the many Palestinians, Iranians and Egyptians.

Arleen Uerling, a long-time resident of Sonoma, Calif., was forced to leave her Palestinian husband behind in Kuwait last September as U.S. authorities flew her and her two children to San Francisco.

Uerling, 29, at first was greeted warmly by Americans, but the reception soon changed. Many in her small hometown seemed unhappy that she continued to wear the full-length garment that devout Muslim women use to cover most of their bodies.

At the beginning of March, Uerling and the two boys left for Alabama with some Kuwaiti friends.

“She’d been away from this country a long time, and she forgot what people here could be like,” said her mother. “She’s running scared.”