Kuwaitis Adapt to Smoky Skies, Permanent Grime : Environment: ‘I don’t do anything except cleaning,’ one says. But few worry about health effects of oil fires.

Drive a dirty car into a dusty, vacant lot on the outskirts of this town, and grimy young men and boys run up and begin smearing it with diesel fuel.

It wrecks the wax job, but diesel fuel and elbow grease are the only things that will cut the oily scum that drizzles down from smoky desert skies and sticks like Krazy Glue.

Take a white cotton robe to an Indian-run laundry, and they must first dry-clean it to remove the tiny, oil-brown flecks. Then, they launder it to banish the smell of dry-cleaning solvents. It costs about $2.50--nearly double the prewar price--but a home washing machine is no match for smog spots.

Kuwait’s air quality is slowly improving as 600 oil-well fires, touched off during the Persian Gulf War, are gradually extinguished--167 were quenched as of Thursday. But Kuwaiti women whose Third World servants fled during the Iraqi invasion must still scrub their tiled courtyards with kerosene.

“I don’t do anything except cleaning, cleaning, cleaning,” said Bedria Khalaf, a research assistant. “Before, we never had to do this work.”

When the winds blow down from the north, skies are blue, and men take their sons to fish on beaches that have been recently cleared of mines. But more often, sandstorms whiten the horizon and add a layer of dust to the film of soot that has grayed this city of white cement buildings.

On Thursday, the blackest day in more than a month, the wind stood still. By 1 p.m., the sky was a dark and grubby blanket. By 3 p.m., oily clouds hung low over the city like an angry thunderstorm about to break. Street lights were lit by 4:30 p.m., and behind the smoke, the sun looked like a sullen harvest moon.

Evening brought no relief. Starry skies are enduring casualties of the Gulf War.

Kuwaitis know that the black stuff--a mixture of smoke and ash from blazing wells, and fine oil droplets from gushing ones--is settling not only on their houses, cars and clothing but also in their lungs.

But few express concern. Even on the blackest days, almost no one wears a protective face mask. Despite Thursday’s threatening skies, the streets were jammed with shoppers stocking up on food and gifts on the eve of Eid al Adha, a major Islamic holiday. Despite the smog, they had brought infants and small children along.

“I kept sneezing all day,” complained Wafa Hussain, 24. “It’s very bad. It’s so dirty, so ugly.”

But the dark days come less often now, she said, and Kuwaitis trying to rebuild their lives have little time to worry about their health. “Nobody is thinking about it,” she said.

Workers at the makeshift carwash earlier this week said they first tried cleaning the cars with gasoline but found diesel worked better. They said the fuel stings and peels their hands but shrugged when asked about their lungs.

“I am used to it now,” said one man.

A 21-year-old customer named Abdullah was equally nonchalant.

“Since it didn’t affect me in the beginning, it won’t have any effect later on,” he said.

He sat in a frayed, plastic lawn chair shaded by an umbrella, smoking cigarettes and watching the laborers--Palestinian, Indian, Bangladeshi and stateless Arabs who cannot find steady work in postwar Kuwait--sudsing the diesel fuel from his Chevrolet Caprice.

Until Iraq invaded Kuwait last Aug. 2, Abdullah said, his Indian maid washed the car every morning or he took it to an automatic car wash, which he said did a better job. But now, he said, car-wash prices have doubled, to between $16.50 and $20, and the lines are too long.

Another customer, Salem Najim Abdullah, 27, said the smog doesn’t bother him, but his children’s noses are running black.

“I have a little brother who can’t breathe properly because of the smog,” he said, “He is just weak. . . . The older people can stand it but not the babies.”

Even smog has its consolations, however; many Kuwaitis say the weather has been cooler than usual because the smoke is choking the fierce summer sun.

“The smoke is covering the sun’s rays, which lowers the temperature a bit,” said Kuwait’s leading weatherman, Mohammed Saleh Ojeri.

The 70-year-old astronomer has been publishing a book of dates--Kuwait’s answer to the Farmer’s Almanac--every year since 1939, and Kuwaitis insist his forecasts never err. Ojeri said there are as yet no scientific studies to confirm the urban folklore about the cooler weather. And he noted that last fall’s rains and this spring’s heat arrived later than usual, in a variation well within the norm for Gulf weather patterns.

In ordinary years, sandstorms can lower temperatures by up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, Ojeri said, and without further study, it is impossible to distinguish the effects of the smog from those of normal dust. He estimated that the smog would lower the temperatures by 7 degrees, at most.

“People’s judgment on the weather has been affected by the war,” he said.

But as they struggle each day to rebuild, some Kuwaitis see the smog as a bitter symbol of Iraqi destruction.

“Every time you go out there, you hate (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein,” said Mohammed Dashti, who was tortured by the Iraqis and lost six relatives during the occupation. “And I hate myself because he is still alive.

“Saddam Hussein changed even the weather,” he said.