Kuwait Times

Published Date: September 26, 2008
By Hussain Al-Qatari, Staff writer

"Everyone thinks that I can pass HIV to them through the air," says Yousif, a young man in Kuwait who has AIDS. "They can't understand that you can have HIV but still be alive and function normally. No. That just doesn't make sense to them. And they have to inform your workplace and have it written in your medical record: 'You have AIDS. You are dying. You are a promiscuous bed-hopping cheap person who is infected to prove to the rest of humans that God is fair'," he said bitterly. "I swear, I'm used to this reaction. I'm immune to it."

"I just wish that they would understand for once that it could have been anyone dear to them," he continued. "Just because I have it and they don't, doesn't mean that they don't f*** around. It means they were lucky enough not to get it."

While his peers are dating and getting engaged and married, Yousif says he is cursed to be alone for the rest of his life. "It's impossible to find people who are understanding. Not even my own family are understanding of this, and I'm their own flesh and blood. Why would total strangers understand?"

The only reason why people get close to him - when they do - he says, is curiosity. "They always want to know: who gave it to you? Did you confront them? Was it in Kuwait? and when I tell them I don't know, I don't remember, they look at me as if I should be ashamed of what I said. They think: 'Wow, what a slut! He must have slept with thousands of people to lose count and not know who gave him the virus!' but honestly, I don't know. I have no idea."

"Of course my family were the worst to deal with this. I told my sister and older brother and my mother about it. We decided that my father is too old for such a shock - he's suffered several strokes before. It happened to be at a time when my mother was nagging me to get married, and I finally told her and my sister that I have HIV. That's when they stopped nagging. They stopped talking to me altogether, actually."

The medical treatment is quite outstanding by Kuwaiti standards. He gets his supply of medication once every three months, he says. The doctors are very cooperative and professional, and they treat him with complete privacy.

The situation is quite different at work, though. "I had a problem at work when my supervisors found out that I had HIV and had to move to another department. I couldn't stand their judgmental stares. The impact of the shock was strong. I felt paranoid being around people. Whenever I try to forget that my own death clock is ticking inside of me, something about people around me had to remind me of it." he said.

So now he's secluded from almost everyone he knows. "Only two of my friends are in touch with me. The rest totally changed when they found out. And my colleagues in the new department don't know anything about my personal life and I intend to keep things that way," said Yousif.

Yousif now awaits his own death sentence. He has no idea when he is going to 'go,' but it wouldn't make a difference to him at this point, he says. He is very exhausted from thinking. He is surrendered to his 'fate,' he says.

A society like ours might find it difficult to deal with a disease like AIDS, what with the wholly negative reputation it entails. Not only is talk about the topic muted in society, but discussing it is very low-key even on a larger scale. For instance, no official statistics on HIV infections in Kuwait were submitted to the website of the World Health Organization, even though it's a United Nations organization and should have official documentation of all countries' HIV figures. Eventually, though, light must be shed on this topic and other taboo topics.

Victims of this disease exist here in Kuwait, after all. The country is not as unadulterated as we pretend to believe. These people live among us. They could be total strangers of no significance. They could be classmates, colleagues, clients, neighbors. But they live among us. They could affect us. They could be us.