GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ COULD’T HAVE CREATED BETTER CHARACTERS!! THE STORY OF COL. H.R.P. DICKSON AND HIS WIFE VIOLET IN KUWAIT
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ COULD’T HAVE CREATED BETTER CHARACTERS!! THE STORY OF COL. H.R.P. DICKSON AND HIS WIFE VIOLET IN KUWAIT
By Kevin Stoda, in Hawally, Kuwait
On the evening of November 8th at the AWARE CENTER in Surrah, Kuwait, author Claudia Farkas Al-Rashoud gave a presentation on “Dame Violet Dickson’s Fascinating Life in Kuwait from 1929 to 1990”.
Concerning Dame Dickson and her husband, Col. H.P.R. Dickson, possibly no other pair of foreign born figures—including Saddam Hussain and George Herbert Walker Bush—have had a greater influence on Kuwaitis.
In terms of fondness towards westerners, almost no one competes with the Dickson family in Kuwaiti memory of the 20th Century.
The only possible exception to this general statement are the recognized influences of (1) some of the early British Oil Company settlers, who built the town of Ahmady, and (2) various pre-oil boom-era Christian missionary nurses and doctors, who founded Kuwait’s first hospitals.
1929: VIOLET DICKSON ARRIVES
Col. Dickson was sent as the British Agent for the Crown to the Gulf region in the late 1920s. Later he worked more directly with the Kuwait and British oil companies until his death in 1959.
Claudia Farkas Al-Rashoud, who has published a variety of books on Dame Violet and other heroes in 20th century Kuwait history, has noted of Violet Dickson’s arrival:
“When she and her family came here in 1929, Kuwait’s desert was a wild and mysterious place, and Bedouins and townspeople alike suffered from famine, disease, plagues of locust, and other disasters. She experienced not only the age of ancient Bedouin traditions but also the transition into an era of affluence, and ultimately, with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a period of horror.”
The Dicksons gave both their children Arabic names, Saud and Zahra, enabling their family to further integrate themselves more fully into the Kuwaiti society as years went by. This is because in traditional Arab circles, the mothers and fathers are recognized publicly by the name of their eldest son. For this reason, early on Violet Dickson was known in Kuwait by Bedouins and city dwellers alike as: “Umm Saud”—Mother of Saud.
Al-Rashoud, as author of the pictorial biography DAME VIOLET DICKSON, shared numerous important vignettes on the lives of the Dickson family in Kuwait.
For example, as a life-long botanist, Violet produced a book on the Kuwaiti desert plants and flowers. In doing a lifetime of research, Dickson spent a great amount of time with bedouins and other Kuwaitis in the desert collecting with her children (and with the help of locals) all kinds of plants and creatures native to the region—hedgehogs, lizards, jerboas, and grasshoppers.
Violet Dickson appeared to love animals so much that Bedouins and other Arabs often donated animals of all sizes and shapes to her and the other Dickson family members. For example, the Saudi Arabian King Abdul al-Aziz donated an Arabian Oryx to have as a pet. Occasionally, on long journeys back to England, Violet Dickson would take some of these animals, reptiles and samples of plants to donate to zoos or museums.
At least one of plant discovered in the desert was eventually named after Dame Violet Dickson herself.
Most importantly, Al-Rashoud shared how life was for Mrs. Dickson in the earliest days of her 60-plus year stay in Kuwait.
THE EARLY DAYS
When the Dicksons arrived at their first residence in Kuwait, they found it infested with vermin.
However, in reminiscence of Oakly Annie and the women who actually helped their husbands conquer the American West and prairies in the 19th century, Dame Dickson simply approached the chore of eradicating the creatures using both wits and skill.
Violet waited till there was a full-moon lit night. On that bright night, she lay a white sheet on the ground outside of the home. In the sheet, Dame Dickson placed barley corn.
Then she grabbed her shot-gun (and rounds of shot) and patiently waited for the rats to approach the sheet with the barley.
The white sheet enabled Violet to make out the creatures quite easily under the night sky. She eventually killed off all of the unwanted house guests by early the next morning.
Al-Rashed continued, “Dame Violet was actually quite a respectable hunter and won shooting contests with sheikhs”. That is, once they had agreed on occasion to allow her and her husband to join them on a hunt or in a shooting match.
In his recent article “Umm Saud: Forever a Part of Kuwait”, Ahmad Al-Khaled wrote: “One aspect of Dame Violet’s life which seems to have enamored her to the Kuwait people was the fact that even after her husband died in 1959, she continued to live in the white plastered house on the Gulf for over 30 years. She came to Kuwait as a wife, but she stayed on here as a member of her community/family.”
Dame Dickson loved the hospitality of the desert Bedouins so much that she once stated, “I think Bedu hospitality must be a response like ships meeting at sea.” These sort of warm words and her eventual command of local Arab dialects enabled both Mr. and Mrs. Dickson to endear themselves to the peoples of Kuwait from their earliest days here.
In short, Al-Rashed emphasized, the Dicksons treated people with equal respect, regardless of their origins. They respected the Kuwaitis, Beduin, and other neighboring peoples in both tone and in deed.
For all these reasons, one other special Kuwaiti name of endearment attributed to the elderly British women--who had observed Kuwait’s transformed from a small pearling and trading village on the Persian Gulf to a major modern oil power--, was the name “Hajjiya”.
This is unusual term of endearment for any Muslim to give a Christian Westerner because a “Hajjiya” is typically used only to denote a woman who has performed the Haj, i.e. a woman who has traveled to Mecca and faithfully performed her Muslim duties. The name “Hajjiya” also thus implies a great reverence for Umm Saud.
TRUE STORY THAT OUTDOES GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
For this historian (and lover of literature), the best narration of the evening of November 8th by Mrs. Al-Rashed at the AWARE CENTER about the Dickson family and Kuwait was the tale of Mr. Dickson’s famous Desert Tree Dream.
It is a magical tale retold now over several generations here in the Gulf.
Mrs. Dickson was aware that many of her husband’s dreams tended to portend good fortune for Kuwaitis and her family, so when her spouse awoke her excitedly one night. She obliged in getting up and immediately writing down in great detail the Colonel’s detailed dream..
This dream occurred in 1937. In it, the Colonel dreamt of a bungalow in the desert with a single sidr (cedar) tree next to the structure. In his dream, he and his wife were living out in the middle of that desert in the isolated bungalow. As far as the eye could see, there was no other large plant life.
As the dream proceeded a dust storm came and threw sand and dust all over the bungalow—piling it up next to the windows. When Mr. Dickson and his wife looked out early the next morning, they saw that the dust storm had created a hole straight down many meters into the sand next to the lone standing Sidr tree.
At the bottom of the deep hole was some sort of stone table. On the masonry was a woman’s mummified body.
Later, in his classic book, THE ARAB OF THE DESERT, Col. Dickson recounted his thoughts in the dream, “Clearly the storm had unearthed an ancient tomb.”
The Colonel soon called some servants to rebury the body. However, moments later, the “gruesome” body suddenly came alive!
The now-revived women said that after a thousand years sleep she was hungry, wanted to wash up, and needed a warm set of clothes.
Al-Rashoud continues, “The Dicksons allowed the amazing being into the home to use the bathroom and soap.”
“At that moment Colonel Dickson saw a crowd of angry men with staves and swords bearing down on them, led by an old white-bearded man with a long knife in his hand.”
The mob wanted to grab the women, throw her back in the ground, and bury her alive.
In the ensuing struggle, Col. Dickson kills the old man with the knife.
However, as he led the woman back into the bungalow, Col. Dickson suddenly awoke from his dream.
The very next morning, after writing down all details of the dream in great detail, Mr. and Mrs. Dickson drove into the desert to find one Umm Mubarak, who was well known in the Kuwaiti community for interpreting dreams.
Umm Mubarak, upon hearing the details of the dream, related the following news and recommendations:
First, she announce, the sidr tree is one that is situated in the Burghan hills. It was an amazing plant--having grown for ages in the middle of nowhere.
Second, the dream interpreter continued, “the woman” who was dug up by the sandstorm by the tree represented “oil”.
Third, the men who wanted to put that woman back into the sand from which see came represent those factions in Kuwait who don’t want the Kuwaiti government, the British or any others drilling for oil in Kuwait.
Fourth, and most importantly, Umm Mubarek said to tell the leaders of the Kuwait Oil Company to stop looking for and drilling for oil in Bahrah. The interpreter explained, move the drilling rigs to the Burghan area where the Sidr tree is located. “Underneath you will find more oil than you will ever need.”
Needless to say, within a few months drilling was, indeed, moved to the Burghan area and early in 1938, the famous Burgan Oil Well #1 was discovered: “This oil was under such pressure and in such quantity it spurted out . . . . It was a gusher.”
That Burgan Oil Well #1 made not only history, but it transformed Kuwait and its people’s history.
Soon the impoverished peoples of Kuwait would be able to have one of the most enviable social welfare systems on the planet.
In short, our story teller, Al-Rashoud, claimed, “Col. Dickson’s dream is considered to be the wealthiest dream in history.”
MEMORIUM
It is claimed by the Dickson children, i.e. Saud and Zahra, and the community of Kuwait that until the death of Col. Dickson in 1959, Violet was observed as somewhat demur and thus played second fiddle to her outspoken and boisterous husband.
However, upon the Colonel’s passing she really blossomed into her own.
In subsequent decades, Dame Dickson continued to go to both men’s and women’s socials, teas, and meetings each month. She also continued to camp in the desert with Bedouin. Finally, she continued to take her camel out for the ride in the morning—sometimes meeting up with the emir who also did so up until the 1960s. (Currently, there are no camels within the city limits of Kuwait.)
Mrs. Dickson also published her book: Forty Years in Kuwait.
In it, she was able to share of a world that had long died out or was dying all around her—including the passing of the age of pearling trade and pearling ships, which once landed near her house on the corniche.
In her writing, Dickson shared of how she could once enjoy the pearling sailors singing their songs late into the night—long before TV, movies, and the internet arrived in Kuwait for entertainment.
Violet Dickson had planned to eventually die and be buried in Kuwait.
Alas, Dame Violet Dickson was forced as an invalid and aging women to flee Kuwait in September 1990—one month after Iraqi forces had marched into Kuwait and had taken over the palaces down the street from her abode by the sea. She died in he UK in January of 1991.
After listening to the presentation at the AWARE CENTER on Dame Dickson, both young Kuwaitis and Westerners are able to imagine an alternative future where westerners and Gulf Arabs live side-by-side in peace and with respect for each other.
Dame Dickson and her husband served as witnesses to how tolerance, love and respect can be exchanged among peoples of all backgrounds from East or West.
Hopefully, Gulf peoples and the manynon-Arabs around the globe will be able to give this sort of coexistence a a try some day—once again—in the future.
The Dickson house still stands on Gulf Road.
Go visit it now, as you can still occasionally are able to talk to or meet some of the Kuwaiti neighbors and friends, who once knew Dame Violet Dickson and her family so well.
NOTES
Al-Khaled, Ahmed, “Umm Saud: Forever a Part of Kuwait”, FRIDAY TIMES,
Nov. 8, 2007, p. 10.
Al-Rashoud, Claudia Farkas, DAME VIOLET DICKSON, (2nd. Ed) Kuwait:
Farkas-Al-Rashoud Books, 2007
Al-Rashoud, Claudia Farkas in AWARE CENTER presentation on “Dame Violet Dickson’s Fascinating Life in Kuwait from 1929 to 1990” given on
November 8, 2007 in Surra, Kuwait.
By Kevin Stoda, in Hawally, Kuwait
On the evening of November 8th at the AWARE CENTER in Surrah, Kuwait, author Claudia Farkas Al-Rashoud gave a presentation on “Dame Violet Dickson’s Fascinating Life in Kuwait from 1929 to 1990”.
Concerning Dame Dickson and her husband, Col. H.P.R. Dickson, possibly no other pair of foreign born figures—including Saddam Hussain and George Herbert Walker Bush—have had a greater influence on Kuwaitis.
In terms of fondness towards westerners, almost no one competes with the Dickson family in Kuwaiti memory of the 20th Century.
The only possible exception to this general statement are the recognized influences of (1) some of the early British Oil Company settlers, who built the town of Ahmady, and (2) various pre-oil boom-era Christian missionary nurses and doctors, who founded Kuwait’s first hospitals.
1929: VIOLET DICKSON ARRIVES
Col. Dickson was sent as the British Agent for the Crown to the Gulf region in the late 1920s. Later he worked more directly with the Kuwait and British oil companies until his death in 1959.
Claudia Farkas Al-Rashoud, who has published a variety of books on Dame Violet and other heroes in 20th century Kuwait history, has noted of Violet Dickson’s arrival:
“When she and her family came here in 1929, Kuwait’s desert was a wild and mysterious place, and Bedouins and townspeople alike suffered from famine, disease, plagues of locust, and other disasters. She experienced not only the age of ancient Bedouin traditions but also the transition into an era of affluence, and ultimately, with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a period of horror.”
The Dicksons gave both their children Arabic names, Saud and Zahra, enabling their family to further integrate themselves more fully into the Kuwaiti society as years went by. This is because in traditional Arab circles, the mothers and fathers are recognized publicly by the name of their eldest son. For this reason, early on Violet Dickson was known in Kuwait by Bedouins and city dwellers alike as: “Umm Saud”—Mother of Saud.
Al-Rashoud, as author of the pictorial biography DAME VIOLET DICKSON, shared numerous important vignettes on the lives of the Dickson family in Kuwait.
For example, as a life-long botanist, Violet produced a book on the Kuwaiti desert plants and flowers. In doing a lifetime of research, Dickson spent a great amount of time with bedouins and other Kuwaitis in the desert collecting with her children (and with the help of locals) all kinds of plants and creatures native to the region—hedgehogs, lizards, jerboas, and grasshoppers.
Violet Dickson appeared to love animals so much that Bedouins and other Arabs often donated animals of all sizes and shapes to her and the other Dickson family members. For example, the Saudi Arabian King Abdul al-Aziz donated an Arabian Oryx to have as a pet. Occasionally, on long journeys back to England, Violet Dickson would take some of these animals, reptiles and samples of plants to donate to zoos or museums.
At least one of plant discovered in the desert was eventually named after Dame Violet Dickson herself.
Most importantly, Al-Rashoud shared how life was for Mrs. Dickson in the earliest days of her 60-plus year stay in Kuwait.
THE EARLY DAYS
When the Dicksons arrived at their first residence in Kuwait, they found it infested with vermin.
However, in reminiscence of Oakly Annie and the women who actually helped their husbands conquer the American West and prairies in the 19th century, Dame Dickson simply approached the chore of eradicating the creatures using both wits and skill.
Violet waited till there was a full-moon lit night. On that bright night, she lay a white sheet on the ground outside of the home. In the sheet, Dame Dickson placed barley corn.
Then she grabbed her shot-gun (and rounds of shot) and patiently waited for the rats to approach the sheet with the barley.
The white sheet enabled Violet to make out the creatures quite easily under the night sky. She eventually killed off all of the unwanted house guests by early the next morning.
Al-Rashed continued, “Dame Violet was actually quite a respectable hunter and won shooting contests with sheikhs”. That is, once they had agreed on occasion to allow her and her husband to join them on a hunt or in a shooting match.
In his recent article “Umm Saud: Forever a Part of Kuwait”, Ahmad Al-Khaled wrote: “One aspect of Dame Violet’s life which seems to have enamored her to the Kuwait people was the fact that even after her husband died in 1959, she continued to live in the white plastered house on the Gulf for over 30 years. She came to Kuwait as a wife, but she stayed on here as a member of her community/family.”
Dame Dickson loved the hospitality of the desert Bedouins so much that she once stated, “I think Bedu hospitality must be a response like ships meeting at sea.” These sort of warm words and her eventual command of local Arab dialects enabled both Mr. and Mrs. Dickson to endear themselves to the peoples of Kuwait from their earliest days here.
In short, Al-Rashed emphasized, the Dicksons treated people with equal respect, regardless of their origins. They respected the Kuwaitis, Beduin, and other neighboring peoples in both tone and in deed.
For all these reasons, one other special Kuwaiti name of endearment attributed to the elderly British women--who had observed Kuwait’s transformed from a small pearling and trading village on the Persian Gulf to a major modern oil power--, was the name “Hajjiya”.
This is unusual term of endearment for any Muslim to give a Christian Westerner because a “Hajjiya” is typically used only to denote a woman who has performed the Haj, i.e. a woman who has traveled to Mecca and faithfully performed her Muslim duties. The name “Hajjiya” also thus implies a great reverence for Umm Saud.
TRUE STORY THAT OUTDOES GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
For this historian (and lover of literature), the best narration of the evening of November 8th by Mrs. Al-Rashed at the AWARE CENTER about the Dickson family and Kuwait was the tale of Mr. Dickson’s famous Desert Tree Dream.
It is a magical tale retold now over several generations here in the Gulf.
Mrs. Dickson was aware that many of her husband’s dreams tended to portend good fortune for Kuwaitis and her family, so when her spouse awoke her excitedly one night. She obliged in getting up and immediately writing down in great detail the Colonel’s detailed dream..
This dream occurred in 1937. In it, the Colonel dreamt of a bungalow in the desert with a single sidr (cedar) tree next to the structure. In his dream, he and his wife were living out in the middle of that desert in the isolated bungalow. As far as the eye could see, there was no other large plant life.
As the dream proceeded a dust storm came and threw sand and dust all over the bungalow—piling it up next to the windows. When Mr. Dickson and his wife looked out early the next morning, they saw that the dust storm had created a hole straight down many meters into the sand next to the lone standing Sidr tree.
At the bottom of the deep hole was some sort of stone table. On the masonry was a woman’s mummified body.
Later, in his classic book, THE ARAB OF THE DESERT, Col. Dickson recounted his thoughts in the dream, “Clearly the storm had unearthed an ancient tomb.”
The Colonel soon called some servants to rebury the body. However, moments later, the “gruesome” body suddenly came alive!
The now-revived women said that after a thousand years sleep she was hungry, wanted to wash up, and needed a warm set of clothes.
Al-Rashoud continues, “The Dicksons allowed the amazing being into the home to use the bathroom and soap.”
“At that moment Colonel Dickson saw a crowd of angry men with staves and swords bearing down on them, led by an old white-bearded man with a long knife in his hand.”
The mob wanted to grab the women, throw her back in the ground, and bury her alive.
In the ensuing struggle, Col. Dickson kills the old man with the knife.
However, as he led the woman back into the bungalow, Col. Dickson suddenly awoke from his dream.
The very next morning, after writing down all details of the dream in great detail, Mr. and Mrs. Dickson drove into the desert to find one Umm Mubarak, who was well known in the Kuwaiti community for interpreting dreams.
Umm Mubarak, upon hearing the details of the dream, related the following news and recommendations:
First, she announce, the sidr tree is one that is situated in the Burghan hills. It was an amazing plant--having grown for ages in the middle of nowhere.
Second, the dream interpreter continued, “the woman” who was dug up by the sandstorm by the tree represented “oil”.
Third, the men who wanted to put that woman back into the sand from which see came represent those factions in Kuwait who don’t want the Kuwaiti government, the British or any others drilling for oil in Kuwait.
Fourth, and most importantly, Umm Mubarek said to tell the leaders of the Kuwait Oil Company to stop looking for and drilling for oil in Bahrah. The interpreter explained, move the drilling rigs to the Burghan area where the Sidr tree is located. “Underneath you will find more oil than you will ever need.”
Needless to say, within a few months drilling was, indeed, moved to the Burghan area and early in 1938, the famous Burgan Oil Well #1 was discovered: “This oil was under such pressure and in such quantity it spurted out . . . . It was a gusher.”
That Burgan Oil Well #1 made not only history, but it transformed Kuwait and its people’s history.
Soon the impoverished peoples of Kuwait would be able to have one of the most enviable social welfare systems on the planet.
In short, our story teller, Al-Rashoud, claimed, “Col. Dickson’s dream is considered to be the wealthiest dream in history.”
MEMORIUM
It is claimed by the Dickson children, i.e. Saud and Zahra, and the community of Kuwait that until the death of Col. Dickson in 1959, Violet was observed as somewhat demur and thus played second fiddle to her outspoken and boisterous husband.
However, upon the Colonel’s passing she really blossomed into her own.
In subsequent decades, Dame Dickson continued to go to both men’s and women’s socials, teas, and meetings each month. She also continued to camp in the desert with Bedouin. Finally, she continued to take her camel out for the ride in the morning—sometimes meeting up with the emir who also did so up until the 1960s. (Currently, there are no camels within the city limits of Kuwait.)
Mrs. Dickson also published her book: Forty Years in Kuwait.
In it, she was able to share of a world that had long died out or was dying all around her—including the passing of the age of pearling trade and pearling ships, which once landed near her house on the corniche.
In her writing, Dickson shared of how she could once enjoy the pearling sailors singing their songs late into the night—long before TV, movies, and the internet arrived in Kuwait for entertainment.
Violet Dickson had planned to eventually die and be buried in Kuwait.
Alas, Dame Violet Dickson was forced as an invalid and aging women to flee Kuwait in September 1990—one month after Iraqi forces had marched into Kuwait and had taken over the palaces down the street from her abode by the sea. She died in he UK in January of 1991.
After listening to the presentation at the AWARE CENTER on Dame Dickson, both young Kuwaitis and Westerners are able to imagine an alternative future where westerners and Gulf Arabs live side-by-side in peace and with respect for each other.
Dame Dickson and her husband served as witnesses to how tolerance, love and respect can be exchanged among peoples of all backgrounds from East or West.
Hopefully, Gulf peoples and the manynon-Arabs around the globe will be able to give this sort of coexistence a a try some day—once again—in the future.
The Dickson house still stands on Gulf Road.
Go visit it now, as you can still occasionally are able to talk to or meet some of the Kuwaiti neighbors and friends, who once knew Dame Violet Dickson and her family so well.
NOTES
Al-Khaled, Ahmed, “Umm Saud: Forever a Part of Kuwait”, FRIDAY TIMES,
Nov. 8, 2007, p. 10.
Al-Rashoud, Claudia Farkas, DAME VIOLET DICKSON, (2nd. Ed) Kuwait:
Farkas-Al-Rashoud Books, 2007
Al-Rashoud, Claudia Farkas in AWARE CENTER presentation on “Dame Violet Dickson’s Fascinating Life in Kuwait from 1929 to 1990” given on
November 8, 2007 in Surra, Kuwait.
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