"We went to the British Embassy for an induction course in case of a chemical attack. They gave us gas masks and told us to prepare a seal-proof room in the house."
Pushpa is 51 years old. She lived in Dubai for a period in her life, it was here she met her husband Kevin who had travelled to the country on a months holiday. The couple left the Middle Eastin April 1995 and spent 18 months in South West France. Pushpa and Kevin now live in the Potteries with their 12 year old son, Ryan.
I have lived in 6 countries and travelled widely.This does widen your horizons and allows you to accept every other human being as equal.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Inside Lives experience.
In August 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, I was living in Qatar with my husband, Kevin. We'd been married for 4 years and were trying for a baby.
We couldn't believe that this could happen in this day and age with the whole world watching! But it had and we had to prepare for the Gulf War. We went to the British Embassy for an induction course in case of a chemical attack. They gave us gas masks and told us to prepare a seal-proof room in the house. Every window in the room had to be sealed off with thick plastic and masking tape. Kevin slipped in some beers, a bottle of cognac and his diving knife into the coolbox full of canned food and drinks. Bless him he had our best interests at heart! We were told that if birds fell out of the sky it would warn us of a chemical attack. But there were no birds in our concrete garden. The windows of our house would rattle and shake with the sounds of fighter jets taking off from the airport nearby. We were lucky if we got three hours sleep a night. Gas masks were precious--other ex-pats and the local Qatari people didn't have them. Twenty-three engineers at the company where I worked had been taken hostage. Scud missiles had also been fired on Qatar and we were terrified. Then the war was over and life returned to normal. Shortly afterwards I went for a routine blood test, only to find that in the midst of all that terror and fear, Kevin and I had conceived our first child. | 
