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.
NOTESAl-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 VioletDickson’s Fascinating Life in Kuwait from 1929 to 1990” given on November 8, 2007 in Surra, Kuwait.
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