New York's legendary children of war, Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid Al Gharaballi are interviewed in issue number 16 of Bidoun, on newsstands now. They discuss their memories of the Iraqi occupation of their native Kuwait and how, as children, their adaptive imaginations saw them through the harsh reality of air strikes, checkpoints, and food rationing.

Khalid: No, we could go out, except when they told us not to. I don't know about Salwa, where she was staying, but Keifan, where my grandma's house was, there was a lot of resistance stuff going on, so it was this really crazy area. At the same time there were a lot of Iraqis, people who had been living in Kuwait for a while, so you didn't know where they stood. Like the kid who tricked me into giving him all my toys.

Fatima: Wait...

Bidoun: What sort of toys are we talking about?

Khalid: I had, like, a lot of Thundercats things, you know. I had the castle and the car, and all the things...

Fatima: Accoutrements...

Khalid: And I was just so sheltered. I was this clueless space cadet, you know? Because of the war, everything was different. I was taking out the garbage, all the maids were gone. Suddenly I was spending a lot of time outside, playing with kids who weren't my cousins. It was really, like, sassiness lessons. Like playing with those Iraqi kids, who were these hustlers. I mean, not literally, but they were just street smart. They really fooled me.

Bidoun: How did they do it?

Khalid: They would say stuff like, I don't have any toys, we're poor. So I got this huge garbage bag and put all my toys in it and gave it to this one boy. And then my mom screamed at me. Those kids had a motorcycle and all this stuff. I had just never had any interactions with people like that, you know?

Fatima: So what I was saying before about being into jinn and spirits and stuff...there were, like, twenty kids between the ages of five and fourteen at the hotel with us, part of the convoy from Kuwait. And me and this boy who was my accomplice tricked all the kids into believing that there was this evil old lady who was an evil spirit that was haunting the garden of the Al-Rashid. And she had a beard—er, no, it was an old man—he had a beard made of dates. So I covered myself in a white sheet, and I had this date beard, and I went inside this enclave. We told the kids that if you walked around that garden at this certain hour in the afternoon, at dusk, you know, you might see him.

Bidoun: Were you wearing a beard full of dates?

Fatima: I was. I took a sheet from the hotel, and then I found these dates and I stuck them to my face, and I just covered my face with the sheet, the dates kind of haphazardly sticking out of the sheet.

Bidoun: How long did you succeed in haunting the other kids?
Fatima: I think... one day? I can't keep secrets.