In The Salmiya Collection, Loomis celebrates the essence of everyday life in a little-known part of the world. With lucid prose and keen detail, these stories offer nuanced portraits tragicomic, bittersweet, and candid of ordinary Kuwaitis: expatriates and natives, students and professors, siblings, and lovers. In "Ancient Civilization 101," a young man suspects his girlfriend Mariam is unfaithful and, in a fury, shears her long hair. The confidence and boldness in Mariam that first attracted him is now seen as a threat. In "The Conference on Rights and Freedom," two young students invited...