The Stories from the collection Al-'araq al-aswad (The Black Sweat), as a result of the varied theme matter create at the same time their own composition as well as a compendium of knowledge about Kuwait and Kuwaitis, an image of social life from the period preceding the oil boom. As the author herself writes and recalls she wanted in the collection to present the customs, way of life, work and belief in superstitions. Hence each short story deals with a different matter or subject. Thanks to which these short stories build up in fragments, almost in a documentary way, a reconstruction of the past which has gone yet remains present, below the surface, within the mentality of contemporary Kuwaiti society. So what is the image presented to us? It is the already generally well-known profile of a society varied materially and ethnically, where the fate of children and their future is basically foreseen from the moment they are born. If someone was born into a shopkeeper's family then the most fantastic thing that fate could deliver him is either the inheritance of the family fortune, or an attempt to organise his own, although a modest stall with sweets, cakes, musk etc. Attempts to transcend one's social position are on the whole condemned to failure. We can see this in the short story Ad-dumya (The Doll), where we are witnesses to the maturing of childish consciousness, which in the enthusiasm for play and friendship slowly starts to discern the cruel details concerning the disproportion of the position of its friend 'Abd Allah.