Another Trip Nearly Over

Once again another trip over. I’m an Oman glutton. There are many reasons but none is a satisfactory explanation on its own. Someone guessed that I was in love with someone here but, no, honestly, nothing of the kind. It hadn’t even occurred to me. My heart is already spoken for.

I do fall in love with geography though—I fell in love with Vancouver, Canada, and New York too. I fell in love with Nepal. In many ways these places are welcoming not only because of what they were, but also what they were not. Vancouver was very much not California. So was Nepal and Nepal was also not America, not even the Western world, not anything I knew, not any point of reference, and it had so many wonderful things as well. New York was just great big strong arms welcoming me as I wandered in looking for somewhere to belong to.

Oman has a lot of the “not” about it. It’s not America, it’s not our consumer oriented society, a system I find infinitely depressing and unrewarding. It’s not our self-absorbtion, which sucks even the most “global” of us into it’s maw. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not……a whole lot of little things. What is it? Conversation, beauty, natural world, I’ve gone through it many times before. It’s not perfect—people in Oman are subject to traditions and rules they might not like, and they may put off, or try to get out of, but when you’re Omani, and your father decides it’s time to marry your cousin, then that’s what you’re going to do. If not, you face a great big avalanche of condemnation, and you will probably lose. The family, the village, the clan, the neighbors, everyone will look down on you for not doing your duty. No one will want to have anything to do with you and your life will be pretty much ruined unless you have built another life elsewhere, like in America. Our freedoms are not so much legislated—although we often think of them that way. Lots of places have freedom of the press, freedom of expression, etc. Our freedom comes from being an immigrant-fed, continually new and changing society, where you can be who you want. You can keep as much of your culture as you like—or reinvent yourself and no one will question you. No one cares who your family is, or what’s your caste, or your religion. The people who do care are isolated pockets, and it doesn’t matter in the greater sense of how society is run.

I remember once a Lebanese friend asked me what religion was listed on my passport, or my ID card. Having your family’s religion listed on your ID is something much of the world takes for granted but to Americans it seems incredible. Impossible for us to understand. In the US, you can be anything you want, and no one will care. If anyone condemns you, you can turn your back on them, and their condemnation will not follow you the way it would in places where everyone knows your family.

Another freedom we have is the freedom of financial strength. Omanis also have this, but I don’t know what traveling is like with an Omani passport, yet. But if your passport is say, Lebanese, or Mauritanian, or even Moroccan, you are limited in your visa choices. You will be seen as a security risk, someone who will overstay any visa granted. But an American passport can go almost anywhere, and the biggest problem we have is when other governments get worried that our security might be compromised, and not let us go to places everyone else can go, like crossing into Yemen from Oman.

So my adoration for Oman comes through that veil, that American veil. I have tried very hard to relax and shut up, and try to make my way through the society here, and I have a fabulous project in mind. But you can’t totally get rid of who you are, especially to go into a defined culture from the loose American one. Nor would I want to! I would have no identity in Omani culture—no family, and would have to marry someone and then live somewhat traditionally. There is just no way. But I am still trying to understand it and live in it, and it’s really fascinating and interesting and lovely. I can compare it to learning the Arabic alphabet through the “beautiful names of God.” It’s a little workbook I got-- as I slowly read this word, or that one, painstakingly sounding them out when all of a sudden they spring off the page as words I recognize! It’s really exciting and beautiful and I am like a little kid learning to read. Every new word is a jewel. And every discovery I make here is a pearl, an abalone, a swimming sea turtle.

I have written so much about what I like here, why I like it, and so on, but really, there are a couple main things: It’s really exquisite. The natural world in Oman is just…….perfect. And people are really easygoing, friendly and generous. So not only do I feel really welcome, but I like who I am here. I tend to take on the attributes of surroundings quickly. So here I find myself not swearing, thinking pleasant thoughts nearly all the time, enjoying things and taking time. I feel much better, gentler, more interesting, more cultured, kinder, and more beautiful both in and out. Now what’s the problem with that?

I’ve always been a traveling fool. But I am ready to stay somewhere. I still want to go to East Africa, and the Sahara, but it’s not pulling me the way it did. I would love to have a boat here in Oman, as someone once fantasized as he ran away with my heart. A boat and a little dwelling, with fat fruit trees, flowers and a rainbow of birds at the edge of the desert—that sounds really good to me.

And we’ve got frankincense here. One day, hopefully this year, or early the next, we will have oil. The trees are giving less, or maybe there are less trees. There are less harvesters, and I don’t know who will harvest these new, cultivated trees once they start oozing. There is not any oil being made at the moment, and the spurts of short-lived attempts use Somali resin. But we’ll see what we can do.

Last Days of Luban

We drove the other day, to a wadi below sea level, past Mughsayl. Even though I just have a little saloon car—that’s a Toyota—not a 4 x 4, I can get pretty well into a lot of places that I would have been timid about before driving across the Sahara in a Volvo station wagon last year. The road wasn’t too bad. And we were rewarded with some fat, mature fertile trees, oozing and bleeding frankincense tears from every orifice. One tree had over 40 cuts, by Christa’s quick count. They seemed like female trees to us, but we may be wrong as we can consider this energetically only. The Wadi is spectacular, disappearing through an opening in the mountains and snaking up nearly to Yemen, if I am remembering the conversation correctly. The sun was really intense, very hot, and I guess most of the work must be done in early morning or evening. I think we saw the second or third cut—Al Saaf. This is some of the very high quality, or at least it has the possibility to be so.

We went to the tomb of bin Ali. It’s an exciting little white pointy one, reminiscent of the hoods of Moroccan jellabayas or the pagodas in Laos. It sits out alone in the space near the town of Mirbat and we crept up it, past huge fragrant basil bushes. We could hear singing inside, someone reciting the Quran. We sat outside, not wanting to intrude, and eventually a guy came out and told us we could go on inside. We made our way into the cool white interior, into the tomb itself, which is huge and covered in striped woven woolen cloth. An old man stood in the corner and continued singing. It was beautiful and reminded me of devotional singing of India. Different religion I know, and there was no call and response, just the suras of Islam. We floated in his words, the frankincense smoke, the cool earthy interior. After some time he stopped singing, went out and returned with steaming basil infused tea. This was probably some of the best tea I’ve ever tasted.

This was Christas last full day. She had come for the tour and come early, then stayed an extra week or so, so she got a pretty good feel for Dhofar. We spent the whole time down here staying at the Crowne, right on the beach and infested with frangipani trees. We spent a lot of time pestering people in the market, trying to figure out the world of frankincense, driving to far flung wadis, geeking on animals, going out with friends, drinking tea, eating, playing in the sea, and just sitting around talking to anyone and everyone.

Along with Christa getting a good idea about Oman, it was really fun to hang out with her, and interesting for me in that this is the first time I have spent time with another foreigner here, and a woman at that. We could do more, see more, and be more comfortable at it. Being alone here sometimes means that whatever I do, I get perhaps more attention than I may actually want, and when there are two of us it’s easier to deal with. Not that anyone is ever overbearing or pushy, but there are courtesies that need to be observed, and then all of a sudden the situation becomes something else. There are not too many other unmarried American women driving their little cars around, talking to everyone, laughing, and joking in the street, in the market, wearing the local Salalah dress and geeking on incense. And my hair is an interpretation of blonde, and wild. I don’t wear a headscarf here, as I really don’t like anything on my head except when forced to in the icy bitterness of a New York winter. I will do it, in conservative places, but not here.

And also, interestingly, the more one covers up the more provocative it is to local men. This is really obvious in Yemen, where I do wear a headscarf and even an abaya, the black cover-all, which renders me instantly invisible to other foreigners but the Yemenis just love it. In the daytime it’s like I’m wearing a big sparkly flag, but at night it’s a little much with all the attention, as I fool no one into thinking I’m a local without even opening my mouth. Even the way I walk and stand is different. It’s a little hard to figure out. Here in Oman I don’t ever wear an abaya—I think the Omanis would be shocked, and probably laugh at me. I do wear the lovely local Dhofari dress, the Thobe. It’s long and colorful and is like a muu muu but the back is long and flows along the ground, to hide your footprints in the sand. I don’t cover my head though, even though it’s meant to be worn with a scarf. And this gets cheers from men and women alike, but if I cover my head, the energy shifts and I feel a little more vulnerable. Odd, actually, you’d think that the less you wear, the more provocative, but the opposite is true! Not that I’m trying to provoke, but the style of dressing here is very sexy actually—showing less fires the imagination. Also, these thobes are very comfortable; they are loose and flowing and air circulates through them. They are also so easy on and off, no buttons, zippers, anything, just over the head once and bang you’re ready to go.

This place is all about the longing heart, love at first sight, unrequited love, sacrifice, duty. And everything swirls in a constant current of relationships, business, meetings, phone calls, texts, at all hours. No one really turns the mobile off, and if they do, the messages pile up in a hurry, and everyone wants to know where were you? The first question you are always asked is: Where are you now? And late into the night there are meetings, meetings, meetings. Usually these are a mix of business and social, in fact I would say that the business part is obligatory, as it verifies the need for the meeting in the first place, as least it’s that way with me. Things are obliquely referred to, and the conversational flow eddies about, to this and that; you will sit for hours and maybe almost nothing is decided, but maybe it’s more than you realize.

Listen to the music of the Arabic world: men and women sing of their aching heart, abandonment, eternal love, eyes that kill, a face like the moon—now you have left and all I think of is you, my Life, My Heart, and one day I will turn away and not ask your permission, just close my heart to you, even though it feels like death right now but one day it will end and I will find my life elsewhere, and you will come back to me when too late and find the desolation I lived in for an eternity but now all I can do is wonder if you think of me right now, and where you are, and when will you come back to me? You bring my flat gray world to life, filling it with joy and butterflies, without you there is nothing, you breathe me into life, from the first moment I saw you the world stopped and if I die today, I will be happy to gaze into your eyes one last time. You are imprinted on the insides of my eyes, and I see only you.

This is popular music.

I don’t speak Arabic; it’s a long road. But I am learning, slowly, without a school, or lessons, and I catch some words here and there, more as time passes, and it’s a delight to find this poetry; the everyday courtesies, different everywhere; the manner in which questions are asked and answered, the undercurrents of conversation. Maybe they’re easier for me to pick up since my brain is not filled with too many words!

It’s probably a good thing that courtesy is so important, that talking is ritualistic at the beginning. It might be inconvenient when you are trying to get out (or in) to a restaurant, or walk through a hotel lobby. Not for me so much, but whomever I am with is certainly a Salalah local, and probably a well known, active one, so situations can turn into receiving lines, with me smiling and shaking hands with dozens of people, or sinking into a chair to wait it out, or slipping out through the front door, and out to the car to wait, like we’re on a reconnaissance mission. But while the heart is full here, loving, aching, longing, desiring and wishing, there is not a lot of time to hone emotional skills, particularly with members of the opposite sex. Sometimes it’s men who are very independent of their culture (comparatively,) who have a considerable western influence, who are the most challenging. Misunderstanding, fear, doubt, and a whole lot of wrong ideas can come together in a terrible mix of confusion and take weeks to remedy. The dynamic between women and men is very interesting, and it flows quite well at times, but not being of this culture, it is taking some time and patience to learn to function in it. I am continually being scolded for not calling and in the same minute to understand that time is not the same here, that things are not planned the way they are in western culture, and then scolded again because I didn’t call at two. Perhaps scolded is a strong word: “made to understand” that so and so was waiting for my call is better. Where are you now?

I had an entire conversation with someone without exchanging a word. We were both in a store, a frankincense store, not surprisingly. I do know him, already, a little. He made me understand that he was interested in a project I have undertaken. He has started something similar. He will show it to me, later, in a minute. And then, tomorrow. All this without one word exchanged. The next day came, and he was not happy with the arrangement—it was supposed to be a secret, which it was, but he did not like that I had someone with me, and had to get out of showing me this thing. Then someone else drove me to see it.

I sat in the coffee shop, working on my laptop. The embarrassed waitress came up, nearly cringing, telling me the man in the corner with the sunglasses on was asking if he could have my phone number. A week earlier she had to follow me into the bathroom to tell me that this same gentleman was asking my name. Today she was very embarrassed because every day this customer has been in asking if I had been there and where was I now? She and I talked about it, what to do, what to do? I was in a good flow writing, and the last thing I wanted to do was close my computer but otherwise this would just go on. She told me all she knew about him, I finally decided to have her ask him over, not once even glancing in his direction. He came over but, to his chagrin, could not communicate very well, and so then started calling friends on the phone, one after the other to please come and help him speak English to the woman in the coffee shop. One showed up soon thereafter, but was also shy, and so eventually the situation rectified itself—they left, happy, and without my number, or any strange vibe. And I went back to my writing. Try translating that to New York!!!

Conversation

Everything comes up for discussion. Endless discussion over glasses of tea. Or coffee. And dates. Whoever owns the white plastic patio chair concession here must have done well. You see them everywhere. Groups of men sitting in these chairs, discussing…….something. We’re all baking at 2 in the afternoon? Here are the guys, under the tree, in their chairs. Driving home at 2 in the morning? There they are, in the parking lot, or just by the side of the road. Or there in one of the late night restaurants, shishas bubbling away, 50 feet between one table and the next. You will see these guys in groups on the sidewalk in front of the beach, and on the beach itself, and they don’t have to necessarily be in chairs either. . You also see groups of women. There are a few mixed groups too, families and even a few couples. But for the most part we see groups of men sitting in a circle. And usually they are all wearing the same thing: dishdasha and little hat or turban. These are plenty of Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis as well, in light colored Kurta Pajamas, but they don’t usually sit in circles; they mill around, or sit at restaurants, or in small groups in the gardens by the side of the road, with their own discussions.
But everyone talks.

It’s a bit of a joke with some people, how Salalah is so boring. But I don’t find it boring at all. Talking to people is what I like to do anyway and it’s a blessing to be able to just pull out a mat or a patio chair, plunk down and enjoy endless conversation. You can bring some food, or not. A drink, perhaps a thermos of tea, or not. Sometimes people play cards.

Sometimes people meet in cafes, or restaurants. Or, better yet, a combination of the two. And even though it’s a small town, driving along at 1 or 2 in the morning, you will pass plenty of people still up, still sitting under trees, leaning against their cars, sitting out along the side of the road, on the sand at the beach, or just out in the middle of the vast space out at the edges of town, just sitting and talking. It’s brilliant.

Senses in Salalah

It’s difficult to imagine a place more sweet: The endless white sand beaches, the wild pounding surf, warm, wet, fresh and so so salty. The swaying coconut palms, heavily fertile with ripe round fruit, so different from the erect and upright date palms to the north, where fronds splay like fancy florid feather dusters, gleaming clumps of hard, yellow dates, hanging in swollen bunches below. There is a riot of colour and scent in dense honey-like plumeria trees, in delicate climbing jasmine, in the powder rose oleanders, the bright and beautiful bouginvilla, the flaming red of flowering coral trees, and the ancient gnarled branches of the frankincense trees, papery bark peeling, bleeding their ancient sap.

There are lush gardens near the sea, soft and green, plenty and bounty and abundance in fruit: bananas, mangos, papayas…..Juxtapose this with the supreme austerity of the desert, the soft stunning high dunes of the Empty Quarter, where the sand is hot as fire by day, impossible to walk on, slowly cooling off in the evening; where you can sit on a dune with nothing but more dunes as far as you can see, stretching beyond Saudi Arabia, and watch the stars come out, numbering beyond numbers, continuing to come, to make themselves known, long after the sun has set, and still they come as night settles in. The Milky Way slowly reveals itself, brighter and brighter, as the rest of the sky darkens, and deep space becomes deeper and more profound. And still more stars come. The winds sing differently in the dunes, from how they sing near the frankincense trees. The wind has a different sound as it kisses the leaves, the branches, the needles, of trees, and the frankincense trees here have their own music, their own heavenly whisper. But the wind in the desert is where true silence is born, and where it lives eternally. Every grain of sand finds its voice and together they sing to the wind. And the dunes themselves sing—they moan, cry and whistle in the lonely night, like lost ghosts or Gods voice, making you sit up, raise your head from the sand, and strain to hear this because there are no other sounds when the dunes sing, except the soft faint whisper of the sand.

The mountains are rough, sharp, steep and rocky, bare and naked mountains, tough and weathered. The austerity of the desert passes seamlessly into the austerity of the mountains. This is a landscape fit for man.

Many thanks to Caroline Chiu for this picture of me in the Rub al Khali.

Jebali

As our aromatic journey comes to a close, I can only say that Oman now has some new fans. It was an interesting experience, bringing people to my favourite country and quite challenging I have to say, but we managed to see quite a bit.

The rose harvest in Jebel Akhtar (Green Mountain) ended early this year, due to a lack of rain and high temperatures. So it was already over by the time we showed up. However, our delightful guide, Salim, found us a distillery in the village of Seeq and even though there were no more roses, we got to see the distilling apparatus which is very unusual. Omanis consider water to be an adulterant so the only water used is that from the roses themselves, and even that through condensation. The rosewater has a strong smokiness and the rose note only becomes apparent after the first taste has had it’s fun and run its course. And even then the rose note is nearly hidden, very subtle, but clearly there, and very concentrated. Omani rosewater (Mai-al-ward) used mainly in local desserts—Oman’s version of Halwa.

The extractor units resemble little pit ovens, each a few inches in diameter and stuffed with some fresh roses, a fire underneath. Above these roses sits a copper bowl in which the condensation collects—the condensation from the roses. Afterward we sat for coffee and dates with Mohammed (the distiller) and his family and conversation turned to other extractions. Seems he is experimenting with frankincense in his new little Tunisian still! So the next morning we came back to see this.

There is not much frankincense being distilled in Oman at the moment, even though there was plenty a few years ago. I think the main issue is with the harvesters, as I wrote before, but there are a few small distillations going on and the next morning, after a visit to the alpine juniper forest, we presented ourselves at Mohammed’s once again. Our luck was in. 2 kilos of Omani frankincense went into the little still, producing about 30 of oil, and several litres of hydrosol. We also dove into the milky leftovers, taking a part of everything home with us for treatment experiments.

We walked around the gardens that afternoon and into the evening, balancing along the edges of the irrigation channels, and admiring the pomegranate flowers, the remaining roses, the cotton bolls.

The alpine forest of Jebel Akhtar houses some of the most magnificently old and gnarled ancient crones anywhere. Some of these juniper, cedar, wild olive and fig trees are over 1000 years old—resting in the stillness and peaceful solitude of Omans alteplana with only the wind and a few feral donkeys for company. Elsewhere in the Arabic world donkeys are known as Hmar—a pejorative word laden with connotations of stupidty, willfulness and stubbornness, while here in Oman they are known as Abu Sabr—Father of Patience.

The alpine juniper forest is serene and magical—a place not known by too many people—it’s wild and old tree enthusiasts who will enjoy this place.

A visit to the little group of shops on the mountain showed that someone is happily cooking up a storm. We found aromatic waters—hydrosals—of myrtle, thyme, peppermint, in addition to the frankincense and rose (both traditional smoky and water distilled) already filling up the backs of the 4 x 4s.

The cool of the mountain was a happy relief from the heat of Muscat, already reaching over 40C, and we were sorry to leave for the drive down to Nizwa, but down we went, into the hot dry winds of the inland desert.