Salalah and another week done

Last Tuesday I left the center with 7 friends and caught the 13-hour bus to Salalah, 7pm – 8am, skipping class on Wednesday. Saturday was Eid al-Nahda, National Renaissance Day or something like that which I’ll get into later, so we had ourselves Wednesday-Saturday for Salalah.

A friend of mine who had lived in Salalah spearheaded the planning .We spent the first two nights in a cheap apartment in the “mintaqa al-sina3iah” which means “industrial district” and it was exactly that – autobody shops and carpenters. And our apartment. Here’s the view from our window:

The price was right. We started the day lazily, appropriately, and then met up with a PF’s friend who drove us around some fun places. We visited what is allegedly Job’s tomb, competing with a spot in Syria for the title. We visited an ex-spring now sinkhole.  All the while I was gaping at the nargila – coconut trees. I can’t remember ever seeing these before! They’re significantly taller than nakhil (date palms) and their trunks are smooth. And wiggly – it looks like Dr. Seuss drew the place.

This month there’s been a festival in Salalah with cultural dancing, goods for sale, and carnival rides. We swung by at night and saw some dancing, and I got a little judgmental. About ten men wearing their white dishadeesh stand in a row, glancing sideways furtively at one another, and bounce their canes from the ground up to their shoulders and back down again in time to music. They are terribly self-conscious. I decided that this cultural dance was not only boring as hell relative to the crazy Namibian war dances I witnessed in a documentary, but was in fact OBJECTIVELY boring as hell. Tar and feather the imperialist, cultural relativists… It’s simply not fun to watch and seemed not fun to be a part of. We finished the evening off with food at Baalbeck, a Lebanese place. I liked having been to the real Baalbeck last year.

The next day we visited a souq by the sea with tons of luban and bukhar – flammable scents and frankincense, for whose trade a few centuries ago Salalah is still famous. The summer months in Salalah are the “kharif,” which confusingly means fall in Arabic. It means the monsoon season in this context, I suppose, and the result is dense fog and often rain and beautiful temperatures. The oceans are mamnua3 al-siba7a (forbidden of swimming) because of their intensity. Walking along the smooth beach and taking in the crash was a nice time. We came across a long stretch of huts overflowing with coconuts, bananas, and various other fruit and had some fun there. I bought a coconut and the gentleman selling it hacked into it with a butcher’s knife in such a way as to convey a small opening for a straw. The milk was not that disgusting, but certainly strange. I had some of the meat from inside but we concluded the drinking coconuts were at a different stage of development, or differently raised, so their meat actually tasted like rubber. Actually. The bananas were the best I’d ever had – dense and sugary.

A piece of Paradise.

We chilled out for a little while until we rendezvoused with our teacher’s friend, a Palestinian woman now living and working in Salalah. She was a firecracker: muhajiba, but invited to go smoke shisha and had one to herself. Spoke about freedom of choice and independence from inane pressuring traditions and how she likes boys and the lack of significant “tafkir” (thought) in the Arab world. I probed her liberalism and she delivered consistently with US university student responses, except for the homosexuality point. Because it’s a mental disorder and we need to treat our friends who have it, not shun them. That’s progressive of her, I suppose? As a side note, the Palestinian counter continues up up and away on the attractive scale, furthering my case that if for no other reason the Israelis and Palestinians should get along to make lots of beautiful babies. The night ended with very late Chinese food.

Our last day in Salalah we rented two cars (24-hr rental) and drove out of the city to a place where natural fountains occur. We stood on cliffs overlooking mountains crashing waves. Somewhere beneath us were submerged caverns that had been burrowed by nature and reached the ground so that when the waves came in huge sprays of water erupted from the top of the cliff. Oftentimes it was air and violent spray, and in this way very reminiscent of the sound a dragon makes. When you hear them.

It was a relaxing day and we ended it at the Crown Plaza hotel for some drinks on the beach. We then slept at the Crown Plaza hotel, in the parking lot. That was an uncomfortable evening. The morning eventually came, alhamdilulah, and we made it to the bus station and took off on the 13-hour return trip, sleeping most of the way.

School resumed on Sunday with a celebration arranged by our PFs in honor of the National Renaissance Day. This is the 40th anniversary of Sultan Qaboos’s coup glorious ascension. (We’ll see if wordpress gets blocked after this post).

Today we began a new schedule, which will only happen once more because we only have two weeks left and the last week is different. After Fosha and Media class we made our way in groups of 6-ish to houses of Omanis in the area. The program really should have instituted this aspect from the get-go, it was fantastic. We had coffee and lunch and chatted for several hours. This is the fourth of fifth time I’ve been in an Omani home, much higher than the number in Egypt (2?) but it was the first time the men and women ate in the same room. It felt nicer that way. Some of my colleagues got into a dense but good-natured political conversation with the man of the house I half listened to, something about Turkey pulled between or rejected by Europe and the Arab world. When I tuned back in it was “How could Osama bin Laden, in the mountains with camels, have orchestrated the attacks on September 11th?” “Well then who did?” “Al-yehud!” So much for the comfort zone. A discouragingly high proportion of residents in this part of the world subscribe to this theory, and it becomes seriously more disturbing in Oman where the education level is seriously higher than I encountered in Egypt. Although not high enough to distinguish between Jews and Israelis, which really should be an uncontroversial point particularly to monotheistic Muslims, “awlad al-3am” (the cousins).

Well there are about two and a half weeks left here. I like Oman a lot, and I really like my comrades-in-flashcards, so I can’t put my finger on why I’ve been a little off this summer and itching for some ‘merca. Going to see Inception tonight.

A dose of the country

This afternoon we returned from our four day trip around part of Oman. We left school Wednesday afternoon, divided into ten jeeps. Our destination was Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain), a range towards the eastern part of the country. As we started climbing the mountain along heavily maintained windy roads through wudian (canyons where water runs when it rains) it started to rain. I tentatively rolled down my window and was rewarded with cool mountain air, a feeling I’d last had driving up to New Hampshire at the beginning of June. A few days before we arrived in Oman there was a terrible cyclone named Fet that destroyed much of the coast and the areas with wudian, and the few I’ve visited have all had serious rebuilding amongst rubble and traces of roads. The ascent of the mountain was reminiscent of this, but it was much cleaner. I can’t imagine how expensive those roads were to build.

Our hotel was at the top of the mountain. We hung out for the rest of the evening and got up early the next morning to “visit families.” We weren’t sure what this meant but apparently the administration or tour company had made contacts with locals to take us around and feed us lunch in their homes. Most of the day was spent traversing the side of the mountain which was completely terraced farms. An older age of Omanis constructed a seriously ingenious network of “filaj” or irrigation channels from either a naturally occurring spring, rainfall, or both, it wasn’t clear. These channels snake their way down the mountain and through the terraces, where the villages cultivate pomegranate, corn, roses, and grapes, among the things I remember. In the valley, where the filaj eventually empty, there are nakheel (date tree) groves. I have had a sort of terrace fetish since a family vacation to Italy over four years ago, and adding two years of farm work to that made for some giddiness. I would love to spend a year or so living in one of these villages and farming pomegranates on a mountainside… And this is the beginning of the trip and the reasons why living in the Omani country would be amazing.

Here’s a picture of the mountainside as seen from walking along the filaj.

My group (five or so of us) ate at our guide’s house. Omani houses generally have a “majlis al-rijal” where the man of the house hosts guests, while the women sit in the “majlis al-hareem” inside. It’s that Arab hospitality. However, I raised the argumentative point to some friends that hosting strangers in a side room isolated from the living space isn’t actually hospitality at all. I was disagreed with, but I’d love to argue my point more if any readers are feeling contrary.

In the afternoon we drove to the desert and spent the evening at a desert camp. It was super similar to my Siwan experiences, beginning with a roller-coaster jeep ride through sand dunes and ending under the stars. Except this desert camp had a pool and fully catered eating area. Siwa felt more “authentic,” although of course this is an imperialistic term created by orientalists to inform their expectations. Friggin hippies. The next morning we made our way to a “camp resort” on the sea via a Boom factory. A boom is a type of large, beautiful wooden boat. The camp resort was a short but beautiful stretch of sandy beach with a restaurant bar on it and a series of A/Ced straw huts… figure that one out. We spent the rest of the day relaxing, swimming, playing cards, and fishing. One of the teachers who came with us is a pretty bad-ass wilderness kind of guy, so before we knew it he had killed a crab or snail and used the meat as bait on a hook and line he’d either brought or found. I took a couple tries at throwing the line and reeling it in, and on my third try I caught a bright blue and yellow fish! It’s a fun feeling. (Disclaimer to PETA: The fish lives to bite bait another day.)

That night we piled into our jeeps around 9pm and headed to the Turtle Reserve. We got into smaller groups and walked in the dark out to the water, which is difficult to do in sand. The guides had red flashlights and led us up to a crater in the beach where a huge green turtle had dug in and was slowly dropping her sticky shiny eggs. After a while she buried them, and later on she was headed back into the surf. It’s a very very slow process and per turtle only happens once every 35 years or so, but this is the egg-laying season I guess. It was a very zen experience, or very boring experience, depending on how one approaches the world or one’s mood. It was a very zen experience.

Today we headed to a huge wadi, this time a towering narrow one with a river in the bottom. We hiked up it for about a half hour and found some BEAUTIFUL swimming and cliff-jumping. It ended in a cave booming with a waterfall. A rope led up the waterfall to a higher pool outside and another waterfall and more cliff-jumping. But the scariest cliff was in the cave itself, from whose walls one could crash into the turquoise below. One student described it as “the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen” and another as “that was the scariest thing I’ve ever done!” The cave of superlatives. It was a wonderful place.

Eventually we made it back to our hotel in Muscat and an administrator informed us that the bus will pick us up at 9am tomorrow as opposed to 7:30. Alhamdilulah. It’ll be an even shorter week than expected because Tuesday after school I’m joining some friends on a midnight bus to Salalah in the south of Oman (12-hour ride) where there is allegedly the kharif, or monsoon season. This means temperate weather and greenery inshallah.

And así we pass the halfway point.

A little bitter

Last weekend was a three day much needed God-given break. In fact, this week and the next two will all be 4-day weeks, which is a seriously nice change of pace. I studied / thesised the first and third days and went on a nice trip with some friends on the middle day (metric Sunday). We rented a car, with no unwanted excitement this time, and drove south through some Wadi (canyon) and found no water. We did get a chance to do some rock-scrambling, sating the nature withdrawal I’ve come to expect in this kind of weather. It was so hot, but much drier than Muscat. And in fact the day was probably the most beautiful day we’ve seen here – we ended it swimming in the ocean at sunset and falling a little bit in love with Oman. A little. The highlight of the day was the GREAT conversations we had.

I supped at an Indian restaurant last night, and some of us are at risk of becoming regulars there. Today we had lunch at a Zanzibari restaurant near the school – Oman has a long history with Zanzibar, from the days of Omani colonialism on the eastern coast of Africa, and the result is a lot of Zanzibaris here. Great food and Egyptly priced! I’m starting to find a different way of appreciating Muscat, which is a pretty disappointing place to try and learn Arabic. The problem is also the fix – there are so many non-Arab immigrants here and Omanis don’t generally hold blue-collar (waiting tables) jobs, so day to day interaction with locals is frequently in English. The bright side is a whole swath of diversity harder to find in, say, Vermont. Tons of good Asian food from nationalities you don’t really hear about state-side (Zanzibari?) and crazy fruit in the grocery stores that you won’t find at a Stop & Shop (like DRAGON FRUIT?)

On the academic front, it’s a similar (but less optimistic) story. I’ve sort of resigned myself to using this time for independent study, trying to broaden my vocabulary and listen to al-Jazeera. I find I don’t benefit from class time, which is usually a interruption-fest of sometimes interesting discussions and minimally instruction or practicing of skills. Originally our class was larger, around ten or eleven students, but because of requests to make class time more intimate we were split and I’m in a class with just three others. Too much discussion, and the teachers seem unable to control the direction of the class time so it’s really disappointing. Halfway done and I haven’t written a single assignment for class – all this new vocab with no outlet will vanish so quickly, and it’s frustrating. I think after our trip this weekend I’ll start taking that upon myself, too, and writing five pages a week or something.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Metric Friday, after class, we’re starting our three-day weekend and are headed to the mountains,  the desert, and sea-turtle spotting. We’ll be split into jeeps of 4 people each and I’m excited about my crew. Good people. It’s time for pounce to reach Oman.

In brighter news I’ve narrowed my thesis topic considerably since my initial thoughts. The current questions are as follows: How have the states of the Arabian Peninsula developed politically? What are the similarities and differences in the ways these monarchies have addressed representation (parliaments, consultative councils, etc)? Why have they gone different directions? How do their differing systems affect governance and security? With particular attention paid to Yemen, the only democratic regime on the Peninsula. And the only FUBAR situation. This is the technical term.

Time to read some more Naguib Mahfouz and stuff more vocab in my brain that I’ll certainly start to recognize but whose use will certainly not be required of me by the program. (A little bitter.)

Living like an Expat.

It looks like it’ll be a weekly posting here, because I simply don’t have any time outside the weekends! On the fourth of July just about all of us went to a party the US embassy was throwing: cheap drinks, not cheap but endless buffet, volley ball, and a pool. It was reasonably fun. The rest of the week was my typical 6:30 wake up, 7:30-4:30 at school, and 10:30 bedtime. I went to a few restaurants, and we watched a lot of world cup. Last night Spain beat Germany to proceed to the finals, and although it was an overall uneventful game we had a great time at a favorite cafe of ours. It’s called “Candles,” located right on the beach by the Hyatt, with shisha and food between 1-2 rials which is remarkably cheap considering the location. Last night for the first time they passed out coca cola-shaped plastic bottles that are actually loud honking noisemakers. The previous game we had watched there, Germany-Argentina, we had a great time exchanging cheers with the rest of the clientele who all seemed to support Germany. It was raucous and good spirited. The waiters at Candles are all Arab and not Omani, including many Egyptians, so it’s fun to rattle off with them indulgently.

Tuesday we went back to Salsa dancing, so it’s officially a weekly ritual for me. I’m getting some basics down and having a grand old time. It’s also fun to pontificate with my dancing buddies between the boogying – some great booze and discussion.

The rental car chapter closed yesterday afternoon when we paid up the 120 rial. Khalas. It means this 2-week period it looks like I’ll reach my stipend limit…

Tomorrow I’m likely to go with a small group renting a car to get out of the city and explore to the north. The group comprises, should I say, the wisest of the program, so I’m looking forward to hanging out with the big kids.

Today I’m planning on not leaving my suite as I study up on the week’s Arabic I haven’t had a chance to absorb and hopefully work some on my thesis research. It’s a three-day weekend because Saturday is the celebration of Mohammad’s ascension. Next weekend is our program trip into the country to do some hiking in the mountains, camping in the desert, and inshallah seeing some sea turtles!!! So it’s also a three-day weekend. The following weekend may or may not be a three-day weekend depending on the moon because the national (Muslim) holidays here are announced correlating to the stages of the moon and therefore inconsistently. This surprised me because my impression was that the stages of the moon are consistent. Wrong again, I suppose.

As we approach the half-way point, I notice somethings to comment on. This experience is the expat experience. We go to bars, we talk in English, we network with other Westerners here. It’s a stark contrast to my Alexandria life, and obviously I preferred that. However it’s nice to have my mind less under the linguistic and cultural grind 24/7 considering that technically I’m on summer vacation. I’m getting my feet wet in Oman. Were I in Alex four weeks in I would feel much more comfortable with the geography of the city, at least, and knowing where to get cheap good food, etc. I’m enjoying myself but a recent revelation is also worth mentioning – I’m ready to be done wayfaring for a little while and am exceedingly relieved that a year settled in the Green Mountains by Otter Creek is on the horizon.

The Rented Renault and “how to keep the US relatively out of your hair”

Quickly, something I forgot to write about last time was my visit to Sultan Qaboos University, where many of our PFs are students. This was some afternoon this past week, probably “metric Wednesday” (that’s Monday, the middle day of the week) as the Embassy workers would say. The library is enormous, and clean, and state of the art, and there are adjacent sex-segregated entrances. Sigh.

Another day this week I went salsa dancing with a handful of comrades at a bar in the Intercontinental Hotel. A few of them have danced for a long time and it was a delight and inspiration to see them knowing their stuff out there on the floor. I mostly watched, but I was urged up for a meringue. Good fun. Afterward I went with some others to watch the Spain-Portugal game at a tent that is set up outside the hotel in a great atmosphere, bleachers and huge screen and popcorn and so on. I think we’re going back there for the final.

Soccer on the beach was a little bit masochistic and quite fun, whatever that says about my psyche… I’m consistently awful at the game, so it’s really not about winning or losing (we tied) but running around outside. Within minutes my clothes were as soaked with sweat as they’d be with water had I plunged into the lukewarm sea. Which I did eventually, of course. Several of us ended removing our shirts and mine was so trashed with sand and sweat I left it off on the way back to the hotel, serious culturally insensitive moment. I got honked at and stuff. Whooops.

Yesterday, Metric Saturday, a few of my friends and I rented a car! This is my first time driving outside of US/Canada, and it was perfectly fine. I was paranoid, idealizing all the things that could go wrong if I got a ticket or wrecked the car and so on. What actually happened was not on my mind in the slightest. We drove to Wadi Mayh, which is a canyon about 20 minutes south of the city. Somewhere as you approach the road becomes dirt. Having read the fine print a few times, I knew that driving on unpaved roads nulls the insurance on the car. Not a problem until it’s a problem, you know? So out we drove without incident. We parked on the side and dipped into the knee-high water for a while. After a cyclone these canyons are allegedly huge rivers which would have been much more beautiful, but it was nice to be in the hot dry air and submerged in clear water with fish nibbling at us. After chilling in the water for a while we got back into the car and decided to explore the canyon further. We drove around a date farm, which more closely resembled a village. School, mosque, houses all crowded together around a mini mountain with an irrigation well. All around the huge rock / hill are acres of date trees. It was fantastically beautiful. We continued on the dirt road until we reached a spot where the water flowed over the path. It wasn’t deep, mid-shin, and it was full of big round rocks. I sat at the wheel considering this obstacle. It was so shallow. Our next destination was through the canyon, so really we had to cross this obstacle if our day was to continue. We concluded that momentum would be required. I put the Renault into reverse and when I felt there was enough of a head start, off we went. We came down into the stream with a disneyland ride-esque SPLASH and pushed through to the other side, triumphant. We cheered. We congratulated each other. I said conclusively “that was such a success!”

Not 100 meters up the road a man was hanging out by his car and waved at us, pointing to the front of the Renault. So I got out and looked, then asked him what was wrong. Looking down the road behind us there was no shrapnel or anything. He gestured more emphatically and then I noticed that our bumper was half underneath our car. We made our way back down to the crossing and inspected the land. Pieces of black plastic were everywhere. We had come down into the river and a stone knocked the bumper half off, shatter a lot of plastic under the front of the car. There were expletives.

We tied the bumper up enough that it wouldn’t drag. We drove BACK through the river, slowly, and it was fine, so we probably should have abandoned that “momentum!” idea. Whatever. Eventually the bumper started to drag and making our way back on highways to Muscat was stressful. We pulled over frequently to re-tied the loose bumper. Alhamdilulah we made it back without having to be towed. The Omani worker (Indian-owned company) came out to look at the damage and his response was “khalas, ma mushkilah.” Which means “alright, no problem.” What? He meant “ma mushkilah, come sign things.” I explained, in Egyptian Arabic which he would understand and which would allow me a good level of detail. Sunday I’ll get a call from the company, after they get an estimate from the mechanic, telling me how much we owe. If the damage is in excess of OR 170, we pay OR 170 and the insurance covers the rest. If it is less, we pay it, and I get the difference credited to my card which they had charged when I first took the car.

Fortunately I couldn’t pick a better group of people to make a poor decision with so we were all in agreement and nobody said “I TOLD YOU NOT TO!” and we’re splitting the cost four ways. That means worst case scenario I’m out OR 42 (~$110), which is a week’s stipend. We get OR 80 every two weeks, and I only used about OR 40. So it’s living on jam sandwiches for the rest of the summer. I would be very surprised if the damage is that much, since it was only the bumper and the car drives perfectly. But we shall see!

This blog entry will be the first my parents know of this, intentionally so!

Yesterday evening we celebrated Independence Day. We procured a small amount of spirits, and everybody brought some food! We grilled burgers on the roof of our hotel, there were pies and potato salad and freshly-caught lobster and music and mirth. On July 4th, metric Tuesday, we’ll be going to the Embassy party. We were invited to it after they came to the center to give us the mandatory “security briefing” so an otherwise dry talk was well worth it. A pool, bar, and food! We even get to leave school early! And why celebrate the founding of the best-designed polity in the world once when you can celebrate it twice?

Today, Metric saturday, just like last Metric saturday, I stayed in all day working. I’ve been doing lots of reading, a “literature review,” of a topic about which I’m going to write my thesis! The long and short of it is evaluating the role of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council, think a Gulf “EU”) in establishing and maintaining security and stability in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly concerning Yemen, Iraq (neither of which are members), and smaller instances of violent sub-state actors (as in Saudi Arabia). The broader “so what?” is something like “Implications for regional international organizations,” or, “How to keep the US relatively out of your hair,” or, “Peace in the Middle East.” Salivating. It feels very good to be this genuinely curious about an academic subject – I can’t say I’ve felt this way before. It keeps my mind occupied, at any rate. If you go to the GCC website, http://www.gcc-sg.org/ you will find a frustrating and funny message. That is kind of slowing down my research in terms of primary sources… I have two friends who “know people” in the Omani and Saudi foreign ministries. I’ve started drafting questions I can ask them regarding intra-Gulf politics and hopefully I can get some juicy primary sources out of that. Otherwise its lots of charters and resolutions and oil statistics and incidents of violence, which are cool but not quite primary research. If this topic sparks the interest of any of my blog’s readers, I encourage you to ask me stuff because at this point I probably won’t have the answers and I’ll have to find them. Alternatively, if you know stuff (or sources and people to talk to), I encourage you to tell me.

It’s 11:00p and therefore thirty minutes after my bedtime. Getting up at 6:30a and working until 5p is just stupid. But reality.