Oman. A Story in Two Parts. Part Two.

“You can’t wear those!”

V is pointing at my shoes. I am wearing a natty pair of olive green Converse.*

“I know. I have hiking boots in my bag.” I point at the bag I have placed in the back of the car.

“I told you. You need strong shoes!”

“I know, I know.” I point at the bag. “I have hiking boots. In the bag.”

It’s not going well. Momentarily, it feels like I’m transported back to my first day of school. I’m worried that if it going like this, I might involuntarily do a wee in my pants. It happened way back in the days of Mrs Reynolds, it could happen again today.

I open the bag. I show the shoes and V visibly calms down. But she rises again and snaps back;

“You have a hat? Sunglasses…”

I know where this is going, so cut her short. I open the bag wide and demonstrate that I have prepared exactly as she instructed. Hiking shoes, sunglasses, sun cream and a hat. I demonstrate that I have also brought a long sleeved shirt to protect my poor freckled arms.

It’s the first time that I have met V. V is a tour guide.

You will recall that I am in Oman for a break, a holiday. If you don’t recall, take a look here:

CATCH UP HERE - Oman. Part One.

I’d arranged a couple of days with V to get me out of Muscat. The first was to hike in the Al Hajar Mountains. The second was to explore one of the river valleys east of Muscat. Get my feet wet.

I had been sent direct instructions about preparation which were being followed up in a forthright manner that precluded the taking of prisoners if I had deviated from instruction. V’s demeanor made me fear that I had maybe been on the wrong websites again and accidentally booked a Dominatrix rather than tour guide.

Too late to back down, I jumped in the front seat of the car. Whichever I had booked, I wasn’t worried. In for a penny.

Within minutes we are out of Muscat and the atmosphere has changed. V has relaxed and dropped into guide mode. History, geography and local politics are quickly reviewed to give me a sense of where we are going and where we have been. Top line stuff but delivered in a relaxed and cheerful manner.

The sun is up, the scenery is amazing. It’s going to be a good day.

V is from Russia. Siberia to be precise. I learn this as we swap informal snippets of our lives that have led to me to purchase her services to take me to the top of a mountain. How we reached it so quickly, I do not know, but we quickly find ourselves deconstructing American and EU Interventionism and V - especially – is becoming vocally supportive of economic ties that Putin is encouraging in developing markets such as India, Pakistan and South America.

I was on holiday, stunned by the sharp, jagged, yellow, orange and blue grey mountains soaring above me while we wound through luxuriously green and rich plantations in the valley bottoms. And as a bonus, I was getting a chance to lay into my own countries politics and ridiculous, outdated, pompous, overbearing, irrational and condescending insistence that it still has a place as a World leader.

It was cathartic. 

I was feeling alive and I was loving it.

V tells me about her childhood. A childhood where she felt safe and protected. She gushes about her education, her degree, the sports that she used to take part in, the facilities and her family home. All free. All provided by the state. How her community pulled together, how there was unity and equality. Everyone had been happy. Then she lamented that the splitting up of the (Soviet) Union had removed much of this and was the beginning of the end. Her nationhood had disintegrated and her people were forever fighting. Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine. V said that she missed the strong leadership of the Union.

Her lament took me back to tree lined avenues leading from Kiev airport to the City Centre in the back of a People Carrier with my friend Paul and his father back in 2006. Our Ukrainian guide discussed the volatile and divided political movements of his country. He noted that his nation didn’t seem cut out for democracy and that he sometimes just wished they had a single, strong leader for the people to rally around, to create identity and determine collective direction. Whether that be orange, blue, right, left or indifferent.

Back in Oman, it all felt much the same.

And it occurred to me, that only I could have booked a Soviet tour guide. I felt warm in her eulogy. I luxuriated in the obvious warmth she still holds for the society she grew up in.

And I could have shed a tear.

Back in the 1980’s I was a vague Soviet apologist. As Kilometres were eaten up, speeding our way into the Mountains, all I couldn’t help wishing I was fourteen again having silly political fights in the play ground at school. I wished V was at my side fighting the good fight; we’d have trounced those Tory fuckers.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a Communist - quiet at the back - but some of my friends seem to think that I was and probably still am. But I am not. I don’t think that I ever have been. But I grew up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud and – even as a kid – couldn’t see why I should back the USA above the USSR. One state appeared to exist solely to make money at any cost and was led by a moronic ape who thought that tomato ketchup was a vegetable.** The other state was overtly militaristic, with leaders that appeared to be constantly on the verge of death but stood – well appeared to stand, at least – for labour and equality for mutual reward.

I was an idealist. I still am an idealist. I was contrary. I still am contrary.

Back in the day, to me, there was only one side to back.

Today, there is none.

OK. During our reminiscing, we conveniently missed out many of the Soviet era faux pas. Trotsky, Hungary, Czechoslovakia… their influence on Ethiopia’s man made famine of the early, mid 1980’s and the eternal war in Afghanistan where they failed to stop the, US backed, Taliban.

But we didn’t miss it all. V’s grandmother was from Kiev but had been deported/transported to Siberia when she was young for the greater good of the Motherland and Her economic well being. Without routine purges and mass deportations, V’s parents would never have met and V would not have been born. Everything turns out rosy in the end.

V’s national pride is palpable. It is as strong as mine is weak. She fits the Putin ideal. She still holds her Orthodox beliefs, showing me her icons and good luck charms handed down by her mother; small pictures of saints surrounded by exquisitely detailed images of colourful flowers. Reminders of her home that she cannot bear to be without. We spoke of how the Great War of the Motherland (WWII to you and me!) had united people more than ever. The effect on the Nation(s) is long lasting and still stands. Her affinity to the homeland is unbroken. But she confided that she did not think that she would ever move back. She tried a few years ago but failed. Aside the brutal capitalism that now pervades, which she accepted as a modern way of life, she explained that the cold had been unbearable. She had suffered with a chest infection for nine months that no antibiotics could touch, only for it to disappear within a fortnight of her arriving back in the UAE, her then home.

I’ve only been here for ten months, but I understand. Northern Europe is the land of the snotty nose and wheezing chest.

But back to the Mountains.

Where I live, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, it is flat. Not Norfolk or Suffolk flat. Dungeness flat! But for hundreds upon hundreds of square miles. Ridges and hills rising 100 meters above sea level are few and far between. The landscape is sparse, harsh and largely unrewarding. Rubbish strewn. Uninviting and unforgiving. And I was tired of it. Yes, it may be more comfortable to walk, but it is so, so dull. So, for Eid, I sought excitement. I sought height and drama. In true style, my research had been top level and I hadn’t grasped just how bloody high they are. Ear popping, breath shorteningly high.

And starkly beautiful.

We start with a stop of at Nizwa, Oman’s original capital city. We trek through the old souk looking at the silversmiths and sweet makers at work. In passing we look at the castle from the outside. We don’t stop, we are heading high. On through Al-Hamra the gateway town to Jebal Shams. And it was here that I started to realise the difference between Oman and the rest of the Arabia I had seen.

The colours. The variety. The personality. The individualism. Gone are the two tone, black and white clothing of women and men. Women, rather than covered in black are decked out in the richest and warmest of colours. Orange, blue, green and scarlet. Their faces are uncovered, although they remain wearing scarves covering their hair. Street sellers line the roads and tracks into the mountains, close to small hamlets surrounded by a few fields and trees. They sell local produce. Dates, limes, pomegranate and handicrafts in wool shorn from the local goats they farm. Everyone appears relaxed. We lose track of the number of people we wave at as we pass. For a few miles we offer a lift to an elderly guy who is clearly struggling up the mountain dirt track that we traverse. He accepts our lift and water with gratitude. He humours my regular stops to capture photographs. The women selling fruit and tourist trinkets at the roadside smile, laugh and joke with us as we talk. It is just after Eid and their skin is covered in the most intricate henna designs, twisting, turning under their sleeves and up their arms. So different to the conservative black clad “Ninjas” that I see in Khobar, Manama and beyond.***

It’s no surprise. The links to India are strong. India is just across the Arabian Sea, after all. For centuries, the two countries have traded.

The shame is that – despite offering the best charm I can manage – none of the women are happy to be photographed. No problem.

On and on we traveled. Upward. Each turn leading to another incline. I wasn’t prepared for the height. More importantly, I wasn’t prepared for the drops. The sheer, stomach twisting drops. Away from the staged and secured viewing points we eventually hiked a valley side where it took two hours to reach a point where the bottom could be seen. Scree slopes held together by sparsely spread shrubs and grasses. Evidence of storm damage is everywhere. When it rains; it proper rains. The pathways have been washed away several times. The evidence is clear. Although feeling safe, the paths are on ledges that are maybe only twenty meters wide. Beyond the edges, there are drops. Sheer drops that top 1,000 meters at points. Drops that are higher than a mountain.

Does anyone else get that desire to take that one last step toward the edge while butterflies dance in your tummy?

That’s what I get on tall buildings and the cliffs and Oman valleys. Roller Coaster scary. Wonderful. I loved it.

Two days later, on my second trip, we traverse a Wadi – a valley bottom. Tracing a river. Where the path dies out, we take to the water and wade and swim 10 meter deep plunge pools to reach the valley end. A cave with a waterfall. A cave that I eventually bottled and plain couldn’t get into. I don’t like water. I don’t like swimming. And I don’t like currents dragging me underneath rock outcrops. I'm fussy. I think it is because I have lungs and legs, not gills and fins. I blame my parents. It was somewhere so far outside my comfort zone that I was enthralled and amazed that I could push through to get as far as I could. Weeks on, aware that I missed out on something magical, I still cannot regret it… But V was there at every step. Encouraging, supporting. Driving me.

We watched Egyptian Vultures soar and hang on thermals above the valleys, Bulbuls and Wheatear flit between rocks and shrubs and Purple Sunbirds imitate Hummingbird on Acacia bushes. I was stunned by the country. Stunned by the scenery. Stunned by the differences between this land of excitement and promise compared to the flat, grey wilderness of Saudi’s Eastern Province.

Purple Sunbird. Wish this was my picture. But it is not. I own no rights. Tis very pretty, though.

All through this, V kept up the tourist chat. Telling me of abandoned and lost villages, showing me the long lasting damage of a Cyclone that hit in the 1990’s and the devastation that it brought to the near subsistence farmers. And it was great. It was everything and more than I expected my cash to buy. But it was the conversations that we fell into when we slogged the kilometres back and forth to Muscat that caught me off guard. These were where I was really inspired. The tourism stuff – incredible, engaging, inspiring and beautiful that it is – couldn’t compete with the frank honest conversations about life and the World that I didn’t expect. It was here, that I was truly inspired.

V showed me ribbon developments of houses scattered along a main road between Nizwa and Muscat. She explains that all Omani citizens are given a plot of land for free at the age of 21. It is provided so that a family home can be constructed. Which explains why none of the houses are the same. Different designs, different sizes. Different people.

We drifted past a more regulated housing development. Two storey and white walled. Social housing provided for the needy; for people who were cared for by the state. For the old, the infirm, the widowed and disabled. V spoke with warmth about the life that she was showing me. She couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said and his vision for the country. Absolute ruler since 1970 he continues to seek a better path for Oman that learns from other Gulf Nations and won’t accept its mistakes. He won’t allow high rise development, preventing Muscat from becoming another plastic playground like Dubai, he is encouraging the population to make use of the land; hence the ribbon housing developments in the apparent middle of nowhere and he is encouraging sustainable tourism based on the countries natural landscape.

Now. I am sure that you can find loads of negatives for Sultan Qaboos if you desire. Knock yourself out, go and check Google. But my story saw nothing but warmth.

V openly expresses a fear of Sultan Qaboos dying. She explains that the population love him. She fears for the nation, emotionally, hoping that his dynasty maintains the positive but caring outlook of his rule… 

And it made me realise why she was in Oman. Because it all falls back to the conversation earlier in the day. Of how she felt sorrow at the passing of the Soviet Union and regret that the split had led to infighting and disillusionment. On a political level, it began to fall into place. A leader. A figurehead for the population to adore and follow who – through his works – is supportive of the population. Unity. Support and equality. Although the ideological and economic differences are as mountainous as Oman, the net result is the same. The absolute monarchy, underpinned by a religion that believes in equality and well being of the population that it rules is not so far different to the Soviet model. Right down to it's dependence on "faith" at it's heart. 

And it took me back to where it started. 

At a Costa Coffee in Bahrain Airport with Hussain suppressing a laugh as I inadvertently highlighted the gaping hole in the democratic process in Britain. 

But now I was thinking about the apparent acceptance, belief and happiness with an individual who has chosen to be a leader and the bickering, backbiting and nonsense that our fair political system has created. 

And I felt stumped. 

Notes

*    My Converse would have looked even better at the top of Jebal Sham!

**   I have no idea whether this is true but it makes a good story. I’ve nicked the idea from Kristin Hersh. During the introduction to the song “Pearl” on her Cats and Mice album, she states that Ronald Reagan had defined ketchup a vegetable. And let’s face it, it can’t be a vegetable… a fruit, maybe, but never a vegetable.

     Here is "Pearl". Cracking song...

        And some stuff as context to the comments I attribute to her.

       Ketchup is a vegetable

***   OK. Maybe it is a bit derogatory to describe women dressed in Hijab as Ninja’s. I understand. But I feel less bad using the term after Hussain admitted that he and his friends use the term… Remember, Hussain is a Saud.