Oman 2000
Muscat Oman
October 2000
Matzalama from Muscat Oman!
Hope all is well with you. This has been a brief trip. The total time gone will be two hours short of a full week. Flew to Dubai last Thursday and Friday (Middle east is always two days going; one day coming) and start the trip home in a few hours. My boss has still not caught on to the amount of work I can get done in order to return by opening day of deer season on Saturday. He actually thinks this pace is normal. Unlike Granddad who often asked when I helped him work if I could get him a stick so he could mark in the dirt my position. When I asked why, he commented that at my present progress he couldn’t actually detect any motion, but felt that if he marked my location and took a nap he might be able to spot movement in relation to the line after a few hours. With a magnifying glass.
That aside, I had some notes I’ve been jotting down of the “strange but true” category regarding Dubai and Oman:
Several years ago when Dubai first started developing infrastructure and specifically paved streets with street lamps, a Dubai policeman pulled over one of our ex-pats and wrote him a ticket for driving at night with his lights on. On, not off. It seems the policeman was particularly upset with this person because he was blatantly ignoring the street lights the Emir had generously erected for driving at night and was needlessly squandering the Emir’s energy by burning his headlights along lighted roads.
In Oman, they will ticket you with a hefty fine if you are observed by the police with a dirty car. If necessary, they will impound the car if it is not immediately cleaned. It seems the Emir here decided to clean up the town and he didn’t just mean the trash. I will say that this is unequivocally the cleanest country I have seen so far anywhere. I haven’t been to Singapore to compare; everyone has always commented on Singapore’s cleanliness.
Along those lines, it is heavily rumored here that the Emir of Oman is gay. The only facts I’ve discerned are that he isn’t married and he doesn’t have any heirs. Many businesses in other countries have portraits of their country’s leader at the entrance. The portraits I have seen here have the Oman Emir decked out in traditional Arab garb except it is extremely stylish and instead of the traditional white it is shades of lavender and purple. Oman is one of, if not the most, stable countries in the region, so perhaps they are on to something. But it wasn’t always so peaceful. It seems the Emir’s father, the previous Emir, was worried about being deposed from the throne like is all the rage over here. (Hey, to heir is human!) He had his son imprisoned for seven years. Finally the son convinced some guards that if they organized his escape and assisted with the overthrow, they could do well in the new administration. The old Emir was expecting this and was always armed awaiting a coop attempt. The son rushed into his father’s bedroom after being emancipated by loyal and opportunistic followers to imprison his father. Unbeknown to him, his old man kept a cocked revolver at all times ready to fire. As soon as the son rushed into the royal bedroom, the old man immediately open fired from a dead sleep…and blew his own foot off. Talk about being defeated!
All buildings over here appear built to resemble forts. Don’t ask me, I couldn’t get there. The best I can figure is that they felt the best defense is a good defense and if Saudi looks south or Yemen looks east, they’ll just shrug and think Oman is impenetrable with 40,000 forts and go fight each other instead. I had to ask after it looked like the Ministry of Water building was getting set for a charge by the Ministry of Electricity building. And the Grand Hyatt where I’m staying appears it could stave off an invasion for years. Or maybe, the fort façade is a diversionary tactic designed to wear out armies running from fort to fort trying to figure out just exactly where the Emir and his army are located.
Hope to see all soon! And, wash those cars.
-Keith