Becoming the next Dubai is the last thing on Oman’s mind. Rob Crossan reports from a Gulf state that is walking a fine line between tradition and modernisation
Listen carefully. If somebody in Oman offers you a warm welcome you had better run, or at least wonder what you have done to cause such gross offence. Standing at the entrance to an ancient fortress which has so many trapdoors, false staircases and secret chambers I feel sure it must have been designed by a distant, nefarious relative of MC Escher, Salah Al-Araimi smiles proudly as he points to a tiny oblong slit directly above where I am positioned.
‘This is how an Omani would get rid of unwanted guests,’ he says. The ‘warm welcome’ is then described. A jug filled with date oil heated to boiling point would be poured through the tiny slit, straight onto the intruder’s head. ‘It was used for centuries,’ he adds. ‘It was extremely effective – while he would be screaming, soldiers could surround him and kill him, if necessary.’ I returned my new friend’s benign smile… and inched away from the entrance.
Visitors to this vast nation in the bottom right corner of the Arabian Peninsula are still likely to come upon date juice today. It can be seen, albeit briefly, in the moments before it rapidly disappears into people’s mouths where the nutritious, sugar-packed fruit is a traditional fast-breaker during Ramadan – which is underway when I visit. It is dusk and the city is just starting to shake off its daytime rectitude ahead of the evening’s socialising and iftar, the holy month’s evening meal that signals the end of the day’s fasting.
‘The main thing to worry about at the end of the afternoon is people’s driving,’ a jewellery trader tells me as he pushes up the grill of his tiny store in Muttrah, the oldest of the capital Muscat’s souks. ‘Everyone is so tired from not eating all day that they can’t concentrate and there are lots of car crashes.’
My guide, Al-Araimi, has a sanguine confidence in his country and its magnetism. Over an Arabic coffee of molar-rotting sweetness, he recounts its meteoric transformation. Oman has – since the tacit British involvement in the 1970 coup that put the present Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al-Said on the throne and, it is rumoured, his father in the London Savoy for his dotage – developed significantly from a feudal hinterland pockmarked by civil conflict.
The nation has managed, more successfully than many in the region, to import developmental zeal to modernise itself, but stopped short of turning itself into a strip of cheerless shopping malls so beloved of red-faced expats and holidaying footballers’ wives. hich is not to say that Western luxury does not exist. Muscat is getting acquainted with five-star hotels with adjoining restaurants which are more suitable for residents of London’s Belgravia than Lawrence of Arabia. But it is best to head out as soon as possible and stroll around the ancient souk of Muttrah in the centre of the city. This is where, come dusk, you will find cafés serving syrupy sweet Arabic coffee and dishes of kabuli lahem (braised lamb legs with rice, chickpeas, raisins and onions) and lqimat, an unctuous, deep-fried sweet covered in saffron sugar.
Men sit together on walls wearing the long dishdasha – collarless white smocks with billowing sleeves which both flatter slimness and conceal corpulence – and kummar – flat-topped embroidered rimless hats. Tiny stores selling dusty coins and collections of khanjars – elaborate bejewelled silver knife holders containing a curved blade traditionally worn around the waists of Omani men – are sold by traders whose approach is positively catatonic in comparison to the aggressive sales pitches you witness in the souks of Marrakech or Cairo. his measured step forward is displayed at Muscat’s Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Completed in 2001, it is the first mosque in the country that non-Muslims are permitted to enter. The staggeringly huge marble edifice of clean, modern lines houses a vast, hand-made carpet that took 600 Iranian women over four years to complete. French stained glass, Austrian Swarovski chandeliers and a tiny machine that cannily blocks cell phone reception for two kilometres firmly refute any misconceptions that Islam is a myopic religion.
But Oman is full of the unexpected. Driving past vast vistas of baking, toffee-coloured scrub, I am jolted out of my seat by what, at first glance, appears to be a mirage. In the interior surrounding Nakhal – a fortress two hours out of Muscat – there are unexpected areas of lushness. Birkat Al Muwz, a village abandoned because of its remote location 25 years ago, is a fine example. It sits in a valley of palm trees whose dates hang heavy from the branches like red light bulbs on a bloated chandelier. Flat-roofed, white-washed houses crouch on the valley floor, which overflows with trees stretching to the middle distance until eventually they lunge into the bottom of the Jebel Akhdar mountain range that rims the horizon like a set of chipped teeth.
At the historic Nakhal, home of the aforementioned warm welcome and a collection of centuries-old firearms of British origin, is the Martini-Henry rifle. The national symbol of the Sultanate, it is an example of Oman’s links with Britain that date back to the 1800s when the two countries entered into several friendship and commerce treaties to safeguard the trade route to India.
The nearby market is full of Ramadan-defying temptation. I stared longingly in the fierce heat at octogenarian traders selling bags of ginger and ground cardamom, honey from acacia trees, contained in old Vimto cordial bottles, sweet potatoes and fleshy pomegranates. It is too hot to haggle, but it is far from expensive to buy any of these goods and keep them in a cool place until evening time, when I can eat with the rest of the Omanis observing Ramadan. I am sure when I dine out this evening, my welcome will be a warm one – in the modern sense.
HOW TO GET
THERE
Gulf Air flies daily from
London to Muscat
www.gulfair.com
Where to stay
Shangri-la Barr Al
Jissah Resort & Spa
www.shangri-la.com
Golden Tulip
Nizwa Hotel
www.goldentulipnizwa.com
Al Nahda Resort & Spa
www.alnahdaresort.com
Grand Hyatt, Muscat
www.muscat.grand.hyatt.com
BIG IDEAS
The Sultan Qaboos
Grand Mosque can hold
up to 20,000 worshippers
and its site covers
40,000sq m.
www.omantourism.gov.om
INSIDE THE MIDDLE EAST
AIRS THURSDAY AT 15:30 AND
19:30; SATURDAY AT 09:30,
15:30 AND 20:30; AND SUNDAY
AT 19:30 (CET).
