A fairyland on the go
The tour through Oman starts with a henna artist ...
A flower, leaves, buds like tears, thickly applied or gossamer. Flowers that connect to tendrils, potted pollen. So Sumya paints the henna, filigree, swinging and full of fantasy. Every woman in the port district of Muscat knows her, because henna is the most beautiful jewelery of an Omani woman and Sumya, 22, his best artist. She lives at the back door of the Mutrah Souk, sharing her room with the young women of the family. Tiles on the floor, Arabic motifs on them, no windows, neon lights under the ceiling. Two mattresses on the wall, one of which is her sister's bed, the other that of her pregnant sister-in-law, who is now rolling out her prayer-mat and mumbling her evening prayer.
The room is cold as the light. But then Sumya starts to paint. I have admired the henna in many women, but never seen how it is applied. Henna happens in secret, good henna is not a service, it is something personal, something that grows with time. That's why I went to Sumya because she takes the time.
She grips my hand, stroking light skin, as if henna needed intimacy to prepare. She looks closely, is silent, then she cuts the tip of the blue syringe bag and begins below the index finger. We can not talk, Sumya can not speak English, and Ibrahim, our guide and translator, can not enter the women's room.
The henna burns as it moves in, after an hour Sumya scratches the green, cold threads with scissors, rubs Vaseline into the skin, my hands look strange, but the drawings are beautiful. Thank you Sumya, she already grabs the next bag of henna and starts to paint her left hand with her right hand.
Muscat is probably the cleanest city in the world. Dirty cars to drive, throw away tilting - all prohibited, at 500 euros penalty, at least. Oman is a sultanate, and the sultan abhors chaos. Even the old town has been cleared away, instead of decay there are glowing water features and polished promenades on which women go for an evening walk without disguising their faces. We watch the lovers go hand in hand, it would be unthinkable in the countryside. In its orderly manner, Muscat is almost rampant. There are bars where you can get a beer, and luxury hotels, whose spaciousness guarantees discretion. There are women in black robes, the Abayas, with a laptop under their arms. And at the university, a men's quota regulates equal opportunities.
Is this the everyday life in Oman, the Arab modernity: successful women who depend on the men? Is this change consistent with tradition and belief - or both? We ask Ibrahim, he says, "Ask the women themselves." And lets play his contacts.
... leads to a new generation of women
"We are a new generation of women," says Noor Hussain Al-Moosa, 34, bank manager. "We have been raised independently, have learned to trust us." She is married, has two children, a voluptuous woman who shoots out her answers as if there is nothing to reconsider in her life.
Noor Hussain Al-Moosa lives in the embassy and villa district of Qurum, which is a bit more well-kept than the rest of Muscat. We meet her during her lunch break at her aunt's house, convenient for her, it's near the bank. The living room looks like an exhibition space for Arabic kitsch, dolls in frilly dresses stand there, artificial flowers and family pictures in lush surroundings.
We sink deep into the upholstered furniture, and Noor Hussain Al-Moosa tells of the team she leads, most of the men, all older than her. "It's easy," she says. "You just have to make everyone feel that you take their ideas seriously." Problems? None. "Equality is the result of the upswing here: life in Oman is expensive, everyone wants to own more, that's our luck, men want wives who make money, two salaries are welcome in every family," she says. "We women are planning our careers exactly, we're not getting our children in front of 27, 28. And it's our fathers who encourage us to learn a profession, I do not believe any woman anymore, that she's being forced into marriage by her father . "
She beats her legs, just looks at us, "Any questions?" Then pulls out her card, handshake. She pricks, looks at my hand closely. "Beautiful henna," she says and smiles appreciatively.
... to a contradictory story
Some things seem contradictory in this country, still unbalanced, at least if you look with Western eyes. Until 1970, Oman was as in the Middle Ages, there were hardly any roads, schools, hospitals.Clan conflicts were handled with the rifle. And within less than 40 years, the Oman has become the Arab flagship country, relentlessly on the upswing. Education and medical care are free, no Omani pays taxes. On the other hand, there are no parties or trade unions, which is especially felt by the almost illegitimate guest workers from India and Pakistan, every fifth of the 2.8 million inhabitants comes from abroad. The fact that Oman is considered safe, almost free from fanaticism and crime, is mainly due to his huge, watchful bureaucracy.
Above all, the Sultan wakes up, he is considered moderate, purposeful, he invests the oil millions in the construction of the country, without making it a second Dubai. He hates everything swanky. The Omani respect him for that. Maybe that's the secret: that things exist together, side by side. Like the tropical rain forest next to the desert.
In Salalah, more than a thousand miles away, in the arrivals hall of the airport, there are warnings: "Take care when driving in fog, keep your distance." Check your wiper blades. "
Windscreen wipers in Oman.
Desert, rocks, rugged land, in the wadis, palm-fringed dry valleys, which lead only after the heavy winter rains water - so we had learned to know the country. But in the south, in the Dhofar region, the monsoon, which is called Khareef here, works. He sets the coast under water in spring and leaves it green until late summer. Misty rivers, fertile slopes - a bizarre appearance in the Omani bleakness.
... to the tropical side of Oman
To see the tropical Oman, we accept the summer heat. It is 50 degrees inland, in the Rub-al-Kahli desert, which soon begins behind Salalah - the world's largest sand desert, some dunes hundreds of meters high. Our Land Rover is air conditioned, for the movies we have a cool box, we have käppis with a wide shade that give shade to the nose and 60 + -Sonnenschutz.
Maybe a higher power had its own plans with this country ...
Well, we did not have rubber boots, of course, we would have needed, in the high, humid grass of the Wadis Darbat, 30 kilometers east of Salalah. A haunted piece of land, waterfalls burst from the limestone walls, mist over it, fine rain. We stand by the river, mosquitoes rise like black balls, I step on a giant frog, which takes off immediately. The rainforest begins before us, banyan figs bend under heavy tendrils to a thicket, a magic forest, what is in it, he keeps secret.
I hear pigeons cooing and bulbuls, little nightingales. I hear hyenas and wildcats, their sounds are distant and barely distinguishable. Unheard of, this place is also scary, unbelievable. As if a higher power had pursued its own plans with this piece of land and would no longer reveal why. Ibrahim tells what a spectacle it is when hundreds of camels at the same time step with great calm on the lush riverbank and drink.
We slither down the wet ground with our desert sandals, mud splashes with every step. Khareef, this is a festival for tourists from all over Arabia. If you have time and money, come here. One wishes "Happy Khareef!", Family fathers photograph their veiled women with child in their arms against the green backdrop, then they picnic behind their Land Rovers and enjoy the breather.
... and no longer reveal their secret.
In the evening they go to the incense market, because Dhofar is the incense land and the souk in Salalah famous for its thousand scents. The traders rent out the roofs of their stalls, where those from far away will sleep in the open air.
Some shops are packed to the ceiling, and the incense is stored in instant coffee glasses or plastic bags.
Others are elegant, the sales counter made of dark wood, the luxury resins in glass containers issued. In Salalah there are the most expensive and best essences, dark, heavy, sweet or fruity, and the best mixers, old women with frankincense-dark fingers. They are constantly throwing pressed glittering lumps or black bark into their burners and fanning the smoke, we are sniffing, but the sales are made by the female Oomani women who know their way around, who can shed nuances, ask questions or wave their girlfriends around at the end to buy a selection of everything.
... to the desert
The fertile land ends abruptly a few kilometers behind Salalah, ten meters are between green and gray. The drizzle gets finer, the windscreen wipers distribute the last drops. Then announces the Rub al-Kahli, the "Empty Quarter", a gigantic sand carpet that covers a quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. It begins as a gray panel land, bare boulders on either side of the road. In the car is a cassette with Indian pop, on it a Hindi version of the Celentano classic "Sono Italiano", we sing along at the chorus in a fantasy Indian, scratched, we sing a bit against the queasy feeling of not knowing how it will be.The desert is a place to be thrown into.
The sand trickles with every step like water.
We leave the solid road at the first red sand dunes. In the distance dark spots emerge that become camels, their outlines are out of focus in the hot air. They are almost black, the desert sun has scorched their fur. We get out, the sand is hot, it is strangely quiet, no movement, our excitement is astonished. Something white shimmers under the sand. It is a skull. I look closer. We are standing on a camel cemetery. The sand has washed the bones of the dead animals white, as in a last love service. Only the Bedouins know this place, they bring their camels to die here.
We drive on, looking for a place for the night, sand is simply sand for us, everything looks the same. But Ibrahim says at some point, "It's good here." In a hollow, we set up the tents, and the sun, sinking deeper, draws contours on the ground with its shadows: a fuselage, the Great Wall of China, a boat. Then everyone goes for themselves. The sand trickles with every step like water, and it casts waves and whitecaps. Dragonflies and bees with huge, white wings clank the few dry scrub like nanobots. The desert is a huge carpet, now moonlit.
Most families are now settled.
We roll out a large mat, peel potatoes, cut vegetables, cook everything and then wash the plates with sand. Ibrahim pours coffee and tells of Yemeni gangsters who sometimes come to the camps at night and steal the jeeps to sell them on the Saudi border. We listen to engines coming closer, but there's nothing. Then we look up, lying on our backs, in the sky. At night, at 35 degrees. Until all uncertainty passes and makes room for a deep trust in this strange world of stars and sand. We only go to the tent to keep the scorpions away.
The sultan built desert villages for the Bedouins of Rub al-Kahli, most families are now settled, earning their living as teachers or in administration. Like ghost villages, the places look like, now in the hot morning, satellite dishes on every rooftop, aligned as if they were receiving messages from the cloudless sky that only they can decipher.
In the middle of nowhere we find a green tent. A man comes towards us wearing a white undershirt and a scarf tied around his hips. Nead Ahmad, 24, is from Peshawar, Pakistan, and has lived in Oman for three years. The seclusion of his camp is overwhelming.
He makes us tea, tea with camel milk, which is sweet and thin. As he talks, he is constantly touching his sternum with his hand. He guards the camels of a rich man from Hashman, 40 kilometers from here. The camels, 55 animals, good condition, are an expression of the prosperity of this man. In Nead Ahmad they express his hope for the time after. He earns 240 euros a month. He has not spent a dime, he saves to find a bride in Pakistan soon. Until then, his life is this green tent.
At five in the morning he gets up, prays, milks the camels, cooks his rice in the watery camel's milk, makes bread or makes a conserve with vegetables, mostly green beans. Then he feeds the young camels and drives the herd further. Or he gets water from a sulfur spring nearby, warm, foul-smelling water, sulfur stinks. Whether he feels lonely? Or just being alone? He says, "I'm not asking myself that." Once a big, glittering beetle digs a hole in the sand next to my tent, but it keeps on trickling down and pours everything back in, and the beetle does a job without any benefit. Maybe to survive in the desert, not to ask for meaning, or to sense in patience is to practice.
... and ends with Henna and a brave woman
Your henna is very beautiful, "says Hanan." For me, henna means joie de vivre. You know, "she says," tomorrow school will start again. I'm going to take henna to celebrate the end of the holidays. "Hanan Saleh Mubark Alzedjaly, 28, a geography and home economics teacher, lives in the city of Sur on the eastern tip of Oman, the village where she teaches, Al Kamil She is 60 kilometers away, she goes there every morning with a shared taxi.Her students are still under the influence of their parents.Hanan is a small, cheerful person, she never goes to work without makeup.'I want the country girl Model, "she says," encouraging her to become self-confident. "The headmaster asked her to come clean-faced, saying no.
Hanan loves beauty, and she loves the beauty salon in Sur's women's souk, with its flacons, saffron and incense pastes. We go there, on the last day of the summer holidays. "When I'm happy," she says, "I look for scents that express that." She lets creams drip on her skin, from shop assistants who are veiled to under the kohl black eyes. She buys henna and glitter particles for the skin.She says, "Ten, fifteen years ago divorced women like me would have been hiding."
Her husband had been jealous of her son, beating her when she spent time with the boy, beating her more after her daughter was born three years later. He locked her up and she fled to her mother. Hanan wanted the divorce, the bride price, a good 5,000 euros, she paid back - he is a kind of bail, which is due when the contract, ie the marriage, is dissolved. The children stayed with her and her husband had to pay for her.
Now she lives in a big house, laid out with red carpet, together with her mother, the children, an uncle and a maid. The house bought her from her salary and from her inheritance, her father died early. She sits in the hallway, the size of the room, smoking incense and sometimes catching one of her kids, who are frantically wrestling on the carpet. Hanan never scolds. She only hugs her children. Can she imagine a new relationship? "There are applicants," she said, "but this time it should be perfect."
Life in Sur starts at six in the morning at the beach when fishermen drop anchor with their old wooden sailing boats, the Dhaus. After a short night on board, they shake their blankets, cat men, who move nimbly on deck, toes clawed into the planks. Motor boats bring their catch to the beach, coral fish, tuna, kingfish, shark. Local boys grab the fish by the fins and throw them on piles, which the dealers then load into the cool-down tanks of their pick-ups to drive them to Dubai. We sit in the vicinity of the old men of Sur, their walking sticks have laid them in the sand, they smile at us, watch how we trade, how to trade with a few gestures. The sun rises behind the rippled clouds, and for a moment the beach is bathed in a twilight. As if modernity held its breath and Oman fell back to the time when the merchants of Sur sailed to India with their ornately decorated dhows, incense on board. And henna, maybe.
Travel info
expeditions in the Dhofar incense region and in the Hadjar-ash-Sharqi mountains in the north from 2595 euros, dates on request.
Hotel travel to Sur, into the desert, to old fortresses and modern Muscat from 2220 Euro, dates on request.
Providers: Nomad, Tel. 065 91/949 98-0, www.nomad-reisen.de
