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The best stories are in the details

Dreaming of dancing
Fati Umm Hamed

Fatima couldn’t put together the RO20 a month as rent for a shop at Salalah’s Haffa Souq so she moved her wares to the new government-built Al Harfiyeen centre, where she saved RO5 on floor space.

“I make up to RO50 a day during the khareef,” she says, standing in the little cube of a shop crammed with local handicraft and incense. “But I average just a couple of rials the rest of the year.” You can tell: while the older Haffa Souq is an organic mix of shopkeepers, bystanders, tourists and local customers, Harfiyeen is bare and empty. We found Fatima sitting outside her shop, fanning herself in the open courtyard as the late afternoon sun filtered through. “There used to be a lot of tailors here, but they’ve gone away as their business fell through.” Now, Fatima is mostly alone except for a neighbouring shopkeeper she eyeballs, a son who passes by and a husband who works in Muscat.

“We need to promote this souq,” she says in the post-khareef lull. “The government organises group tours and entertainment in Haffa. We need singing and dancing here too.” That just might do the trick. For now, Harfiyeen and Fatima bask in anonymity, off the map, lost in the bleak byroads of the Dhofari capital.

Fatima’s son Hamed stands silently in an undershirt, between the terracotta oil burners and leather key chains that smell of camel hide. He studies in the tenth grade and will eventually help his mother in the shop after finishing his education. With business so bad, though, a future in an unknown market targeting a seasonal market is bleak at best.

Hot off the fire
Sabha and Saida

Beyond the bus stand, past the fish being de-scaled, cut or bought, around the vegetables – this is where you will find Sabha Khalil Rabiya. 50 years old, tucked beneath a voluminous thob, sitting on the floor against a concrete pillar in front of a pot of boiling camel’s milk, Sabha is easy to miss. But over the rich Dhofari home-made cheese that she ladles over to us, a story of resilience and warmth emerges.

Sabha used to work in the Sultan Qaboos Hospital at Salalah, collecting bed sheets, cleaning up. Six years ago, she retired and moved to the government fish and vegetable market, where they gave her a platform two steps above the floor for free. It is here that she cooks her clarified butter from camel’s milk, boiling it in a huge pot. Nothing gets wasted: the heavy cheesy sediment at the bottom gets eaten, and the thick, smooth cream at the top goes to the favourite customers, who get invited to sit down and share stories. The liquid itself goes into plastic bottles that sell for RO5 for about a litre. “People from as far away as Shuwaymiyah come here for my butter,” Sabha insists, although that does seem to be stretching things a bit.

Sabha insists she is the hot favourite in the souq – there might be others who sell the butter but none who prepare it in the market. This means that Sabha’s is fresh from the fire, while others convince you that theirs is straight from home.

In the midst of boiling milk, shouting at the local tea boy and bargaining with her customers, Sabha took Saida under her wing. Saida Ramdan Salim was 36 years old, didn’t have any parents and was without work. “I told her to come with me,” says Sabha, “I would teach her the business, show her a good life. I bought her the vegetables, got her to the shop and taught her how to sell.” That was six years ago. Saida now has work experience, loyal customers and good company. Together, they clock up to RO50 a day during the khareef. While Western tourists might just come to look, it’s the visitors from the rest of the Gulf who buy produce, in addition to the regular local customers.

With no rent, free electricity and a strong product, Sabha and Saida are happy, except for one small detail. The ceiling fan doesn’t work, and so they’ve had to invest in their own floor-mounted ones. And the toilets need cleaning.

One bowl of curry
said bin khali

Said bin Khali has darkened so much over the past 80 years – much of it out at sea – that he easily outdoes the shadows in the little restaurant 200km east of Salalah. As the temperature outside soars through the 40s and the sunlight bounces off waves and corrugated metal roofs, Said sits with a bowl of curry full of bread he has dunked in.

Hasik is as far east as you can get from the capital of Dhofar, but Said comes from the other extreme, from Rakhyut near the border with Yemen. “The abalone diving is better here,” he says, “and so is the frankincense. I left my home 30 years ago and set sail for Hasik. Things were good, with a few misses along the way. My diving partner ran away with my share of the business.”

Said cackles in the cool of the room, against the green plasticky paint on the walls and the Formica tabletop. Outside, children return from school. “My wife died here. I have a daughter who married a man from Mirbat.

Now a widow, she helps with the sardines, drying them in the sun.”

Death in the afternoon
hasik and hadbin

They died more than 800 years ago, buried on a gentle hillock overlooking a wild, aching blue sea in Dhofar’s deep southeast. The village that they came from can still be seen, crumbling stone fragments by the side of the road. The fishing settlements have since moved on, leaving only the remnants along the coast, beyond Ras Nuss where the sea is calm and the fishing unbeatable.

‘Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim,’ reads one, quoting from scripture. ‘She moved from this world to the next. Her name was Milfa bint Abdulla, God be with her.’ Whoever this lady was, she died around 1128, going by the almost indecipherable calligraphy chiselled into the tombstone.

Another one proclaims, ‘Al Haj al Fakir’ (the poor Hajji), Abdullah bin Sa’ad bin Ahmed died on Thursday in Ramadan, in 1137.’

While most details of the graves – and the lives they mark – have been lost over the ages as they bask in the sun, sea wind and anonymity, they do still hold clues. Some of the inscriptions can still be read, typically starting from a quote from the Quran and proceeding to give details like the person’s name, age at death and year they were buried. One of the more interesting details is that the men get two tombstones, one at each end, while the women get three. Many graves also have coral, shells and sea-smoothed stones spread over them.

A kilo of thuraha
musallam bin ahmed

It is late afternoon and fishermen along the coast are returning with the day’s catch. Dispel romantic visions of dhows and locals coming back with dinner. This might be the south easternmost corner of Oman but welcome to the world of expatriate fishermen, local middlemen, ice-packed lorries and so called fish factories that sort the catch and channel it to markets across the world.

Musallam bin Ahmed comes here each afternoon, armed with a clipboard of numbers and a truck of ice. Boats come in, fish come out, accounts are made. One kilogram of a fish called thuraha sells for RO3.400. The more the better. And this afternoon looks good already.

Later, as the coast gets cooler, hundreds of prospectors will dive into the waters west of Hasik, harvesting the abalone that they hope will make them a fortune. Dhofar’s extensive waterfront is expected to churn out more than 40 tonnes of abalone, and at an expected RO75 per kilo it is enough to keep a lot of divers happy till the next season, around November and December. There are unconfirmed reports of local women abalone divers in the area, especially around Hadbin, and we will follow this up when the season starts as it begins to get cooler.

Women and bread
muna

One of the more humble offerings from Dhofar is the brittle bread that the locals call khalib – and outsiders insist on nicknaming ‘Salalah bread.’ While the latter might lack imagination, the product itself is as close to perfection as you can get. Slapped against the walls in a tunnel of an oven dug into the ground, the thin bread takes minutes to bake – and is good to eat for days after, with a distinct taste that keeps you munching for hours.

Women around Salalah usually bake khalib at home, and some sell it, so it is really through word of mouth that you will find it. But perhaps the most interesting part is not the bread itself, but the seasoned, character-laden ladies who bake it. Far away from the camera-shy women from the further reaches of the country, these women are fearless with visitors and full of stories.

Even the bread in Dhofar contains some of the cultural complexity that comes with the region. Look closely at a disc of khalib and you will see the pattern of ridges and dots superimposed in the dough. Although such garnish adds nothing by way of taste, this is for art’s sake. The women take the soft dough off a plate and slap each one on a terracotta disk a couple of inches thick, with the pattern across one convex side. Once on, the dough is tapped over the bass relief with a hairbrush and its spikes. Barely a minute later, it is ready for the oven.

Muna is one such lady: she has smeared her face with an organic mask to protect it from the heat of the oven as she bends into it with the soft dough. While her husband is out at sea fishing, she supplements the family income with about RO40 a month – a good time to bake bread.

When the sands weep
ramlathashman

As the temperature in the Empty Quarter rises above the 40s and hits the stratosphere, horizons disappear into mirages, minds begin to wander and dunes weep sand. It happens when something in the sand gives way in the heat – perhaps the moisture content. And that’s when you will find the tear-like streaks at the edge of a sand dune. With all the delicateness of a dried tear stain – or the nuances of moving sand – this might be the biggest event in a landscape of endless nothingness that is splayed out across thousands of kilometres and three countries: Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Mystery beach
beyond mughsayl

The best part about the deserted beach that you cannot see from the road and that is accessible either from the sea or after an hour or so of hiking – is just that it boasts of all these points.

It is probably around a curve or two of cliff from Mughsayl, where every tourist goes, which means that it is completely isolated by the dramatic cliffs that are framed in most tourist postcards.

High up on the slopes above Mughsayl, along the Salalah-Sarfayt road, is a patch of parking from where you can enjoy the view. Walk up the ridge and you will see a path leading down, towards the isolated patch of water. All around are little plants characteristic of Dhofar’s khareef outpouring. We haven’t tried the route down yet, but hope to in the future. It might not be as easy as it sounds – you’ll have to make your way down the slopes of the mountain, navigating the rock face and wadi below. Watch this space – we’ll let you know how it goes over future issues.

Looking for baobabs
wadihanna

Are there baobabs in Wadi Hanna? And, perhaps before that, what is a baobab and where is Hanna? You will find some answers and a lot more questions east of Salalah, between Taqah and Mirbat. It is here that Wadi Hanna is supposed to run under the road, and it is in Hanna that you will supposedly find the only baobabs in the Middle East.

The baobab is a tree like no other: it is massive, with a fantastic trunk that tapers to the top. It can store up to 120,000 litres in a trunk that can reach ten metres in diameter. The baobab is found in mainland Africa, Madagascar and Australia – and allegedly Wadi Hanna. We haven’t seen it yet but will look for it later this month and let you know how it goes.