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February 05 The post office where you can't post anything My Uncle Sid is dying. He's my favourite uncle, doesn't deserve to die, but he is: the prostate cancer has spread. It's his birthday this month: inevitably his last. He's not into computers and he's not online. So, I wanted to send him a final birthday card. I went to a lot of trouble choosing the right card in a greetings card store in Muscat, the capital of Oman, because getting the right card with the right words was important. I went to my local post office, here in Salalah, to post the card at 3.10pm, but it had closed for the day. There were no opening times anywhere to be seen so when it was open was anybody's guess. Opening hours in Oman vary considerably from one place to another and nobody seems too sure when any of them are. So, you just have to keep turning up at the door and hope that one day you'll find the place open. It's a hit and miss affair. So, the next day, I went back to the post office at 1.50pm. It was closed. I wasn't going to give up. I tried again the next day at 12.50 pm. The post office was open ! I smiled, almost punched the air. My uncle was going to get his birthday card. I walked in with a big smile still on my face. I hesitated for a moment. The post office, a large grey concrete building, seemed deserted. Then I noticed a clerk at one of the counters. He was staring down at the counter as if he didn't want to be seen. I gave a polite 'Assalamualaikum" greeting, put the card, in its neatly addressed envelope, on the counter and told him, in Arabic, that it was to go to England. He grunted, picked his nose, rubbed his face and generally procrastinated. Then, an Omani man walked in. The clerk turned to him and they chatted for five minutes. The gist of the conversation was that he couldn't deal with the paperwork the Omani man presented him with. He then proceeded to give lengthy convoluted directions to where he thought the Omani man should go. The Omani man left. The post office clerk glanced down at the birthday card in front of him and seemed annoyed that it was still there. Anyway, he decided to ignore it and started shuffling papers without actually looking at them. Then another Omani man walked in. The same thing happened all over again. The clerk proceeded to explain why he couldn't do anything to help him and sent him on his way with complicated directions, which seemed to end up somewhere in the Empty Quarter. After the second man had left, the clerk and I looked down at the birthday card once more. He asked me, 'Where is it for?' I told him again, 'England.' He shuffled some more papers. Then he opened and closed some drawers. He started to look under some of the papers and even under his tea cup. He picked his nose and rubbed his face again, which made me look away. There was a silence of perhaps one minute in which I guessed he was hoping another Omani would come in whom he could also tell to politely go away. Then, when no one else appeared, he for a brief moment almost made eye contact with me and said, 'No stamps.' I asked him, in a quiet, slightly tense voice, 'Where can I buy a stamp?  He replied, with a shrug of the shoulders, 'I don't know.' As I left, I noticed the sign above his head. It said, in both English and Arabic, 'Stamps.' January 30 A Tomb with a View Salalah is famous for its tombs of famous religious figures. There is for example, next to Lulu supermarket, the tomb of the father of the Virgin Mary, although there is the possibility that it might not be. But, nils deperandum, as it is said that, if he wasn't the father of the Virgin Mary, then he must have been the father of Moses (or somebody good anyway). I guess you could say this tomb has killed two birds with one stone. The sarcophagus is 33 m long, so there is plenty of room for conjecture. One there is little doubt about (well, there is a little, as he has another tomb in Lebanon) is Job's tomb. This is the mausoleum of Job of the Old
Testament, known as the Prophet Ayub in the Koran. He is probably best
known for the misquote "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Both the Bible and the Koran say that he was an enormously rich man whose wealth was taken from him, and who was afflicted with a terrible skin disease, but he never despaired, remained loyal to God and was eventually rewarded by being made even richer and restored to full health. Hence the idiomatic expression, to be as patient as Job. By the way, what Job actually said, according to the Bible, was, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." His simple tomb is on a pretty hilltop, with great views of Salalah, the coast and the surrounding countryside. Another very nice tomb is on just off the road to Mirbat. This is the tomb of Mohammed bin Ali Al-Alawi, a descendant of the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, who set up a madrassa (religious school) in Mirbat and died here in 1161. This abundance of nice tombs has given rise to tomb tourists: little groups of people who tour the tombs in taxis.   January 26 Living in La La LandThere is a beautiful African Paradise Flycatcher that sits on a branch outside my window, deserted beaches where I swim with dolphins, there are storks and eagles in the mountains, banana, papaya and coconut plantations by the roadsides, camels wandering along the roads, a sultan's palace and a frankincense souq. It is said that the Queen of Sheba once had a palace here too. Where am I? You might think I must be living in La La Land, but this place is for real and I'm living in Salalah.
Not many people outside the Arabian Peninsula seem to know about Salalah, except for a few Swedish tourists who fly down here for the winter sun, the occasional group of birdwatchers, and the migrant workers from Kerala and the Philippines who work in the shops, hotels and restaurants.
So, where, you might ask, is this place? Well, it stands on the north-western shore of the Indian Ocean, a two-hour drive from the Yemeni border and a twelve hour drive, through the Dhofar mountains and across the desert, to Muscat. It is an area known as the Land of Frankincense and it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The city reached its peak in the 12th century, when it traded with Africa, India and China. Its major export was frankincense, but it also traded Arabian horses and gold. During the 14th century it was still a major trading port, when it was visited by Ibn Battuta.
To be contd.
 
January 22 Photo competitionI've just entered an AirMiles photo competition. The theme is 'People in Faraway Places' and as I've taken photos of a lot of people in a lot of faraway places, I thought, why not give it a go? The problem is you are only allowed to submit one photo.  Finally, I decided on this portrait of an Afghan refugee girl, called Fatimah, I met outside a bazaar in Iran. She has a haunting kind of beauty that perhaps, like Sharbat Gula's, Steve McCurry's famous Afghan Girl with Green Eyes in National Geographic, won't stand the rigors of time, but I hope I've captured it forever in this picture. I discovered, by chance, that an Italian children's charity is already using it on their website, without asking my permission, but as it's a charity, I don't mind. In fact, I'll even give them a bit of publicity: Il Paese dei Bambini che sorridono Trip to the Big CityI like living in Salalah. It has a beautiful location between palm-fringed beaches, banana and coconut plantations and the Dhofar Mountains. But, it is a relatively small city and so there are some things it just doesn't have. I flew up to Muscat for a meeting this week and after it had finished I had a few hours to spare and went to the Muscat City Centre shopping mall. I felt like a boy from the sticks, awestruck by the amazing variety of things on sale. There was a Borders bookstore, with thousands of English books - something you just cannot find in Salalah. I bought five: 'The Time Traveler's Wife', 'The Alchemist', 'No Country for Old Men' 'On Chesil Beach' and 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush'. I was looking for 'The Book Thief', but they didn't stock it. Perhaps they thought it might encourage shoplifting. There was also a massive Carrefour, full of goodies, from which I bought, amongst other things, some fresh pasta. It's amazing the things you take for granted, like books and pasta, when you are in your home country.
December 04 A picture which appeared to be all left that turned out to be all rightLooking through my photos of Nicaragua, I came across this one, which I'd initially discarded as a totally unbalanced composition, but then I stopped and really LOOKED at it. For all the things that are happening on the left - the indigenous fresco of a man with a crocodile head, the precious transaction in the ramshackle stall which needs to be shielded from public view, the young woman walking so fast to a destination which  makes her feel very anxious, the little girl who's escaped from her too small shoes, the baby left in a hotel doorway - the one that speaks of human warmth, is there on the right: the pink baseball cap placed on a fire hydrant in the hope that whoever dropped it will see it. September 23 An Englishman in OmanI have now moved to Oman so my space has yet another new name: An Englishman in Oman.
August 31 I'm getting there I guess everybody has an ambition at some stage in his or her life. Mine, for as long as I can remember, was a vague ambition to see the world. As I began to travel, this solidified into something more concrete: an ambition to visit 100 countries and live in 20 of them. Well, I am, at last, closing in on my goal. Tomorrow I am flying to Oman, which will be the 93rd country I've visited and the 18th I've lived and worked in. So, then what am I going to do? Well, I'm planning to write a book about it. It's certainly been a long way to go just to get material for a book.  August 08 Buenos Aires - City of Passion I think most people who visit Buenos Aires wish they could live there forever - I did. May 07 Caught in a Riot I spent a month travelling around Peru. It is one of the most interesting countries in the world. While I was there, I saw a fair amount of political unrest and my travels were interrupted by demonstrations and riots and on one occasion the bus I was on was "hijacked". Well, to be precise it was surrounded by demonstrators who put rocks and burning tyres round the bus so it couldn't move. Eventually, after one of the demonstrators had been killed by riot police, the bus was allowed to continue. One point of interest: while I was waiting by the side of the road, I ate a guinea pig. It wasn't very nice. December 13 Moldova MOLDOVAN FACT OF THE DAY: 90 % of Moldovans want to leave Moldova. Why 90% ???? The other 10 % have already left. December 08 The Tallest Christmas Tree in Europe The tallest Christmas tree in Europe is in Bucharest and I've seen it! Whoopeee!!! To tell you the truth, it's a bit of a disappointment as it's not a real tree, just a conical metal frame with lights stuck on it. Here are some of the mind-blowing, or mind-numbing, (depending on how much you're into giant Christmas trees) stats: It is 76 metres high, as high as a 21-storey
skyscraper, 26 metres in diameter, weighs 290 tons and is covered with
an incredible 2.4 million lights. 25 lorries were needed to
transport the tree, which took two months and 300
people to erect. For those of you who haven't already booked your flights to Bucharest to see it, here is a photo of it so you can see what it would look like if it were only a few centimetres high: April 25 Flying to BenghaziI'm flying from Tripoli to Benghazi tomorrow. Locals tell me that its the smelliest city in Libya: something to do with the high water table affecting the sewage system. I'll let you know if that's true when I get back. I have a meeting there on Saturday, but will have Friday free to explore the ancient city of Cyrene, which is between Benghazi and the Egyptian border. One thing Libya is great for is ruins. May 16 Life in DaejeonI have been here in Korea for nearly three months now. The fact that everything here was initially so new and different was offset by the fact that there was a massive language barrier between me and the local people. Learning Korean has been a priority since I arrived. I have a class once a week, which helps to keep me studying and every time I see a Korean course for beginners I buy it! I have FIVE now. Well, anyway, last night I saw the fruits of my labour, or rather I ate them. I ordered my first home delivery meal from a local restaurant, by phone, all in Korean and they actually understood what I was saying! 이 은 |
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