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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.' TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://iwys.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!AB8BD1FA0ACF51BB!810.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
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