Time magazine’s Gaddafi cover is really cool.
A interesting video combining the final speech from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator with images of the Arab spring (mostly in Egypt it looks like), from peop1e.
Ok people, this is getting ridiculous. How is that the IDF can kill children throwing rocks across fences and get away with it? Murdering innocent Palestinian children seems to the latest fad over there, if not standard operating procedure. How is this acceptable?!? Yes, I realize that the…
While I agree somewhat with the sentiment of my good friend RienDire’s argument, her argument is in my opinion somewhat misfocused. The actual issue at hand when we consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an issue of nationalism. Zionism, and therefore Israel, is both the product of, and is continually sustained by, the only notable nationalist movement by Jews of any nation. This nationalist movement is also unique in that while the vast majority of nationalist movements involve the majority population of a geographic area coming to the consensus that they are one homogeneous people and that the geographic area is the homeland of that people, i.e., that there is some sort of intrinsic connection between those people and that area of land. The Jewish nationalist movement, on the other hand, was led by the minority Jewish population of various geographic areas, originally, mainly from eastern Europe, but joined later by Jews from all over the west and also the middle east. This particular nationalist narrative states that the Jews are one nation, and that their homeland is, naturally, the land of Palestine. The Palestinian national narrative, on the other hand, is basically reactionary to this Zionist narrative, and this reflects the fact that there was no notion of a “Palestinian nation” until the Arabs of Palestine began realizing that their country was being taken over by Jews. Before this point, these Arabs likely thought of themselves as citizens of the Ottoman empire, and then, perhaps briefly, citizens of the new Syrian nation. When Israel was founded and subsequently fought its war of independence, this Arab population was caught in the middle. The reactionary Palestinian nationalist narrative states basically that Arabs currently living in Palestine and Arabs who fled Palestine since the war of independence are a nation, and that their homeland is the land of Palestine. So now there are two diametrically opposed nationalist narratives, both claiming the same lands, although the division of Israel and Palestine dictated that both have a claim only to part of the land of Palestine, though this has proved to be an uneasy and unsatisfactory solution for both sides. Currently, Israel is maintaining a policy of slow destruction of the Palestinian state through settlements, refusal to allow the return of refugees, and denial of Palestinian statehood. This is because these two nationalist narratives are mutually exclusive. Other times that this kind of situation where differing nationalist narratives claim the same area the result is usually civil war or genocide: quicker, more violent ways to end a nationalist movement. Though the result will likely be the same, the Israelis are taking the slow approach. Eventually, we will see if Palestine ever receives true statehood, or if this nationalist movement will be slowly suffocated.
Last couple of days in Oman
So I’m back in America now but I figure I might as well write about my last couple of days. Wednesday was our last day of classes at the center. All the flights from muscat to Europe go out at night, so we had most of Thursday free. Mahmood happened to be getting married on Thursday, so he invited me to come up to Niswa for his engagement ceremony. So around 11 a couple of his friends from muscat picked me up on their way out to niswa.
Mahmood is there to my right (you should probably be able to spot me…) along with his friends Abdullah, Abdullah, Mohamed, and Haythan. Mahmood’s got the full Omani dress on, the dishdasha robe worn with a khanjar dagger and the small turban, called a massar. And also a sword. The wedding ceremony was probably one of the most straightforward I’ve ever been to: at around 1:00, we and all of Mahmood’s male relatives, and probably most of the other men from his village, gathered in a building next to the mosque. Then what I suppose must have been the Imam of the mosque had Mahmood sit in front of him and said a speech over him, some parts of which Mahmood repeated. From what I gathered it was basically a pronouncement of his marriage. Then, once that finished, platters of rice and roast beef were brought on and everyone ate lunch. There may have been more after this, but we just stopped to get pictures and then left. The whole thing lasted no more than two hours.
Notice that the bride was not involved at all. She and the women have their own ceremony, which I’ve heard involves more of a party than the men’s side of the wedding. Apparently they can do the women’s celebration some time later.
Anyway after that we headed back to muscat, stopping to get lost for awhile when Mohamed mentioned that there’s a supernatural cave somewhere near the road from nizwa to muscat. Remember the story of the prophet Moses, and how when he went to get the ten commandments, he returned to find everyone worshiping a golden calf? Apparently that golden calf is in Oman. In this cave. But when anybody goes in the cave their electronics stop working and then other mysterious phenomena scare them into leaving.
Anyway when Mohamed mentioned this Abdullah, who was driving, decided we should go check it out. But like I said we didn’t find it and just got lost for awhile. We did find some cool ruins though.
Then I got back to muscat, packed up, said ma’a salaama to my host family, and went to the airport for the flight back to the states.
Foood
So I thought maybe I should talk about some of the foodstuffs I’ve been having the last couple of weeks. The thing about “Omani Food” is that it exists, but muscat is too cosmopolitan for it to actually be available. Zanzibari food, Pakistani food, Indian food, Yemeni food, Sri Lankan food, Turkish food, Levantine food, sure, but no really Omani food. Besides dates.
Aisha, who is Sri Lankan, makes lunch at the center about half the time and the rest of the time the center orders from a local restaurant. Sri Lankan food seems to consist mostly of rice served sometimes with a flaky flatbread called chipati and various mixes of vegetables, chicken, fish or mutton in different sauces.
At the host house I’ve been getting what I assume is Zanzibari food, and we’ve also had that at the center. The Zanzibari food seems to be similar to Sri Lankan only somewhat less spicy, and with more vegetables, lots of tomatoes, spinach, and potatoes. They also have less rice and more chipati. It’s good food for the most part.
Street food in muscat is really great too, it’s usually Turkish or Levatine food. There are tons of small restaurants that are all called “coffee shops” and may or may not actually serve coffee. There’s typically a guy in the front making shwerma, which is like a piece of arabic flatbread with hummus, chicken or lamb, vegetables and hot sauce wrapped up to go, and maybe another guy making kebab. There are usually tables set up on the street for men to sit at (women are expected to go inside to the restaurant’s “family area” which in practice means “no bachelors section”.) Some of the larger places have a full menu with various Turkish and Levantine dishes.
At more traditional restaurants, and at a couple of Omani homes we’ve visited, the most common dish has been a big plate of rice and vegetables, with grilled chicken on top, served with a kind of yoghurt-y sauce. It’s pretty good but difficult to eat with your hands. I’ve been told that this is pretty similar to some pakistani dishes and Yemeni food.
There’s also a lot of fresh fruit juices here. Mango is pretty common, either in a kind of smoothie form or more of a juice form. There’s another common juice that I think is a kind of pomegranate/grape sort of mix, and also lemonade and mint is pretty good.
The only truly “Omani” foods we’ve had are dates and halwa. Dates are, as I may have previously mentioned, pretty much alright. Halwa basically means “sweet stuff” and is used around the Arab world to mean a variety of sweets, but Omani halwa and is this kind of gelatinous, honey flavored confection that has nuts and spices in it. The texture is kind of weird, and the flavor is just kind of alright. Until John pointed out how much it tastes kind of like sweet barbecue sauce. Then you just don’t really want to be eating a large blob of gelatinous barbecue sauce anymore.
Anyway coming back to America on Friday.
Some pictures from Salalah.
Salalah trip
We’ve seen a lot of Muscat and the northern region of Oman, but the southern dhofar region is totally different. Salalah, the capital of the region, is a tourist destination for many Omanis and others from around the gulf this time of year because the monsoon brings rain and cooler temperatures to dhofar and makes salalah basically tropical.
Originally, we thought there wasn’t time in the program for a trip to salalah, but we discussed it with the administration and we decided that although Sultan et. al were busy this weekend, we could just go ourselves for the weekend. So we arranged for a hotel and plane tickets, and flew down last Wednesday night.
That evening we met with Yarob, a young guy who has worked with the center in the past. He arranged for a bus and driver for the weekend. That night we checked out the cultural festival that’s held in salalah during this season, ate some local foods and confections, heard traditional music, and saw some traditional dances.
The next day our driver took us up into the mountains above Salalah, stopping at some spectacular sea cliffs along the way. Dhofar looks like the rest of Oman, dry and rocky. But the monsoon reason brings heavy fog and rain to Dhofar for three months during the summer. For which the mountains look like Ireland.
We visited Wadi Darbat, one of the famous areas in the region, then headed back to Al-Husn Souq in Salalah, where tradtional song and dance was again on display. Then in the evening some of us met Yarob for a barbecue. This was a bit wierd because he chose some random spot in the desert next sort of near a highway. But it was great, our driver Salim grilled some of the best sheesh kabob I’ve ever had and Yarob taught us how to dance some of the traditional dances we’d been seeing.
Then at 12:30 at night the highway was taken over by a convoy of huge trucks, each one carrying some sort armored military transport. It was all completely unmarked and the trucks were covered, so we were a bit confused, but Yarob explained to us that this was US military hardware moving form Salalah’s port to the military base in the Dhofar region, in preparation for deployment in Iraq. This was surreal. Here we are, a group of Americans, confused and surprised by our own military’s logistics. I had no idea that there was an American presence in southern Oman, or really Oman at all. It’s just a bit weird to have a foreigner explain some aspect of your own government’s activities to you.
Anyway the next morning we went out to what is considered to be the prophet Jobe’s tomb. A bit unexpected but interesting nonetheless. Then we went down to a part of the Salalah coastline. The waves this time of year are pretty crazy and swimming at any of the beaches is basically impossible, but we went out to this interesting headland where the waves are so strong that they’ve cut caves into the bottom of the cliffs. When a big wave comes water can spray in geysers out the top of the cliffs. Certainly different, and the coastline here is spectacular.
After that we headed back to Salalah and caught our return flight back to Muscat.
Land Lottery
I mentioned this before, but we talked about it today in class and it’s pretty unique, so I think I’m going to elaborate on it a little.
I don’t know the official name for this, but by law, any Omani citizen over the age of 21 can apply to receive a 600 meter square plot of empty land, for which they pay a 100 rial fee. This system originally applied only to men, but since a few years ago it has been extended to women also.What I didn’t realize before is that this is literally a lottery: when your application is processed, you go to the office of the wali (local governor) and pick a land deed out of a big rotating drum.
The land that’s available is just empty land owned by the government, not out in the middle of the desert, but more than likely in just some random place. Sultan pointed out the land he got when we passed it on the way to sur. It was just some empty rocky patch by the side of the road in the mountains.
In theory, this land is for building a house, but in practice, it’s more often sold. If it happens to be in a good place, say, in a nice area of muscat, it can be sold to developers for thousands of rials. Most people don’t get an excellent place though, and just sell it to a real estate company. There are, however, loans available from the government for building a house, so if the land is in a fairly good spot or if the person is bit of a pioneer they do settle there.
Ustadh Saif explained this system to us, and then asked if there was any way to buy land from the government in America. He was a bit taken aback when we explained that there really isn’t. Here in Oman the vast majority of land is just empty, and before 1970, it just belonged to the Sultan, and so in practice it belonged to nobody. Then after Sultan Qaboos came to power he began this system to distribute land to the people. It’s a bit weird actually to think about, but the entire state of Pennsylvania, and therefore the land that I live on, was owned privately since it was given to William Penn by the king of England to settle a debt. Sure, the both the national and state government own land, but nobody can buy it from them, much less have it given to them by the government.
Also I’m going to be in Salalah for the weekend and I don’t think I’ll bring my laptop. But I’ll get back again on Friday.
The Peculiarities of the Omani Roundabout
In the post before this I mentioned that our drivers for the trip were somewhat unhinged whilst behind the wheel. This is however not really unusual for Omanis.
It’s certainly a driving culture, mostly everybody owns a car. But Omanis like to drive fast. And a fair amount of them take speed limits, seat-belt laws, lane designations, etc. as more like guidelines than actual rules. It’s really not surprising that car accidents are the leading cause of death amongst Omanis.
Roundabouts are one of the less-than-sane aspects of driving here. I’m not really sure how roundabouts work in other countries, but here most roundabouts are two lanes, but right of way is given to the inside lane. If someone wants to go right at the roundabout, they just go in the outside lane and turn right. But if they want to go straight through, the driver will almost always cut across into the middle lane, and then cut across again at the second turn. With little or no attention paid to who they may be cutting off in the outside lane. The result is that if you are driving around the city, and are not aware of this system, you are almost certain to get hit while driving around the outside lane of a roundabout.
The peculiarities of traffic flow are exacerbated by the fact that Omanis like to drive fast. The maximum speed on the freeway is 120 km/h, and by law, all Omani cars have an alarm that goes off when it exceeds this limit. The joke is that the Omanis like the way it sounds. There don’t really seem to be police on patrol, but on the main roads there are radars that automatically give people tickets. So they slow down whenever they spot one of these, then speed up right after they pass it. One person mentioned to me that the radar won’t catch you if you drive under 140 km/h, then proceeded to drive at exactly 139 km/h for the entirety of the trip. This same person also mentioned that they currently owe over 150 rials in speeding tickets.
Outside muscat, there really isn’t much traffic. Or roundabouts. Or turns for the most part. So there it’s less of a problem. Within the city, there does seem to be some sort of system that emerges from the chaos and makes it all work for the most part. But in ways that are impossible to completely comprehend.
Anyway on a completely unrelated note I should be coming home in about two weeks.
