the pinaki.info blog

I am sitting by myself on an exposed outcrop of rock almost 400km from Muscat, in a little dead-end wadi that no one knows of. Nothing seems to have changed in this little cup between mountains for thousands of years. True, the trees would have died, but successive generations would have sprung up in their place, and they would have looked much like the present-day vegetation. This is the first feeling you get as you sit atop a hillock in Wadi Geel, that hint that you are looking upon what people of another civilisation, or some rudimentary form of it, had seen too. Geel is timeless.

It is also silent, at least on first impression. Soon, I hear the little sounds, like the crisp flap of the pages of my notebook, or the wind through the leaves of the sidr, or the shirt slapping against my back. Occasionally, the wadi will bring with it a faraway sound, like a goatherd from Tokzah, calling out to his herd. Everything, even the wind, bounces off Jebel Misht and its characteristic jagged top that casts shadows even when it should be afternoon. This evening, anything seems possible.

Previous tenants had left a few clues, including the remains of two stone rooms that were used to shelter at night, or to house goats. There are a few rusted cans and batteries lying about – later additions, perhaps, for by the time men had acquired such things they had lost the will to build walls out of wadi stones.

A weathered, sun-dried archaeologist is waiting for me an hour away in Bat, and we will eat chicken in his kitchen – the archaeologist, stonemason and writer – a few dusty turns away from 5,000-year-old stone tombs. The next morning we will drive an hour up to a plateau and then hike up three more hours to a little village stuck to the side of the mountain where they harvest lemons. The fruit itself must have been imported into these depths of Oman centuries ago, the living remains of ancient migrations and conquests.

Wadi Geel – with its immediate area rich in stunted, centuries-old trees, old stone dwellings and casually undulating terrain surrounded by mountains – should be a blank canvas against which you have an intelligent conversation, or be shown something of monumental importance. But there is nothing here except the wind, and my own desperate attempts to find something a bit more concrete to hang on to.

Of course, the photo not only demonstrates my genius in holding an SLR with one hand while attempting a self portrait with a bit more intelligence than that involved with a mug shot, but it also reminds me of Joseph Koudelka’s image in Czechoslovakia in 1968, which I admired online in college, before I had even started shooting. Of course, Koudelka cheated: he’s using a wider lens than I am, the arm is probably not his judging by the angle and hell, if I was in Czechoslovakia and not Wadi Geel do you really think I would be bothering with any of this?