Saalma is ecstatic when my fixer Seema and I hunt down her house the next day, and practically hugs me when I say I have been to Wadi Ala, which she left for the big city a lifetime ago.
She pulls her plastic carpet over to where a strip of shade spills out on the verandah and we lean against peeling plaster and compare notes on the mountain that she will never see again, its lemons hanging 1,300m up the Jebel Kawr. I had squeezed them into my bottle of warm water that tasted of heated plastic months ago while I had looked over her ancestral village three hours worth of hiking under me.
My fountain pen is blotting itself all over the little page as she pokes a stubby finger at me and insists that all the tribes of Oman – all the good and old ones – are originally from Iraq.
Her husband divorced her 35 years ago, when she was pregnant with the son who would later abandon her. She’d left home to see her father in hospital and hadn’t taken permission and that was reason enough. He married again and had 4 children but Saalma swore she’d never want another man.
Just opposite, the oldest house in Mithadmat stands crumbling into the earth that was used to build it, looking over fields and the nubuk tree that my fixer insists can turn into a really obscene word if jumbled up. I lean over and shoot Seema and Saalma in between paragraphs.
2 Comments
So I finally managed to go through your website today and honestly it blew my mind … you have taken each and every element of the above story and described it so immaculately … it really touched me!
Your stories on Kolkata are also very well written … so glad ur part of SJS Group … Welcome! (smiling)
Well, some Omanis would tell you that when Iraq was culturaly and academicly the place to be, a lot of Omanis migrated to Iraq. I was even told that a certain famous man who lived in Iraq hundreds of years ago was a great grandfather of mine. On the other hand, we were taught at school that Al Azd, a famous Omani tribe was originaly from Yemen. I beleive I am Azdi.
I asked my reletives who told me that you must first find out who the great great grandfather of the tribe is (I don’t know how long ago that would be). If they are the decendants of ‘Qahtan’, than they originated from Yemen, and if decended from ‘Adnan’, then Iraq.
You probably know more about this than I lol. If you ask, I honestly have not researched this nor have I found reliable sources to have a say. If must, Wikipedia will have a story to tell!