tiptoeing through a herd of elephants in the dark

Actually, it had started to sprinkle just past Hatta, near the Oman border. The sky was dark with low, heavy clouds which made me feel claustrophobic, as we were also surrounded by those close, flinty little mountains there. (Iqbal and I drove from Hatta to Abu Dhabi at night one time, and as we passed through those close rocky hills, I felt like we were tiptoeing through a herd of elephants in the dark, trying to be silent so as not to rouse them.)

beautiful red and white light filled droplets

So as we were standing outdoors, in the line to the stamp window at the Omani border, we got sprinkled on. The clouds were ominous, but did that make us think? No. But by the time night fell we still had not reached Muscat, and it was raining steadily. I was driving at that stage, but I hadn't counted on having to ford rivers in a rented Toyota!    Oman is a mountainous country, and the road to Muscat crosses many wadis (dry river beds). You can tell you're crossing one because the road dips into them and there are high water markers on both sides, like the snow depth markers on Oregon highways. That night, between swaths of the windshield wipers, through beautiful red and white light filled droplets framing or obscuring my view of the road ahead, I saw the flashing warning lights of a car in front of me, which was slowing to join a line of other cars with their red lights flashing. I was soon upon them and saw that we had slowed down to cross a trough of fast moving water 3 car lengths wide, and heaven knew how deep. I hesitated, I sweated, I thought of retreat though we would have no doubt met the same if we had gone back for it was raining heavily and all those dips in the road we'd crossed on the way, were surely filled with water coming down from the mountains through the wadis.

a car which had been carried onto the sidewalk

So I tremulously moved forward in the line, waiting for the car ahead of me to get across (actually watching to see IF it got across), then I plunged into that fast moving torrent and drove through. That first flooded wadi was the biggest and swiftest. When we came upon the next one, I was seasonedno sweat. And so, we made it into Muscat, well after dark. After checking into our hotel, we took a drive from Ruwi, where our hotel was, through a pass in Muscat's low, rocky coastal mountains to Muttrah and along the corniche to Muscat proper. Clearly, we realized, we had missed the flood which had washed (and must regularly do so) through the neighborhoods nestled in the wadis of the mountains. We saw a car which had been carried onto the sidewalk by the water. It had water marks halfway up its side and had been tossed by the flow like a stick. We realized that we were lucky, somewhat harrowing though our drive in had been, that we hadn't been in Muscat's streets a couple of hours earlier.

dashed my hopes of combing through piles of Omani silver jewelry

The next day we visited Muttrah souk. As you can see in the picture, the shops are all high above ground level, yet I think water was so high the night before that some were flooded even so. The debris you can see in the walkway was probably some of their merchandise which floated out on the tide. As it was the Eid Al Fitr holiday (Islamic feast days following Ramadhan, the month of fasting), there weren't many people out and many shops were closed, which dashed my hopes of combing through piles of Omani silver jewelry. We faced that everywhere we went, but it also meant that the roads were deserted and easy to navigate.

I'll always think of Oman as cool and damp

You can see from the photos shown in these Oman pages that we had beautiful cloudy skies most of the time we were in Oman. It was cool and fresh and great for photography. The plaster of the buildings had damp patches from rain, and there seemed to be water everywhere. This was surprising to us, as we lived in the dry and sandy United Arab Emirates, Oman's neighbor to the north. But when we got back to Abu Dhabi, there was a lake in the parking lot of the college, and we heard tales of flooding here, too. This area does get rain in the winterdepends on it. It just doesn't happen very often, and when it does, it is relished. I'll always think of Oman as cool and damp, not hot and dusty as no doubt it is most of the year, just like Abu Dhabi. I'll think of it in light of the name of its largest mountain, Jebal Al Akthar, which means "Green Mountain." april 1992

ŠJanice Adams
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