Day two in Matrah..."The Souq"

It is currently 11:35 pm and this is my second night in Matrah. Saturday 28^th. Today was hot. Really hot. Like 112 degrees hot and I was outside walking around for awhile…we started the morning with an excursion back into the ‘Souq’ (market). SIT’s academic director tasked our group to find an interesting object, buy it for under 5 OMR (Omani Riyals) and bring it back to the group. 5 OMR is roughly 13 US dollars so this took some bargaining skills and a decent run-around of some Arabic terms… ‘bikam hadtha?’ or how much is this? Was my go to phrase.  I ended up stopping in a little shop near the end of the Souq and bought a number of items from an Indian man named Mullah Hamziz. He cut me a deal on a hand-crafted letter carrier made of sterling silver. I bought some other cool stuff too, including an Omani ‘Kanjar’…the traditional dagger worn by Oman’s more prominent individuals…Sultan Qaboos is rarely seen without one. I wandered the Souq for about an hour and thirty minutes before realizing that I was completely lost. I was pretty sure I was getting followed at one point and just decided to dip in and out of a few alley-ways at a brisk pace. I got even more lost. Miles of intricate alleys clustered and dotted with shops…jewels, gold trinkets, silver, counterfeit items…you name it and its probably not in the Souq, but they have allot of very unique items at for various price ranges. Converting OMR to US $ is a skill I developed while watching a few merchants try to scam me. It’s not hard math and is really necessary if you are not going to bother with losing some cents on the dollar at an exchange depot. After downloading the compass app on my iphone and asking for directions about 6 times I finally found my way back to the coastline and back to the Naseem Hotel. The Souq is truly an invigorating experience. Its like nothing I’ve ever seen and it will always stick with me as one of those places where you just don’t want to let anyone bump into you or graze your hip as you take in the reasonably priced but ‘barter-able’ eye candy coming at you from every direction…nevertheless its an awesome place that everybody needs to get lost in once in awhile, it really brings out a sense of independence and puts the worlds materialistic saturation in perspective. I like the Souq at Matrah. 

            After the Souq I went to the SIT World Learning Center and took my Arabic placement test…I think I’ll be in the intermediate level. My speaking and reading are much better than my writing. I get a solid internet connection at the Center and can post my blogs/facebook/skype and Stumble there. It’s a modern villa about 10 seconds from the beach that has been converted into classroom space…I have a locker and a comfy sofa there. Most importantly its air-conditioned…its air-conditioned. I also had the chance to eat lunch at the World Learning director’s home in Muscat. He is a wonderful man and his wife showed our group stupendous hospitality in true Omani fashion. We ate plenty of food and learned a few things about Omani culture…some of them I did not know before:
            1- Coffee is commonly served after meals…or tea. It is polite to defer a serving for one’s self onto the oldest male in the room…this is done by looking at the ground and gesturing toward him with the RIGHT hand…not the left. The left hand is considered the personal hygiene hand and it is disrespectful to use it when making a motion toward another person. Omani’s are very clean people.

            2- When coffee is served…to you. Never set your cup down as it too is a sign of disrespect. When you want a refill you just hold the cup out and the server fills you up. Unless you shake the cup with a slight back and forth gesture at the server, you will always get re-filled instead of giving your cup back.

            3- I also got to try a desert dish called ‘Helwa’. This is a thick and dark gooey substance with the consistency of frozen pudding. But its not cold and it has some nuts mixed in. Its sweet and dissolves right on the palate. Its very very delicious. I also ate Dhofari grown dates which were amazing.

            Around 9:00 at night the Ramadan prayer got let out and Matrah came alive…

Ramadan involves fasting all day and breaking the fast at around sundown. So those who celebrate it pretty much shut down during the day and work through the night. This means that although the Souq was open during the day (because most merchants are Indian and probably Hindu) it was not really full… after the last prayer it truly was a bustling multicultural organism with women fully decked out in Islamic attire (only their eyes visible) and men wearing traditional robes…men come strait from the mosque.  I went back to the Souq and walked around…bought another dagger for not too much money and took some cool pictures.

            Before going back to the Souq, I had one of the more meaningful experiences yet in Matrah. I was taking a picture of the mosque when a man sitting on the boardwalk (actually a long curved stretch of intricately designed tiles running along the coast in Matrah) motioned me to come over…I asked to take his picture and he obliged. He asked my name to which I replied William. He introduced himself as Mr.Saquhet. He spoke very little English and a little Arabic. Mr. Saquhet was clearly lonely and just wanted to chat or ‘shoot the shit’ with someone he found interesting…or at the time maybe I looked vulnerable, I don’t really know. Anyway, he asked if I liked pepsi? I said yes and he asked me to wait in the spot I was standing. Mr. Saquhet ran across the street ( which is no easy task as cars go over 60 mile an hour consistently and won’t stop for anything) he bought two pepsi cans and we drank them. He asked about me and my time in Oman… 21 and here on a 3 month student visa. Mr. Saquhet however, was an ex-military man from Pakistan. He had been a soldier there for 24 years and now drives a truck around Oman to deliver food supplies to various stores and hotels.  He spoke fluent Urdu and needless to say the linguistic barrier between us was wide. Sometimes I didn’t know what he was saying and I’m sure he was lost in my translations at times too. It didn’t really matter. We shared “good” conversation about the US/Pakistani military efforts in the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Northern Waziristan…at leas that’s what I was talking about. And we just laughed at the countless Omanis who walked past us and stared with curious bewilderment at two very different people from clearly different regions of the world, different socioeconomic backgrounds and senses of fashion that clashed like the titans. I was having fun. Mr. Shaquhet asked me if I had any work for him while I was in Oman…like if I needed a driver because he knew “every street and cliff hole in Oman country.” I took down his cell number and gave him mine. The he asked, in traditional Omani fashion if I would share a bite to eat with him…I said yah, I was starving and the prayer had just gotten out so roast chicken and lamb smells wafted from the Souq into my nostrils. I asked if he knew a good place with authentic Omani food…he said he wanted to go back to his home and “grill food and smoke hookah on his roof”. Now, Omanis are friendly people…more than most people in big cities…but really? I’m alone and we just met, you’re a grown man who claims to be an ex-soldier/truck driver with no family in Oman. Not a chance in the afterlife my friend. I said I couldn’t go to far from the hotel because I was expecting a package soon. Maybe he was really just an interesting and friendly guy who needed a friend. Maybe we would have eaten good Omani chicken and lamb and smoked some hookah (which I’m refraining from due to athletics). I’ll never know.