Salalah

Wednesday morning I flew from Muscat to Salalah. Salalah is the southern most area of Oman and it shares a border with Yemen.  In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the broader region containing Salalah, named Dohfar, was the site for the infamous Dohfar Rebellion. Before going to Salalah, I had specifically read about this insidious insurrection that Qaboos had swiftly and mercifully dealt with during his early reign in an effort to fully unite the distinct geographical and cultural divisions of Northern and Southern Oman. Per my Pre-departure preparation, I also understood that the modernization that is so prevalent in Muscat, i.e. shopping malls, car dealerships, movie theatres, has slowly and incompletely trickled down the face of the country and only recently landed in Salalah. In retrospect, the Salalah I witnessed last Wednesday is much more complex in its expression of the past and much deeper in its roots than I imagined. However, this idea of trickling-modernity; where frivolous amenities and gaudy hotels along with healthcare facilities and better schools come down slowly and tactfully… seems more like an inevitable monsoon than a couple of random raindrops from above.

                                                            Oman Air

Oman air runs exactly one flight a week to Salalah from Muscat… if you miss your flight or can’t afford the ticket or just want to see the countryside and take pictures … It is roughly 1010km or about 550 miles and a twelve-hour bus ride from to your destination. I wanted to drive. SIT bought me a plane ticket. I flew.

            Oman Air runs a luxurious service in the skies of Arabia. Judging airlines is an interestingly subjective process as almost every passenger has different needs and “comfort ability” levels when their lives are in the hands of two hopefully well-trained and sober individuals whispering orders over an intercom at 10,000 feet. I like a meal, some legroom, and a cool air-temperature, in that order. And of course a solid landing but that’s not my point.

            The in-flight meal was delectable and even had some semblance of traditional Omani nourishment…rice, beef or pasta, salad, water or tea, a roll and a piece of cake were politely and delicately dished out in solid golden colored plastic dishware on our one hour flight. The seats in coach were situated unusually far apart and provided more than ample legroom for me to stretch out and pass out without feeling guilty about constricting the passenger behind me. From my window seat, I could see the hot air outside the plane wearily waving and weaving its way off the grey tarmac into the boiling Arabian atmosphere…I didn’t sweat a drop.

            Interestingly, per my good Omani friend, Al-Jisr… pre-departure, I had the regal pleasure of meeting face-to-face, one on one, with the CEO of Oman Air. We chatted for a few hours over some delightful fish and a little hookah. He was really a nice guy with a very apparent knack for efficient management. I have one constructive suggestion for him if we ever meet again… do some research on cell-phone/ computer use on the plane…maybe Oman Air has…all I know is that cell phones can be used in contention with a computerized internet connection at any time during the Oman Air flight…per my American streamlined conditioning, I still turned my phone off and read a book.

                                                Salalah’s Great Juxtaposition

            Salalah should be un-refined, raw, non-materialistic and basic… the tribes should be ruling and defying the North via guerilla style insurgency. The streets should be rampant with thugs and vandals, unsafe for women and weaker individuals. Right? There was a revolution here? People died, bullets were fired and foreign armies were called in for assistance. Where is the chaos and where are the violent politico-tribe clashes? Where’s the thick tension between the natives and foreigners who bring un-pure influences? They’re someplace else, and certainly not in today’s Salalah or for that matter the greater Dohfar region.

            Salalah is less modernized than Muscat. It’s an observable fact in the town of Mirbat. In some places, houses remain vacant and dilapidated. Shops and supply stores are all seemingly locally owned. There is no Starbucks, no McDonalds and certainly no disco club. Modernization has spread top down in Oman in two ways…one; the government and the commercial elite have been the chief catalysts for change as they have imported cars, chain restaurants, and various other types of foreign capital. Also, and secondly, this change his physically travelled from the North of the country to the South since 1970. It is only natural that a place like Salalah would be less technical and far less reliant on today’s parsimonious machine-gadgetry. Ok, so where’s the gritty farm landscape and short-lived mud huts with half starving natives? Is that a Toyota Land Cruiser?

I wanted Salalah to be unrefined and raw. I wanted to see a place untouched by the selling’s of America. Someplace exclusively in touch with nature and unfiltered through a movie screen perspective. Well dammit, that rustic pipe dream of an idea got flooded and evaporated quicker than a wadi riverbed in the middle of summer. Our first stop off of the airplane and the metaphorical catalyst for my neural water vapor was the Ministry of Tourism.

            Salalah is going to be an amazing tourist haven by 2020. At least 10 different hotels and miniature villa cities are going to be tactically and expediently erected so that they may blossom into refined, distilled and fettered zones of vacation land fun for the whole family. “Ehhemm,” the whole wealthy probably Saudi or Emirati family. Salalah may very well save Oman in the near future or it may spread the roots of destruction…with roughly 60 years of oil left in the ground and the Sultan nearing his pass, God forbid…Oman needs a new thriving sector of the economy to support its current life choices. This brings to light an interesting juxtaposition that I observed on my visit. The government’s view of Salalah as an investment opportunity and a proverbial goldmine and the residents of Salalah’s view of their home as just that, home, “what could go wrong here with Sultan Qaboos, a former Salalalien himself, at the helm?”

            There seem to be a lot of juxtapositions in Salalah that call into question this same “government opposite the native Omani perspective.” From high up in the mountains, standing right by a weathered and self-sustaining farmhouse with tires on its roof to keep the semi-leak-proof tarp from getting displaced by the strong Northern winds… I could see both the Salalah Port and the Salalah Free Zone. The Port is a massive stretch of cranes with loading and unloading apparatuses mixed with gargantuan container ships and tiny wooden dhows afoot a network of stored shipment containers and section fencing with a few naval armaments sprinkled around the seemingly bottomless maritime salad bar. The Salalah Free Zone is a vast expanse of desert land to big for the human eye to capture in one panorama even from atop the surrounding mountains. I was told that Oman is doing a lot to encourage international capital investment in the form of factories in the Free Zone. The idea is that companies exist tax-free for the first 30 years of operation in this designated area of Salalah. The Port exists as a modern art-full eye sore on an otherwise pristine coastline. The Free Zone would just be empty desert, but I’m sure the plans for a methane plant in the near future will surely increase the need for some pungent perfume. And that’s just it. At what cultural and natural price does Oman declare it’s future economic investments… worth it? How much is the government willing to risk in terms of heritage preservation and do the people of Salalah get any say in the matter?

            The traditional coconut stand I visited would suggest that natives to Salalah are already saturated with tourist benefits. The stand was roughly 100yards long and had the allure of being “off the beaten pathway”… The vendors were friendly and more than happy to satisfy my coco craving as well as provide me with some sugar cane and a few nice pictures. The only other consumers present at the market were a few Saudis debating which produce to buy. As I stood sipping my coconut and waiting for the group to pack up and ship out, I noticed an older man walking in his under-garments out of the thick banana trees that grew behind the market. He seemed angry as he exchanged some harsh words with one of the vendors…he was brushed aside with a sweeping hand gesture and sent back to the banana forest from which he came. As he was walking back I could tell that he took a fleeting interest in my camera. I followed him. About 30 yards behind the market I found him sitting near a flowing ‘falaj’ or a long slender irrigation canal…this suggests that the land was very fertile and the soil was saturated with water. He motioned for me come over. I walked slowly toward him and by that time his friend had showed up. They were friendly and didn’t understand any of the classical Arabic I spoke. The man scooped up a palm full of water from the ‘falaj’ and directed it spritely into his mouth. He motioned to ask if I wanted any…I did my best to say that the water would make me sick… I think he understood as he then dug a shallow hole in the ground with his hands and drank the murky water that bubbled up. He laughed and made a motion to flex his muscle presumably saying that he could drink the water because he was strong. I walked back toward the coconut stand with his laughter resounding in the background. The coconut stand was filled with tourists. To a Westerner, it had the allure of an older world and an unrefined dining experience. Maybe that is Salalah’s future in a nutshell. Seemingly old and unrestricted but wrought with a fleeting sense of appreciation that can only be held by one who stays somewhere definitely, a tourist. All the while, the natives who nourish themselves strait from the ground with their bare hands will be cast into the background laughing at their un-adapted guests.

            Salalah is beautiful to say the least. The mountains are daunting and the coastline is private and colorful. At times, I felt like I could have been in Africa. Wild herds of camel, goats and lush green vegetation give Salalah an authentic sensibility. This unique place may very well save Oman’s economic future. However, just as Salalah was the revolutionary tipping point for change in the 1960’s and 1970’s… this second round of change will again come at some cost.

           

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