The Grand Mosque of Oman

The world's largest Persian rug is inside – roughly the size of a football field. It took 600 Persian women four years to sew it. I desperately wanted to see it, but evidently you have to be a Muslim if you want to see the damn rug after 11 a.m. So said the Muslim pilgrims outside the mosque. I was about to argue, but then I realized that the guys I assumed were Muslim pilgrims – the ones wearing wine-colored dishis in the picture below, like they just stepped out of Raiders of the Lost Ark – were not pilgrims at all, but mosque guards. You know how I figured it out? Because they were wearing f#©&ing guns.

I decided not to push my luck on the rug thing.

As you probably noticed, this last picture isn't the Grand Mosque. It's the "Islamic Science Center," whatever that means. Islamic science has been on a wee bit of a break these last thousand years or so – as my friend Dennis pointed out, the fact that many of our Arabic students can't do simple algebra is particularly upsetting given that the Arabs invented algebra. I guess you can't complain too much about the Islamic Science Center, though – it presumably bears a closer relationship to actual science than does Christian Science.

Mosques of Muscat

These speak for themselves.

Moon mosque

Muscat

Our first view of Muscat when we woke up on Saturday, from the hotel window:

It’s actually the harbor town of Muttrah, the older residential heart of the Muscat area. We ran downstairs to have a look around. Our second view wasn’t quite so lovely:

But good scenery is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? Honestly, I’ve seen mountains, and I’ve seen harbor towns, but I’d never seen a pack of wild goats eating dumpster trash. I love that photo.

An old Portuguese fort stands watch over the harbor. The Portuguese should have stuck around and built some vacation homes, because the Omanis built a hell of a beautiful city here. Click on the pictures for a full screen view – it’s much better.

Here’s another fort, built on a rocky outcropping. A fort-like Irish pub has sprung up next door. I particularly love the guy kissing his baby in the lower right hand corner. A lot of times, I take some dull shot, and discover later that I inadvertently caught a lovely moment on the periphery. That photo of the children playing in front of the rugs, posted below, is an example of that. They were a tiny little dot at the bottom of the picture, until the magic of digital zooming was brought to bear. And the kiddies are ten times more interesting than the rugs in the original photo, aren’t they?

A few more random shots of Muscat:

Tomorrow – I saved the best for almost last. The mosques.

Roundabout art

Streets in the Middle East don’t get names. For example, I live on the corner of “27c and 3a, community 316.” Sexy, I know.

Instead, drivers navigate by landmark, and to make things easier for their beloved peoples, local rulers mark the roundabouts – traffic circles – with giant works of art. Directions might go like this: “Follow the central road to the giant leaping fish, then turn right until you get to the massive chicken taco…”

I can’t decide if these sculptures are inspiring or hideous. Judge for yourself. My favorite is…

The Great Bird of Fujeirah

I was so entranced by the Great Bird that I simply stopped the car in the middle of the roundabout and gawped. Then I started snapping away. Other drivers were careening around me and honking wildly, not that that’s unusual here.

Take a closer look at the serene magnificence of the Great Bird’s face:

Also in Fujeirah, the Great Hand holding the Great… um… the Great Turkey Drumstick:

Leaping Fish by the harbor in Muttrah, Oman:

I christen this one the Tumbling Jar Fountain of Muttrah. I really like this one, actually. Note Arab dude and Indian cell phone man in corner, for size perspective.

And last but not least, let’s not forget to thank the Dear Leader who made all this possible, Sheikh Zayed, ruler of UAE until his death a couple of months ago. The people sure do love their Dear Leader:

Tomorrow, come back and see pictures of lovely Muscat, the ancient seaside capital of Oman…

Road to Oman

The drive from Dubai west to Oman starts in the desert, an ugly flat scrub punctuated by occasional oil derricks. But before long, the mountains.

The mountains are beautiful but bleak – until you pull over to fix your seat belt and you notice tiny green nurseries are hidden in the curves of the road, invisible to passing cars. This little green river widened into a stream of palm trees – a date farm – but I couldn’t get a good picture of the palms.

These pictures were taken in Fujeirah province, in north central UAE. The land is mostly empty, but in the middle of the mountains the path is interrupted by a roadside souk – a row of rug dealers, grocers and crafts shops.

“Special discount!” this guy kept shouting, clutching my arm. He was very persistent, and in the end, he sold me a rug. I dickered him down to half his asking price, though I was later told that I still got screwed.

I don’t usually like taking pictures of people directly. But this Afghani guy insisted. The guy is a natural. He looks like he’s never seen a camera before – but he was posing. He was strutting his stuff, I swear to you. He kept asking me to bring him back a copy of the picture. When I told him that it was a picture for the computer only, he looked thoughtful for a second, then he smiled and doubled his insistence. He said something sort of unintelligible, but I think it had to do with him asking me for advertising. So, consider this my end of the bargain: If you’re ever on the road through Fujeirah province, buy a rug from this man.

So much haggling left us hungry. Lunch was some dates and a corn on the cob, grilled with salt and lemon. I tell you this: I never truly ate corn until this weekend. My eyes rolled back in my head and the lemon juice dripped down my chin. And when I finished eating my dates, I spit my seeds on the ground like a hick. I didn’t even feel like a jackass, as I would have in America.

Here’s where they make the corn:

It was a Friday afternoon – the Muslim Sunday. We drove through lots of little towns, each with a mosque prominent at its center. We drove through one little town just as prayers were letting out – in a town small enough to drive through in five minutes, we saw what looked like thousands of people flooding from the mosque’s gates.

Tomorrow: the fabulous art of the Middle Eastern roundabout…