Twenty. Four. Hours. After my final flight landed in Muscat the evening of Thursday the 27th, I had till 10:00pm the next day to wait for the remainder of the group to arrive. .. I moved seats a few times, you know, change of scenery. Going to the restroom was always a big to-do and took at least fifteen. Finished a book… Sat… and sat… after being awake all night, I figure it MUST be at least noon on Friday and am ready to throw in the towel when I find it isn’t even 9am yet. As if wallowing in boredom in a tiny airport and having gotten zero sleep for the last two days wasn’t fun enough - it’s Ramadan, ladies and gentlemen. From the pre-dawn prayer to sunset (approx 6:27pm), Muslims are forbidden from engaging in eating, drinking, sex, gum chewing, and smoking.
Forbidden.
The acts might actually be illegal if performed in public. And, for those of us not practicing Islam, participation in these activities is restricted to situations of absolute privacy. If you want to eat or drink or blah-de-blah you MUST be completely alone. Unfortunately, being cooped up in an overly populated, one-runway airport, not to mention being white, and female, made privacy not unlikely, it was an impossibility. Throughout the morning I tried to accept this, having finished dinner the previous night at around 1am local time (jet lag does evil things). Too bad there just wasn’t enough to do to keep my mind off of it. I realized I had to eat. And now. I loaded up my four obnoxious pieces of luggage, made another awkward stop at the tiny restroom in order to formulate a plan, and found my way to the “departures” entrance which, because of morning prayers was surprisingly vacant. But it didn’t take long. As I’m reaching into my backpack for the Larabar, a gentleman takes a seat across the room from me. Luckily a smatter of columns decorate the center of the room and our placement makes it so we are JUST hidden from each other. Still paranoid, I take some of the bar, put it in my mouth and try some method of subtle chewing/swallowing in order to be less conspicuous. This exhausting eating technique was made all the more doable because of its necessity; I couldn’t think of anything but food.
But as luck would have it, two men immediately made their way over to the bench perpendicular to my own and began “the stare”. Now let me be clear, this variety of staring isn’t the you-look-up-and-they-are-watching-but-immediately-look-away-out-of-embarassment staring. It’s like they are playing that first-one-to-blink game like when you were a kid on long road trips, but they don’t invite you to join. I thought I had followed the clothing rules. For it exceeding 100F outside coupled with insane humidity I was basically dressed for winter. Nothing from my ankles to my neck was visible and I often put the hood up on my sweater. But the Omani men of the airport make staring more than an art, it’s a national pastime. By that evening I was so ready for a hijab and abaya you wouldn’t believe I was Sarah D… something, anything to cover me and blend me, hid me! (A hijab is a head scarf that Muslim women wear wrapped to cover their hair and shoulders, only the oval of their face is visible. An abaya is basically a black cloak worn to cover perhaps less modest clothing. Nearly all young women wear this combination in a pitch black because it is “trendy”. No joke, it’s seen as extremely youthful and stylish especially when various pieces are bejeweled with colorful rhinestones and glitter.) So I’ve had one bite of Larabar, privacy unattainable I decide to return to my main bench in the general entrance. I read some more, trying to do anything to pass the time, to forget the 13 hours remaining and the rumble in my stomach. Mid morning there is an obvious lull in the crowd. Able to see a good portion of the current airport population, I count those before me. Forty-three men and three women, including myself.
I break out the book again and just as I realize the futility in trying to ignore and subdue and suppress, an angel of the Lord asks me if I was an SIT student. Actually his name is Scott but for the relief of company that he provided for me for the next 12 hours he might as well have been Gabriel. All day long we watched the dark men in their dishdashas swarm and then ebb away in the crowded airport. We discovered that Omani men are extremely affectionate and it is completely normal for these grown man-friends to hold hands when walking, sitting, talking, what have you. They embrace often and with the European cheek-to-cheek (switch), other cheek-to-cheek (switch), first cheek-to-cheek kind of formality. Scott and I talked about food, ourselves, schools, Arabic, food, families, future careers, food, movies, books, food, music, food, and food. It didn’t take long before the children next to Scott and the tourist next to me all eating weakened my resolve and I took to the painfully slow process of feeding myself bits of bar under the façade of scratching my nose, yawning, chewing a nail, ANYTHING.
It was a really long day.
Early afternoon, Sarah arrived and joined our white-kid club. Graham arrived a little before the breaking of the fast. Slowly but surely we filled a row, and then the aisle in front of the row, and then the opposite benches. Everyone had finally been accounted for by midnightish. I had been in the same airport, basically the same seat, for over twenty four hours, hadn’t slept in over thirty (and when I had slept before that thirty it had been a 45 minute stint), and had been restricted to the most inefficient eating I had ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Keeping my eyes open in the bus to the hotel was itself a true illustration of perseverance and determination. But you better believe that when my head hit that pillow I was done. Good night, Oman.
Forbidden.
The acts might actually be illegal if performed in public. And, for those of us not practicing Islam, participation in these activities is restricted to situations of absolute privacy. If you want to eat or drink or blah-de-blah you MUST be completely alone. Unfortunately, being cooped up in an overly populated, one-runway airport, not to mention being white, and female, made privacy not unlikely, it was an impossibility. Throughout the morning I tried to accept this, having finished dinner the previous night at around 1am local time (jet lag does evil things). Too bad there just wasn’t enough to do to keep my mind off of it. I realized I had to eat. And now. I loaded up my four obnoxious pieces of luggage, made another awkward stop at the tiny restroom in order to formulate a plan, and found my way to the “departures” entrance which, because of morning prayers was surprisingly vacant. But it didn’t take long. As I’m reaching into my backpack for the Larabar, a gentleman takes a seat across the room from me. Luckily a smatter of columns decorate the center of the room and our placement makes it so we are JUST hidden from each other. Still paranoid, I take some of the bar, put it in my mouth and try some method of subtle chewing/swallowing in order to be less conspicuous. This exhausting eating technique was made all the more doable because of its necessity; I couldn’t think of anything but food.
But as luck would have it, two men immediately made their way over to the bench perpendicular to my own and began “the stare”. Now let me be clear, this variety of staring isn’t the you-look-up-and-they-are-watching-but-immediately-look-away-out-of-embarassment staring. It’s like they are playing that first-one-to-blink game like when you were a kid on long road trips, but they don’t invite you to join. I thought I had followed the clothing rules. For it exceeding 100F outside coupled with insane humidity I was basically dressed for winter. Nothing from my ankles to my neck was visible and I often put the hood up on my sweater. But the Omani men of the airport make staring more than an art, it’s a national pastime. By that evening I was so ready for a hijab and abaya you wouldn’t believe I was Sarah D… something, anything to cover me and blend me, hid me! (A hijab is a head scarf that Muslim women wear wrapped to cover their hair and shoulders, only the oval of their face is visible. An abaya is basically a black cloak worn to cover perhaps less modest clothing. Nearly all young women wear this combination in a pitch black because it is “trendy”. No joke, it’s seen as extremely youthful and stylish especially when various pieces are bejeweled with colorful rhinestones and glitter.) So I’ve had one bite of Larabar, privacy unattainable I decide to return to my main bench in the general entrance. I read some more, trying to do anything to pass the time, to forget the 13 hours remaining and the rumble in my stomach. Mid morning there is an obvious lull in the crowd. Able to see a good portion of the current airport population, I count those before me. Forty-three men and three women, including myself.
I break out the book again and just as I realize the futility in trying to ignore and subdue and suppress, an angel of the Lord asks me if I was an SIT student. Actually his name is Scott but for the relief of company that he provided for me for the next 12 hours he might as well have been Gabriel. All day long we watched the dark men in their dishdashas swarm and then ebb away in the crowded airport. We discovered that Omani men are extremely affectionate and it is completely normal for these grown man-friends to hold hands when walking, sitting, talking, what have you. They embrace often and with the European cheek-to-cheek (switch), other cheek-to-cheek (switch), first cheek-to-cheek kind of formality. Scott and I talked about food, ourselves, schools, Arabic, food, families, future careers, food, movies, books, food, music, food, and food. It didn’t take long before the children next to Scott and the tourist next to me all eating weakened my resolve and I took to the painfully slow process of feeding myself bits of bar under the façade of scratching my nose, yawning, chewing a nail, ANYTHING.
It was a really long day.
Early afternoon, Sarah arrived and joined our white-kid club. Graham arrived a little before the breaking of the fast. Slowly but surely we filled a row, and then the aisle in front of the row, and then the opposite benches. Everyone had finally been accounted for by midnightish. I had been in the same airport, basically the same seat, for over twenty four hours, hadn’t slept in over thirty (and when I had slept before that thirty it had been a 45 minute stint), and had been restricted to the most inefficient eating I had ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Keeping my eyes open in the bus to the hotel was itself a true illustration of perseverance and determination. But you better believe that when my head hit that pillow I was done. Good night, Oman.
(Our room in Muscat)
No comments:
Post a Comment