A love letter to Muscat

You are the place I was born and will return to


Dear Muscat,

I left you a few years ago to venture and explore thinking I would never miss you. I’ve had a colourful life on your lands, at times it may not have seemed the most appealing to me. I wanted to leave. Surprisingly I do long to see you again.

At some point, you were my hometown, an exotic market place full of fabric stores that mostly sold the exact same fabric as their next door competitors, in your centre.  I can’t recall how long that was before we moved – because we moved rather frequently around you – but I can remember a medley of athan from the mosque across the street and the sound of steam and horns of docking ships creeping into our flat just a little after sunrise. It was our waking alarm, along with the smell of Omani bread that our neighbour, uncle Saif, made for the kids in the building every morning.

Honking cars waiting for their Chai cup at karak café. Our building was in a complex of tiny traditional markets that sold everything from stones, and local silver to hearty deep fried samosas, it was called the Souq. An exuberant spot that only went still five times a day as the sound of athan calling for prayer. The vivid lanterns and the gold Islamic geometric designs on the interior walls of the Souq were what made the market place an enchanting spot in the hours of darkness.  Traditional music would echo from cassette stores pulling the passers with curiosity.

A little later, you were my hometown, a silent neighbourhood just a few miles away from the cacophonous motor way by the grand mosque, Sultan Qaboos Grand mosque. My mother used to take my siblings and I walking to the mosque every night of the fasting month, Ramadan, to met her friends and chatter about all sorts of spiritual matters. Forty degrees outside of dry heat didn’t phase me but it was mandated by my mother. Thirty nights of Saffron milk and the sound of prayers, thirty nights of running away to the library of the mosque, passing by the enormous chandeliers, ornate interior, stepping on the handsome hand made Persian rugs and the heavy marble that encrusted the grounds of the mosque. You gave me peace, and stillness.

Just before I’ve left, you were my hometown, a room in our enormous family house, an airless library overlooking a canvas of sand by the airport.  There were houses behind us, and not too far away there was a shopping mall that fed my shopping addiction greatly. It was loud, the deafening ear- splitting whistle of planes taxiing, the sound of air compressed into hundreds of PSIs at an immense speed, and soon after the roar of the engines. The was the soundtrack of my few days before I left you. I woke up on the smell of omani coffee that aunt made and the sound of planes going off and landing on the huge landscape that we lived by.

You are not as horrible as I pictured you. You are the place I was born and will return to. I know loads who want to catch the nearest opportunity to fly and see you. You are my hometown.