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GARDENS AND WOLVES

written and photographed by PINAKI CHAKRAVARTY

“The GSM network provider came here a few years ago,
but went back because the road was too tough”

DROP DOWN
Into the world of Yasab

“The old people say that since we didn’t have any utensils in the old days we used to drop the flour for the bread right on the floor,” says the wizened old man. “And that’s how our village gets its name. Yasab means ‘to drop down.’”

Yasab isn’t any ordinary village – its 14 houses and three tribes huddle against the cold rock, staring up at Oman’s highest mountain, howling back at the wolves that eat their goats. The only way to get there is to leave Wadi Sahtan, west of Rustaq, and gnaw your way up one of the steepest, most thrilling dirt tracks in the sultanate. Two hours from the highway, Yasab sits in the fold of mountains, hidden from everyone, even its closest neighbour.

Not much has changed since the old days, although they don’t have to pick the dirt out of their bread any more. Electricity wires are now strung over this settlement, but they lead nowhere, because Yasab is just too small and too far away. Ditto for GSM coverage, which dies somewhere between the sheer rock and mountain air, lost in the echoes of shawawi songs and wolf howls.

AGRICULTURE
Feeding animals and people

Why stay in almost utter isolation? Why choose this spot and not another on the slopes that stretch along the northern edge of the Hajar? The exact reasons have been lost between the generations – no one alive today can tell you when it was that they settled here. Of course, the answer lies somewhere among the assets of the place and the need to move away from competition.

Those assets include the shallow wadi walls that shelter them from the ravages of the wind over bare slopes, and the sheer inaccessibility ensures security. They talk of a small seasonal spring and four faltering wells. The little water they do tap into irrigates the fields of mahendu and shair for the goats, handful of imported cows and donkeys, while borr, dara, alias, dasal (onion), thom, asfarjal, anab (grape), khas, fijil, belinj and laymoon (lemon) are grown for human consumption. That sounds like a lot and it is – you will find terraced gardens wherever they can be sustained, and the parched remnants of those abandoned with time, as the water dried up or the income wasn’t worth the effort.

FOOD
Dried meat and hand-cranked generators

Electricity comes in half-hearted spurts if you’re up to hand-cranking the diesel generator to life in Ali Masood’s house. It feeds a few bulbs and the remains of a television, itself plugged into a massive dish antenna made out of bolted pieces under which a donkey helps itself to a bucket of water. Because they have no electricity, they have no refrigeration (if you mention an air-conditioner they will break out into grins). This means that meat cannot be frozen but has to be salted and dried instead, massive chunks skewered on a musharra and left out in the sun till they crinkle – even the flies lose interest. Such meat can be kept for up to three months, reborn over the fire before the meal.

The fish seems to last even longer. Samak Awal is bought dried from the fishermen of the Batinah and is a storage dream that you can revive after a year. Of course, the romance of all these techniques are lost in the fact that the residents can now drive down to the foodstuff shops in the dusty recesses of Sahtan and stock up on cans of sardines they call kaasha.

EDUCATION
A school like no other

The school has an exclusivity to it that few others in a wadi can match, done with a few bright colours, a couple of rooms and the inevitable generator. It stays open from a quarter past seven in the morning till half past noon from Saturdays to Thursdays – teachers live in the village during these days, and holiday down the mountain on weekends.

Fifty-eight students are spread over nine grades, and if you want further education you have to make your way to Rustaq, the capital of the wilayat. Given the scarcity of residents, class strength isn’t equally divided: some have one teacher for as few as two students.

THE EXPATRIATE
400bz a day

Eisa Homaid al Khatri turns his wizened face to the sun and says he receives RO100 worth of assistance a month, or ten rials for every member of his family – “Just enough to buy soap.”

When he was young, he met a man from Ibri who told him of jobs in Saudi Arabia. “I worked for seven months there as a cleaner in the railways,” he says, “and earned 700bz a day.” Tiring, he came back, only to return to the kingdom through his friend, who organised a construction site assignment. This time he lasted a year, earning even less: 400bz. His wanderlust cured, he has spent the rest of his life in Yasab, tending to the goats, ploughing the fields, revelling in the dirt track raked through the mountain eight years ago. Before that, residents had to make their way over the mountains by donkey to Rustaq, or by foot up the sheer rock to the other side and al Hamra.

“There are two routes to the top,” he says, squinting into the sun, “about four hours up.” That might be enough for a shawawi, but don’t expect to make it within that timeframe if you try it. You can see a new dirt track somewhere in the distance, being hammered into submission from the radar station (you can see the white of its dome sticking out of rock) that sits near Jebel Shams, or al Qannah as it was originally known. In months – or years – it will connect to Yasab. The settlement will gain importance and lose some – it will see traffic, but that traffic will pass it by as it does all the settlements in all the wadis that run down the slopes of the Hajar, leaving dust in its wake, but perhaps ensuring GSM coverage.

There is no traffic to scare away the wolves, who snatch at goats if they wander too far off up the slopes. The dib are the bane of Eisa’s life for they have eaten his entire flock. “I wanted to shoot them, but the government forbids this. You can’t see them because they are scared of humans, but sometimes you can hear them howl.” And this is when he crinkles his face, turns his head up to the peaks and lets out a soulful rendering – a howl in English, yuawi in Arabic and a haunting echo to the mountain.

Ali Masoud al Khatri is Eisa’s cousin, and joins the family every night around a common fire. He spent two years in the Air Force band trying to learn the instrument they call the karba – but left because he couldn’t quite get the hang of it. Instead, he spent nine years in Amq, the largest settlement in Wadi Sahtan, as a municipal cleaner. “The GSM network provider came here a few years ago,” he says, “but went back because the road was too tough.”

MAZRA
Lemons and disease

Mazra might be on an offshoot of the dirt track that leads to Yasab, but it’s positively five-star in comparison. The concrete seems smoother, the electricity wires lead somewhere and the water comes piped from the municipality. Alive with the ring of mobile phones and children, Mazra, which translates into gardens, seems to be heady with relative prosperity.

Saleh Jindib Ghufayl al Abri will not take no for an answer, so after five minutes of refusals and insistence we follow him into his house and sit down around a massive plate heaped high with steaming rice, over which ladles full of vegetable curry are poured, and mishkak left over from Eid is thrown over.

A few metres beyond, the balcony looks out over cliffs to a fantastic view of peaks on the far side of Sahtan, so that everything, even the washing of hands post-lunch in the outdoor sink, is done against this larger-than-life backdrop. Sticking out like a partly hammered nail is Qarn Dhawi, a crooked finger under which a road mirrors the one we are on, snaking up the rock and disappearing over to the other side. That road makes its way over Jebel Dhawi into Wadi Sim – another trip and another story.

The gardens here are spread over two locations: beside the village and a couple of kilometres up the mountain, where another spring feeds them in Lajal. Talk of agriculture inevitably leads to the disease that is eating away at their lemons – a problem you will find as far away as Barka too. They call the disease saratan, and there seems to be nothing they know of that will make things better. It seems to be worse at lower altitudes, though – the plants here have been depleted but aren’t all dead. The roots of the plants were attacked by worms years ago, but that problem was solved with government-supplied chemicals.

Such problems are non-existent for Saleh’s uncle, Dahi Zenar, who sits with failing eyesight in the bright sunlight, weaving a basket on the balcony with Qarn Dhawi in the background. His soft purple turban seems larger than life, and he wears a knife in a leather sheath stuck through a belt across his dishdasha. “We built these homes on our own, without any assistance,” he says proudly, wagging a finger over the rooftops. “We have a lot more children to house nowadays, because in the old days a lot of us were away in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for work. Each house today has at least eight children. Now we enjoy health and prosperity.”

But 4WDs, infrastructure and airwaves have changed the ways of the mountain people forever, and Yasab might just be far enough to still hold on to some remnants of authenticity. There are few places where you can still hear the howl of wolves – now all you have to do is ask Eisa.

GPS coordinates for Yasab: 40 Q 0523775, 2578486