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Written and photographed by Pinaki
chakravarty
Three mountain villages of dead ends and old men
DEAD END
Sitting with Salma
Salma bint Marhoum al Abri is so old she’s lost count of exactly
how many years she has lived between the sheer rock face that
rises hundreds of metres up to the radar station and the windblown,
dust-ridden slopes of Wadi Sahtan. Al Hob is the last village
up the road, and so deeply is it recessed into the mountain
that its residents have nowhere to go but down, and away.
Such dead-end outlook means that the young ones migrate to
cities like Rustaq and Muscat, or larger villages like Amq
on the wadi floor, leaving behind the oldest generations.
It is here, in its abandoned, ancient quarter, that you will
find Salma, among locked houses.
We found her sitting by a stack of firewood all by herself,
her fingers covered with silver rings, her arms with bangles.
She lives alone in a two-room stone hut and has no neighbours,
just locked doors and stone steps leading to the communal
gardens .
A brother, living in the newer quarter of concrete houses,
feeds her, for she can’t walk very far and has to survive
on RO30 of monthly social allowance.
EMPTYING QUARTER
Padlocked green doors
Hob is quietly emptying, bit by bit, for it offers no school
or jobs, not even the essential football field scraped through
the gravel. There are walking trails leading up the slopes
– it’s three to six hours to the top of Oman’s highest mountain
– but they are the past. Who wants to slog up by foot when
the lights of the cities twinkle below: all the foodstuff
shops, shawarma racks, ministry jobs and paved roads you can
gorge yourself on. There are few, if any, villagers who still
venture further up the mountain, only those who talk of it.
One such man is Jassim Suleiman al Abri, just 18 years old
but already with his sights on the big city. “The route up
is really tough,” he says, grimacing in make-believe pain,
“and you have to have a very good head for heights because
some parts are very exposed.” With his crisp brown dishdasha,
trendy haircut and weekend plans, Jassim doesn’t look like
he would make it very far up anytime soon, for the college
in Musanna is calling, and after that perhaps even Muscat.
He breaks into English, testimony to his current year through
foundation course, before financial studies begin. It will
be another three years before he gets out and starts looking
for a job in the capital.
Jassim invites us into his house in the new part of Hob, with
its handful of alleys and tangle of electricity wires dropping
from one pole to the other. Even here, in the bit of the village
that is supposed to be alive, the house looks unlived in,
barely more than a shell to entertain the stray visitor. An
hour later, after the fruits have been taken away, the coffee
drunk and the seeds picked up, it is just another empty house,
with a padlocked green door.
Most of the old men have spent a few years, decades ago, in
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where they tried their hands at
manual labour: construction sites, public gardens, municipal
work. Most left after a couple of years, returning to the
familiarity and quiet of the mountain villages. Some, like
Suleiman bin Saleh al Abri, left home when only 13, leaving
the village of Madruj on the slopes adjacent to Hob.
MADRUJ
The gatekeeper
Head up from Wadi Sahtan above al Hail and Madruj is at the
end of the right-hand fork, Hob on the left. Madruj roughly
translates into ‘steps’, from its topography and terraced
gardens, now in decline. Like Hob, it is also at the end of
its road, back to the vertical slopes, with nowhere to go
but down – unless you’re prepared for the agonising walk up.
Follow the falaj instead, its now-concrete channel beginning
at a spring in the mountains an hour’s walk away.
Hamed bin Saleh al Abri is 60 now, and you will find him wandering
down Madruj’s single street with a pair of old binoculars,
occasionally looking over the slopes at his goats. He left
home as a teenager, working as a gatekeeper before coming
home again – yet another story unfolding, and trailing off
in the fading light.
GETTING THERE
GPS waypoints and kilometre readings
Zero your odometer where Wadi Sahtan’s dirt track begins and
turn right after 14km, at the sign pointing to al Hob.
Amq: 40 Q 0533596, 2575786, elevation 652m
Madruj: 40 Q 0529260, 2570646, elevation 1,130m
Hob: 40 Q 0529342, 2569421, elevation 1,170m
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