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FOUR STORIES FROM QAFIFA
written and photographed by PINAKI CHAKRAVARTY
“When lightning struck my date palms and killed three, I wept�/span>

THE DAM BREAKS
Leaving Yemen

Around 1,500 years ago, the great dam of Marib in what is now Yemen broke for the last time, spilling its banks and leaving its irrigation channels dry. The fall of one of the central pillars of south Arabian civilisations brought about the migration of about 50,000 people, and one of them is supposed to have been a lady called Najya bint Jarm, who settled down in the little village of Qafifa, west of what is now Ibra in Oman, tucked into the mountains around Wadi Tayyin. Najya had children, and is talked of in folktales as the ancestor of the present-day Mingis of Qafifa, who have built up their plantations ever since. Today, the tribe seems caught midway between the comfort of life in the shade of the Hajar and the draw of the oilfields to the south that mix backbreaking work in the desert heat with more money than most Mingis have ever seen.

OIL
Why one leaves farms for the desert

Ali al Mingi grew up in the days when the young ones were running away from school, running away to find jobs in the new companies that were springing up in the capital. He managed to get a job as a mechanic’s assistant at a car workshop where he earned RO100 a month, before leaving to sell airline tickets at a travel agency. But all this paled before the draw of oil flowing through the desert, the draw of money and independence that ran through Qafifa and left its farms unattended. Ali started at the lowest level, doing jobs so dangerous you could lose a hand if you weren’t careful, and kill others if you slipped up. “We trained continuously, and were tested every three days, made to fit the safety valve in under 18 seconds,�he says, after five years spent rising from floor man to mud tester to assistant driller. What will the future hold? “The way forward? Driller, assistant manager, rig manager �the dream is not over. We might trace our origins to some of the oldest civilisations of Arabia, but we’re looking to the future.� The future is all around. We’re sitting in a brand-new majlis, under a ceiling painted with the setting sun at one end and daylight at another, the colours making their transition from orange to deep blue through the clouds across. The walls have sections directly painted upon them too: the inevitable scenes of dhows on the sea, water rushing through wadis and falaj systems, pools surrounded by greenery.

Ali’s grandfather sold off all the ancestral land when his father was just six, and the family had to start from scratch. Ali’s father started working on other people’s farms, then went to Saudi Arabia, returning to Oman to be a construction worker before coming back to Qafifa and building up his own farm, planting trees where there were none. “When lightning struck my date palms and killed three, I wept,�he says, sitting in the house his children have made. The old man still has enough character to be the centre of attention, although his health is failing, and his mind wanders.

SPEED
How the other half lives

Hilal al Mingi is the sheikh’s son, the other end of the spectrum. He didn’t have to sweat through the desert or car workshops; instead he enjoys fast bikes, his mishkak and the three houses he is building for his family in Qafifa, which he visits over the weekend. On a good day, which usually means the wee hours, he can reach the clock-tower roundabout at Seeb in 45 minutes. “Forty, actually,�he points out, correcting himself. “I lost five minutes at the petrol station.�He might hit 250kmph around the bends, so low and fast his body makes contact with the road as he leans into the curve.
“I wanted to get out of the routine of our village, to graduate from the farms to the oilfields. I saw the advertisement in the papers for a new maritime college in Muscat, and was the second student to apply. In time, I will be a ship’s captain.� But even Hilal’s beginnings weren’t so rosy. His father had a shop in the Mutrah souq in the Eighties, and left it in the care of his son �Hilal’s brother �while he attended to family and business in Zanzibar. When he got back he found the venture in tatters, and sold it off, trying his luck elsewhere, while the wife stayed back in the village to look after the plantations. The fastest Hilal has clocked while trying to reach his mother? �95,�he says with a wink.

AFRICA
Trying to get back home

And then there is the Zanzibari connection. Salim al Mingi has spent his whole life on the island, where his father settled after leaving Oman in the Sixties. He went to school there, joined the family business and prospered, but maintained his Omani identity throughout. Now in his 40s and with not much to look forward to on the island, he is desperately trying to emigrate to what he feels is his home country. But much too much water has flowed under the bridge. Modern legalities that weren’t imagined almost half a century ago have complicated things for him. Instead, he makes do with a three-month vacation in Oman, buying a truck in Dubai that he hopes to do business with. “I was married to a Zanzibari,�he says, of his days on the island. “But my father didn’t approve after a while.�Such is the force of family that Salim divorced his wife, and now seems to be scouting around Qafifa for someone who can bolster his claim to the land. Adrift between countries, this Mingi wants to come home, but it might just be too late. And so it is with the Mingis, who broke free with the spilling of a dam, settled in the plantations just west of the desert, discovered oil, ran away from home, built up businesses, looked for a place to settle down. Some things change, and yet nothing ever does.