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RAS AL JEBEL

“A complicated business model unfolds as we sip on
lukewarm juice in the half-empty store, daylight coming in
through the open doorway, bouncing off mostly bare walls”

NOTHING
The patch everyone forgot about

It might be 45 degrees and counting, but somewhere over the scrub plains of dusty vegetation, the ridges of rock that poke into desert and the sand that gets kicked up every few minutes, there is the ever-present hint of rain just passed.

Welcome to the patch of Oman everyone forgot about. Only its borders feature on the map: Ibri to the northeast, Adam to the west, oilfields to the east, Jebel Kawr to the north and the blank stare of scruffy desert that follows the highway south to Salalah. But stay a while here, itself, and you have nothing in hand. What the rest of the world considers nothing, at least. The one bit of landmark sticking out of blank space is Ras al Jebel, literally Head of the Mountain.

The Ras is actually the last edge of a stony ridge that forms a bulbous outcrop at the end, where it subsides into desert to the west. And under it, to the north, is the settlement of Bedu that takes its name from the mountain: a smattering of low houses huddled together against the wind that hammers desert against mountain. Water is the last thing you think of in a landscape like this, but there are wells, and it had rained just a couple of days before we drifted through. Signs of rain were everywhere: the scrape of wadi stones washed across the road, the patches of drying mud already cracking under the sun, even pools of water in a few select hollows. Soon, the desert will bloom.

BARGAIN
Desert shopping

Nasser Humain Said al Darai’s ancestors might have broken into song with the rain, but it lost a lot of its significance with transported water, government-funded wells, pickups and Bedouin businesses. It just doesn’t matter anymore. Even here, with no obvious sign of urban development, you will find Nasser lingering between his general store and the lone, abandoned telephone booth that has been standing empty for decades, a surreal, prefabricated stamp of the city that never quite took root.

A complicated business model unfolds as we sip on lukewarm juice in the half-empty store, daylight coming in through the open doorway and bouncing off mostly bare walls. The ‘foodstuff and luxuries’ shop was started by Nasser’s father in 1998, and has remained open from 7am–10pm ever since. Nasser owns the shop now, but he isn’t the man behind the counter, and he isn’t actively involved in its day-to-day operations, that is, serving the occasional wide-eyed driver ploughing through the desert. That bit of business is, by yearly contract, left to Hamood Janeibi, who will surprise you with a command of English that put our stutter of Arabic to shame. Hamood just uses Nasser’s shop, stocking it and selling his goods while Nasser looks on from the sidelines, keeping a track of the business. Once in a while, a blip of a pickup breaks through the haze and a rial’s worth of shopping takes place: a green can of aerated drink, a packet of biscuits.

Nasser jumps in his pickup, heading to the oilfields, and a day job. Outside, the wind slaps against the building, which also houses a laundry. Even the Bedu in Ras al Jebel need one.

LITTLE MOUNTAINS
Mixing sand and rock

This is really the beginning of open scrubland desert that starts just south of the Western Hajar and extends down Oman’s westernmost edge, turning into the Empty Quarter the closer you get to Saudi Arabia. Up here, though, the mountains still make their last presence felt, with independent slabs of rock poking out and extending westward, with desert in between.

At Ras al Jebel, you will find yourself between a number of such hills, with Jebel Rashid to the north, Jebel Salakh and then Jebel Hamma to the west. “Jebel Hamma,” says Nasser, “isn’t really hard. It is softer, like a mixture of rock and sand.” We soon find his description is dead on, as we drive past the crumbling, yellowish mountain on our left.

NATIH
Creating landmarks

Driving down south to Adam, then west to Ras, and then doing a loop that curves west, then north and finally east back to the highway to Muscat will give you enough of a glimpse of this desert land, past the ridges, sand, occasional stray camels, pools of rain water (if you’re lucky) and over some inner roads making their way to Salalah from the Emirates. It isn’t spectacular, but it gives you enough open space to do what you like, while offering bits of geographical features that make it much more interesting than the absolutely flat desert you find further south.

Later, on your way back to the highway, you will come across the abandoned Natih filling station. This region is so bare it seems almost like an attraction in itself, and chances are that you will stop and look. Inside, all there is left are the empty shelves of the main office, one sink in the restaurant and some broken glass. Most things wooden have been ripped out to make other things, or to be burned. The only thing left standing untouched is the little mosque at the back.