Small Town Arabia

As in any small town, there is one major road that threads the settlement of Khasab. On one end it leads into the aptly named Hajjar, or “stone”, Mountains surrounding the village. On the other, it leads to the sea. This is the direction I am being driven, towards the narrow harbor at the mouth of Khasab.

Modest, box-like buildings line the road, their angularity every now and then interrupted by the graceful curve of a dome. Mosques in Oman punctuate the dusty landscapes with their brightly tiled domes, here in turquoise and midnight blue. They appear like promises of the ocean waiting beyond.

Through the peaceful thoroughfare, past the hardy date palms and the goats meandering in their shade, we arrive at the harbor and the heart of activity in this seafaring town. Our bus backs onto a pier and I am momentarily startled into thinking we have entered the water. The driver grins at the shock mirrored in the other tourists’ eyes, as at a joke that never grows old. He opens the doors.

I step forward and am visually reassured of the ledge between the bus and the vibrant blue-green beyond. It is at this moment, as I tread carefully on the wooden planks making a path over the ocean, that I feel I have truly entered Khasab.

The short walk ends at a gangway to a traditional dhow, the large yet elegant wooden vessel moored at the end of the pier. Dhows once formed the soul of the Arabian Gulf’s fishing and pearling activities, though now they are increasingly regarded as historical relics. Here among the remote seaside communities of the Musandam Peninsula, where dhows are still commonly in use, it is easy to envision that not too distant past.

As the boat moves out of the harbor and deep into one of the coast’s intricate inlets, the mediating influence of civilization quickly falls away. The rough, gray-brown mountains that have been razed in and around Khasab here rise unmolested from the water. Perhaps because there is nothing else to look at, they are oddly mesmerizing—the meticulously parallel strata and the defiant angles they form to the sea that created them.

And then, unbelievably, there is life. In the crook of these mountains, on a tiny patch of semi-flatness, stands a cluster of buildings hewn from the surrounding rock. A row of boats lines the brief shore and before the dhow’s crew can say so, I understand that they are the only means to and from the habitation. I am filled with an unexpected yearning to stop there, though I know we will maintain a respectful distance.

The quiet austerity of stone and water suddenly recedes in the sound of an approaching motor. I see a speedboat with an intrepid young man standing at its prow, his simple, ankle-length tunic billowing in the wind like a sail. He and his companion raise their hands as they whizz by. Then, silence.