O Man - what a place

Watching a green turtle, flippering a slow walk back to the sea having laid and covered her eggs, as green turtles have done for the past 200 million years brought 10 years of married life into focus as a microscopic drop in this ocean of time. We'd watched the female at night with an Omani guide on a beach at the south eastern most tip of the Arabian peninsula. She deftly flicked sand over her heap of eggs, creating a dip for herself in the warm sand of the unpopulated beach: illuminated by a bright moon in a black sky, pin pricked with stars - the only visitors that night, our small group of curious onlookers, and the turtles themselves. While the mothers buried eggs, newly hatched turtles scurried to the waves. 'Only 2 in 1000 will reach maturity' explained the guide, and the females that survive will find their way back to this very same beach to lay their eggs, in 25 years time.

It was the end to a beautiful week in a place that felt so far from our daily existences in Jerusalem and Baghdad. Eternities away from the topsy turvy life with small people or Iraqi politics. Mum and Dad generously moved in for 10 days so J and I were liberated to explore without travel cot or sticker books. And Oman seemed so far from the Arab World we've grown accustomed to: our Jerusalem neighbourhood with its trash-filled skips and piles of rubble; unexplained building sites and noise and trouble; police cars angrily honking and helicopters hovering at night.

We were transported to another kind of Arabian land of cleaner streets and architected lines;  pastel low-rise houses below soaring brown stone mountains; juniper and rose strewn plateaus above misty ravines; dark ochre fortresses made of mud 'al dhob' from where we get 'adobe' and flowing cool water in ancient irrigation systems called: 'felaj'; date palm oases and smooth tarmac roads leading through the desert.

This pinkish land was a magical place for a holiday, and time to take stock of ten years past, and also the future, in golden silence in the mountains; and beside lapping turquoise water of the Persian Gulf.

The effects were immediate and lovely. Like the dwarfs' current favourite book: 'The Sound of Silence' where a little Japanese boy goes in search of silence, and finds it between the noises, and underneath everything; we didn't even have to look for it. A mountain view like no other I have seen, and at times, not even a bird call or a whisper of wind. All the thought bubbles we had in our minds, had time to bob to the surface, popping effortlessly and having time to spread into the air and into our conversation. It was almost like every minute of this peace got better and better until we reached a point of meditation almost - in our uninterruptedness together. We got back to the package that we all carry around with our other halves, which is made of gold and truth, but the quotidian demands can mean we sometimes forget to pay daily homage or respect to it.

The essential room for any fort

Jars for storing date juice

So the turtles were our last adventure after mountain hikes and 6 days of conversations. While America was electing its next leader, we saw the arrow quivering towards that devastating result, and with sinking hearts pulled ourselves out of bed to go and look at the turtles once again before the sun rose over the Persian gulf.

The World Wildlife Fund were there already, gently gluing a GPS to the shell of the female turtle. They explained the turtles are under threat so they're trying to find out more about their habits - where they swim, and why numbers are dwindling. The main threats are built up beaches which confuse the baby turtles who automatically walk towards lights, and away from, rather than towards, the sea. And also the amount of plastics in the ocean.

Again, we watched the mother turtle bury herself into a sandy dip in the beach, covering her eggs with a deft flick of each flipper, until the little pile of eggs was safely protected 1 metre under the sand. Still in the darkness a tiny newly hatched turtle scurried towards to waves, trying to avoid crabs and other predators lying in wait.  As it began to grow light, the adult female dragged herself out of the trench and slowly and painstakingly flippered her way back to the water.

As the week to ourselves drew to a close - this precious nugget of time crammed into hard-working chunks of absence from each other, J reassured me as we drove towards the airport: 'We have so many excitements to look forward to not least of which is life.' We'd stopped at the souq, buying some Omani hats from a Kashmiri man with an islamic whispy beard. But he looked me in the eye, had no problems with shaking my hand, and explained to us as the election results came through: 'Trump. He danger man. He has head like child. Not mature.' Then we were kept waiting in the bus while a VIP sheikh was driven to the door of our plane and as J put it: 'pressed puffy cheek to puffy perfumed cheek and squeezed mallows hands together in farewell.' Us in the bus, waited while they took their time, unapologetically.

I trained my anxious mind back to the ancient green turtle and its 200 million year stretch on the planet. The perfection of nature, and the imperfection of everything mankind seems to be capable of in return. We soared out of Muscat, over its low rise white buildings and straight roads throughout the desert; and I looked out of the window and remembered the sight of the female turtle staggering her steady way into the rising sun, and back into the waves to carry her who knows where next.