November 2020
The feeling of warm air enveloping my skin in the night time as you step into a new world is one of my earliest travel memories, together with the wafts of aviation fuel laced with something exotic. For 7.5 hours I'd had what felt like the sought after room of my own. A small capsule within myself of non-interruption as the Pea and Rashimi were absorbed by the novelty of a flight to somewhere new. With films and food on tap, and a vibrant, intense sunset above the clouds to gaze at for a few minutes before dark.
J was there to meet us and was almost knocked flat by the exuberance and velocity of two small humans running into his arms in the carpeted welcome zone.
How I wished the Lozenge had been in that tangle too, and just as I was thinking of him, my telephone rang and it was the Lozenge himself sounding fine and perky, not even jealous. Just excited for us about having arrived in a place that would soon be his home too. After re-assembling all the 16 bags and releasing a panting, wagging Debbie onto the warm concrete for a scurry about and a very long wee in front of a group of Bangladeshi airport staff, we drove to our new home, gazing at the lit up buildings flying by - those outskirts between airport and home that are always the first impression, but places we'll probably never visit.
It was about 3am by the time we got into bed. And the first day was a blurry fog of bare feet on cool marble floors and opening multiple cupboard doors to find a cup or a bowl. J had unpacked every box and arranged the whole house bar pictures, as well as all the food shopping and finding a Sri Lankan helper called Nalani who greeted us like her long lost family. 'Madam, your children they sweetie, and your doggie sweetie, Madam. And Sir James he been sad without you all, Madam. And he been so busy taking out all from the boxes. He is a kind Sir,' she sang as she swept around clearing up around us. I had an internal chuckle about Sir James and am getting used to being called Madam again. After we tried and failed to get St Grace to call us by our real names in Jordan, we have since given up on that campaign.
She's an active, smiling, strong ball of energy, with a flower tattooed on her neck and an infectious laugh.10 years older than me with a much older husband and children and grandchildren back in Sri Lanka. There's a good aura in the house already.
Rashimi's room is painted a dusty petrol blue. It's a handsome room with a big window and he sets about making himself at home. He arranged his bows and arrows and books and lego, puts a Harry Potter wand on his desk and then started taping photographs onto his bathroom door of family, his friends, adventures and previous homes. This is his fifth home, and sixth if you include 'our plan B' as the Lozenge calls it - ie. Scotland, which he has considered home for the past 8 months. After a two hour burst of nesting, Rashimi slumped onto the bed. 'This is not a real home,' he sobbed. 'It's not The Steading. There's no stuff to fiddle with and it feels unloved. I don't think this will ever feel like home.' The photographs started dropping off the bathroom door as the warm air heated the sticky tape. Outside his window is our rectangular garden with trampoline, some bougainvillea bushes and patchy grass. There's a bright red hibiscus bush like the one outside the window in the Bethlehem hospital where the Pea was born.
I remembered settling into all our other houses, as I looked at Rashimi's long legs on the bed - almost not a Rashimi any longer, yet allowed to be one in a strict family circle. I sat beside him, realising the older the child, the more they notice and so perhaps the longer to settle. 'It's a bit like friendships and planting seeds,' I consoled. 'A house also needs time to grow into a home.' Just take it a day at a time and you never know, one day it might feel so. I feel the absence of his brother for him. Settling into a new house is automatic with a companion. Manual when you're alone.
Meanwhile the Pea was happy in her new cool white boudoir acting out some rather dramatic sounding role plays with her Sylvanian hedgehogs and squirrels who have moved back into her Georgian dolls house from Gran Gran that she hasn't seen since March. It seems that moving house and country when you're 5 rather than 9 is a less complicated affair.
J came back from work early, and we four bicycled out of our gate towards the beach. The Pea looks like Miss Marple on a bike. Very upright and stately, but with dangerous wobbling whenever there's a hurdle or a car. So it was more time consuming reaching the beach than I'd imagined. We're two blocks back from the sea which looks out towards the Gulf of Oman and across the water is Iran. We're an inch on the map above the Tropic of Cancer. The evening sky was a pastel wash of mauve and orange and bluee. Green parakeets screeched between date palms above and people were walking along the paved corniche as the beaches are still out of bounds because of Covid. J, P and H dashed into the lapping waves. It was impossible not to.
They were soon sandy and drenched. Darkness hit suddenly and after some languid moments in lapping waves, Ham drove straight into a concrete bollard on his way home hurting his already-brown shin, and the Pea became a cross, sandy ball of fury as swiftly as night had just fallen, and cycled home in bare feet. I peddled slowly on, with the Pea's sandy Crocs dangling in my hand.
The first days meandered along. There was no school the first week, so Ham and Pea connected with their new school online. The system will be one week in school and one week at home alternately until at least the end of the Easter term. I try and cheer myself up with the notion that the variety might keep things fresh. But the Pea is not interested in learning from a screen. They are both longing for classmates. It's been 8 months without any.
We had to call the Lozenge at midnight (8pm his time) and his matron picked up the phone. 'He's so lovely and he's settled in fast,' she said. I wonder if it's easier to settle when it's your own decision to go somewhere. Since it was not Rashimi's decision to move to Oman, maybe he feels like he has less agency with his situation.
Nalani is a comforting non-family presence in our days. 'Hello madam! Sweetie outside,' she sings when she sees me. I'm not sure which of the Sweeties she's referring to, but I'm glad she calls them Sweetie. Any extra love towards your children (and dog) is a reinforcement like an extra layer of shell. It strengthens you when you're far from home, when outsiders love your children too.
It was our wedding anniversary on day 2. 14 years of adventures and our sixth house. We raided the fancy dress box, and J nipped to the booze shop with his liquor license. There's something called a sin tax which makes every sip a careful one. A bottle of non-decent wine is about 20 quid. But at least now I've worked out that everyone is talking about the sin tax not syntax, which had got me into some confusing conversations initally. A lot of people we meet explain how life is not how it was before. But since we never knew it before perhaps we won't notice.
There was a loud sound of whirring and scraping coming from Rashimi's bedroom and he emerged with an old tile he found on the hot, flat roof of our house which he'd engraved with his stone engraver: ‘JL, LL, HL, LL, PL, NF .heart. Happy Anneversary.'
‘What is Nalani’s surname?’ he'd asked. She is already part of our family in his eyes. Like the two au pairs from Brittany before her, who featured in every family drawing.
That evening Rashimi struggled to sleep. He sat with us for our anniversary dinner eating nuts and drinking milk. I went to look for candles and found them on the shelf in the store cupboard. They were all bent into a broad curve, stuck together and spooning each other after weeks in a roasting container in the port back in May.
Everywhere there are familiar things - like faces of friends. Debbie sleeps outside Nalani's door in the cool shaft of air conditioning that emanates from the gap at the bottom. 'I am very hot madam, always hot. I don't like hot so I keep on the AC, okay?' Debbie is also allowed into the sanctuary of Nalani's room. As I left the store cupboard I saw her caramel furry form curled up on the red mock-leopard bedspread watching American Idol surrounded by pots with trailing leaves ('good luck plant') and joss stick smoke. I wondered if Rashimi should be in there too. It looked both cool and cosy.
I woke early with the call to prayer at 5am and lay still, focusing on it. I realised I felt in some ways more familiar with this sound, than I did with an English church bell in South Northants. It was a calming thing to listen to. And even nicer not have to get out of bed and onto my rug on my knees. I wondered what thoughts and feelings are interlacing Rashimi's dreams, and also at what time he had eventually slept. Half of me was asking what just happened - we'd suddenly landed somewhere near the bottom of a sandy peninsula with only 2 of our 3 children, a hot dog with a white house and a white car on a white street. The men in their crisp white dish dashes and embroidered hats, and ladies in black abayas gliding and wafting down the corniche were in some ways a calm and relaxing sight, but there was also a creeping sensation that maybe nothing would happen ever again.
In some ways the pace here makes South Northants look like the fast lane. Yet at the same time, it has never felt more of a privilege to arrive in a new place with time to explore. I take it less for granted. I consider it even more of a conscious choice. Responsibility, even. To make the most of it. As Leslie the 96-year-old Tintin translator said when I asked if she had any regrets: ‘I made the most of every opportunity that came my way, my dear.’
By 6am I decided it was better to go and discover where we were with a sniffing, scampering Debbie outside than lying in bed wondering where we were.
The air was cool and silken in the early morning. Our street is languid and wide with frangipani and bougainvillea trees, and a beautiful thickly branched, twisting plant called a desert rose, which often flanks people's doorways. The verges are lush and there are no people to be seen most mornings in our street. I don't know when you do meet the owners of the enormous, shining Ram and Hummer trucks with wheels as tall as the Pea which are parked outside the gateways, but whenever our paths cross, people are smiling beneath their mask and say hello.
We're in the area with many embassies. Our house is flanked by the Uzbek Embassy, Senegal a bit further up the street and Bangladesh around the corner. Fortunately we're with the small fry as it feels more residential than ambassadorial. The buildings are all a cool white, walled with more white with some stained glass here and there, and all the lattice work is different - mostly geometric, giving a uniformed but not homogenous look. There are delicate patterns and shapes which change from building to building as snowflakes differ from each other. Some wooden carved balconies and latticed windows remind me of Afghanistan. There's an abundance of plants and trees growing out of coloured pots both inside and outside of people's walled dwellings. As I wandered towards the beach a guinea fowl strutted from one of the more opulent looking houses.
All along the road are red, white and green lights which could have been mistaken for Christmas had it not been for the National Day 50 year banners and posters emblazoned around the city of Muscat. 50 years ago the country became Oman under the rule of Sultan Qaboos who died earlier this year. And it's amazing to think that all of the infrastructure in our area, and probably most beyond it, has existed for only a little longer than Jamie and I. So either the buildings are new, or we are old, or perhaps both.The early days are the raw days, the strange days.
Your nerves are nearer the surface and the responsibility of it all can be overwhelming at times. Bringing only part of our family to half way down the world, only to realise we could sit in a white house for three years home schooling and go back home again none the wiser, is a bit of a dread. I miss previous adventures and houses and friends. The buzz of Jerusalem, the politics the brain-soul challenge of it. I miss the Jordanians and Syrians we befriended, filmed and worked with there. The Glammy and St Grace and the children when they were smaller. The inimitable Afghan colleagues in Kabul, the friends from each and every place now scattered everywhere. Not to mention our home friends and family. As I walked I wondered where all the life will emerge from here. The friends and the knowledge, the fruitfulness of the adventure. At the beginning in a time of Covid, it's easy to doubt that green shoots will grow again in our lives and our relationships.
That morning I sat at the piano during a rare interval where no one was saying 'Mummy' and needing help with their online class, I sate at the piano and picked up the Lozenge's Cat Stevens book. I realised we still hadn't managed to play anything together on piano and guitar as we'd planned, and now he wasn't here. I started playing Wild World. The tears plopped, though I managed to laugh below the tears thinking that I sounded like Richard Clayderman in a deserted shopping mall - the notes echoing in the carpet-free marbled interior. We were a table with only three legs without the whole family here. My inclination to throw myself into anything was diminished, even taking a photograph felt incomplete. The online schoolers looked up, downed tools and before long I had four hot sticky arms reaching around me. Pea's only just joine around my middle. We were all feeling it. Their consolation meant everything.
Later that day Nalani sashayed in wearing a long skirt having had her brows done in bold italic. Like a brightly coloured genie, she came bearing gifts - cocktail glasses with a kink in the stem for J and I as an anniversary present, and flip flops for the children. Hello Kitty in pink for the Pea which went down like candy floss at breakfast time.
J came home and we went to the fish market which was full of every size and hue of fish from a sardine to a shark, and a local fruit section with herbs and spices, local melons and some vintage-looking lines of Vimto.
We went to a beautiful exhibition of painting and collage by a Portuguese-British artist who was drawn by the beauty of the coastline, shells and fish and struck by the sadness of the rubbish on all the beaches. The result was a wonderful pastiche of colour coordinated rubbish, and in the opposite room the same but all with biodegradable versions of the same, from fishing nets to beach mats. It seems there is maybe a kind of ‘village’ in the city, and the exhibition was housed in one of the oldest buildings, with balconies all the way up like houses you see in Morocco or Spain.
We visited our boat, Ibra 3 which we bought off some people who were leaving. It's in a scruffy marina in one of the coves around the corner from the centre port area, Muttrah. On our way there we found some delicious falafel in an empty restaurant which reminded us of previous Arabian homes and the ice began to melt in our spirits. People were smiling and friendly and happy to chat. It's lovely to stumble about in Arabic again.
The following day we thought the Pea and Rashimi deserved a swimming pool, so we headed to a nearby hotel which has a familiar vibe of the 1980's. You could almost imagine that Elton John had had something to do with the design. Let's just say there are pineapples, and there's a grand piano that looks like a combination between a sex toy and a sports car. Its anachronistic interior makes it feel more authentic and less sleek. We felt at home quite fast, and the Pea the Rashimi spent all morning gliding around the lazy river with various inflatable objects. The Pea found four Lebanese sisters of around her age and crucially a bit older, who could swim, and Rashimi made friends with an Iraqi boy his age called Ayham. We also met a Syrian man with his son, Fares who fled Syria 9 years ago when the war began, which was the time when we were just about to embark on this Arab World adventure ourselves. The water under the bridge in Syria since then is almost too much to consider.
J and I lay watching the Pea and Rashimi leaping about into the water with their new Arab playmates and felt like things were opening up in our new land. I reminded myself of the jellyfish mode to go with the flow, even if it's slow. Letting time keep its own time. Maybe no wonder that all websites in Oman end with dot OM.
Pweeeeesht. The air and the rush dissipated and everything suddenly felt quite zen.
