Oman: The turban warrior

The relationship between Christian western Europe and the Arabs has been one of the most complex and pyrotechnically hysterical international love affairs. It's been marked by both avid adoration and cringing distaste. The communities that have sifted a hard, elegant living from the undulating sand have fascinated and repelled the West.


Arabs live on the edge of our old world in an older one. They inhabit the edge of our imaginations and are the antithesis of the secure Europe of mud-and-brick road signs, wet weather, wool, sausages and a grand, decadent, fleshy culture. Out of the Arabian desert rode a ferocious astheticism, the whirlwind of Islam, the fury of prophets, a cruel absolutism and the implacable belief in a religion of iron practicality and brass nerve. They made a civilisation of infinite, hard-edged abstracts. But there is also immense hospitality and the highest forms of moral masculine etiquette: bravery, loyalty, self-respect, self-restraint and harsh fatalism.

Images of Arabs and the desert salt western art. In the 19th century, pictures of palm trees and belly dancers outnumbered thatched cottages and milkmaids on the walls of the Royal Academy. There were burgeoning schools of Arabists. And in the chilly foreign offices of dark Europe, young men would look out of lachrymose windows and imagine the keening, shadowless sands with a desperate yearning ­ from Richard Burton, the translator of The Perfumed Garden and one of the first westerners to travel to Mecca, and Edward FitzGerald, whose translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat is still one of the most reprinted and recited poems in English, to T E Lawrence and his Seven Pillars and Wilfred Thesiger wandering in the empty quarter and the multitude of overheated young remittance men who escaped the social straitjacket of home to relax in souks and marbled halls.

The desert nomad has seemed the paragon of manliness. He represents what we must once have been: lawless, a wanderer following his flocks, responsible only to his family, governed by an unwritten law of steely formality guarded by a spring-loaded temper, never forgiving, never forgetting, bowing to nothing less than God and the crescent moon. We are going through one of our periodical rows with the Arab world. So it seems like a good time to go and visit Arabia and take the kids. I don't mean that facetiously. The more I travel, the more I am convinced that the search for sybaritic indulgence is morally prolapsed. It's a demi-sinful waste of privilege and opportunity. Travel should question, not confirm. It should excite, not relax. So I took Flora, 14, and Ali, 12, to Oman for half-term.

Half-terms are a bore break, too short for a serious trip and too long to be given over to cinemas, interactive museums, Pizza Express and Legoland. I wanted somewhere that was a doable travel time, but that when we arrived would be radical, different and exciting without being dangerous. There needed to be lots of things to do, but most importantly, I wanted the children to see something worth seeing and to question our society's growing fear of foreigners, particularly Muslims and Arabs.

Family holidays are precious: the opportunities between toddling bucket and spade and the gap year are numbered. I probably only have a couple of years left when Flora will want to be seen out with me. I want my kids to travel well when they travel on their own. I want them to go with optimism and purpose. Oman isn't one of those hasty, exit-strategy nations made up of colonial patches and desperation. Neither is it just a collection of oil wells with a hankering to look like Singapore on the Gulf, whose highest aspiration is to be a holiday resort for footballers, drunk expats and Hello! shoots.

Oman is an ancient kingdom that was once an empire that included Zanzibar and the Swahili coast of Africa as well as ports in Persia. The Omanis were famous sailors and traders who imported ivory, gold, precious stones and traded slaves from Africa. At home in the Arabian Sea they had the beds for the finest natural pearls. For a century and a half they have had a particularly close relationship with the British. First as a stabilising force in the Arabian Sea when the protection of trade with India was vital, then with a stream of idealistic young men who wanted to go outward bound, and finally, 30-odd years ago, the British covertly facilitated a coup that put the present incumbent on the throne at the expense of his father.

The capital, Muscat, is a modern and attractive city when compared with the neighbouring metropolises of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. But the ancient capital is Nizwah, a market with a fort and a winding souk. We arrived there in the middle of a cattle market in Ramadan. Markets are a worldwide fundamental. All societies have organised somewhere to trade in public. They all have that comforting, bartering, capitalist familiarity, but they are also an unfakable indicator of the style and emotion of a country.

The cattle market at Nizwa was crowded, loud and hand-waving, but fundamentally considerate. All the men wore dishdashes and characteristic embroidered caps which are carefully creased and dimpled. The women wear a selection of billowing abbayas that are all-enveloping; most, but not all, are veiled. Their burqas are open and see-through, not the ferocious, medieval structures or shrouds of some cultures. The Bedouin are believers but they're not political fanatics. There's a lot of bargaining but nobody loses their temper ­ it's too hot and everyone's thirsty and hungry, not least the sagging animals. Small boys drag reluctant sheep and truculent goats into the back of Toyota pick-ups. They'll be fattened for the great feast of the new moon. Toyotas are the real iron workhorses of the developing world. We pass a camel that's been folded into the back of a pick-up. Its haughty face is held high, eyes closed as if pretending not to notice the ignominy of being bussed in the back of a metal box.

In the shade of fruit trees, traders sell bottles of desert honey that ranges from straw-coloured to mahogany, depending on which tiny, hardy flower the wild bees have made their garden. In the souk, kiosks sell dusty metal jewellery, the silver ankle bracelets and earrings of Bedouin brides. I pick up a necklace of trade beads that has in it Venetian glass, Baltic amber and Chinese jade along with the thick imperial Hapsburg silver coins that were the international currency of herdsmen who had no knowledge of banks. Their silver content is the same as their face value. There are also racks of the curved knives that are the masculine motif for Omani men. Their handles are carved from horn, a depressing amount of which originally graced rhinos.

The great forts that dot the trade routes and wadis of Oman are thick-walled, mud-bricked organic edifices that were the basis of clan thuggery and dynastic intrigue. I particularly like one where the comfortable guest quarters were stuffed with concealed holes for hiding eavesdroppers and where the treads of stairs could be removed at night to break the ankles of anyone who decided to go visiting. It's very Arab to welcome all and trust none. In the basement were the stores for dates. The walls stained black, the sugar syrup would run out of long channels and be bottled as a preservative, and boiled to pour from the battlements on enemies.

Oman is a devoutly observant country, and travelling through Ramadan, the children had to learn to be particularly considerate of other people's effort and to be careful not to eat or drink conspicuously in front of those who can't. Not that they would ever be denied or confronted. Fasting is to make Muslims strong; the fact that we eat and drink shows that we're weak. Without exception everyone we meet is polite, helpful and courteous. There is no undercurrent of the anger or resentment that has infected so much of the Middle East. I want the children to see that this is what's normal for Muslims, not the daily horror of the news.

The other more prosaic reason I chose to come to Oman is the surprising variety of environments that you can travel through in a couple of days. It's not like the Gulf states where it's either air-conditioned tinted glass or wind-blown baked scrub. Here the oasis wadis have a miraculous beauty. Fresh, cold water frets down from high mountains through beautiful waterfalls into narrow canyons, and causes dense emerald patches of intense coolness.

From a distance in the desert they look unbelievably inviting. Farmers dig intricate waterways and little canals that are full of self-important frogs. On the banks, herons stand regarding their reflections with insouciantly cocked heads. I caught sight of the flashing iridescent turquoise of an Egyptian roller. Normally it's difficult to get the kids to walk anywhere, but these wadis are so entrancing that they dash on ahead. There's magic here like the drawings in bedtime stories; these are places of enchantment, the secret homes of djinns and genies, flying carpets and three wishes. We swam in the still water through the green shadows while small fish nibbled our toes.

Continued on page 2()

Oman's mountains are stark and impressive. New roads double and redouble up their precipitous heights. On the very roof of Oman there is an astonishing and ancient market garden stepped over what they say is the second deepest canyon in the world, after Colorado's grand one. Up here they grow fruit and roses; there are thousands of rose bushes for perfume. Arabs like their smells deep, rich and opulent. Flowers have been planted here for thousands of years.

Beneath us in the dead fall of the valley, huge eagles twist and hang. Back down at sea level the coast is an empty strip of clean, white sand that stretches for 5 kilometres, a beach on which we see nobody. The Indian Ocean lunges at the shore and behind us mountains shiver in the heat haze. It's as fine a beach as you'll find six hours from Slough. Further down the coast, towering with gantries and spires and shining, curling ducts steaming with a raw purpose is a natural-gas station.

Oman, like the rest of Arabia, has harvested the bounty of combustible prehistoric shrimps. But it doesn't seem to have turned into one of those warped, repressive and decadent countries of the petroleum age. The money, it's true, supports an absolute royal family and a top-down largesse and philanthropy, but the dividend seems to have been used to build an infrastructure that fits the character of the nation. It hasn't made Omanis into the spoilt, graft-phobic whingers with inflated sense of entitlement that has so softened the rest of the Gulf. Oman still feels like a country rooted in its geography, history and heritage that has a purpose beyond petrol, Ferraris and air-conditioned Starbucks.

One of the things that have all but vanished in Oman is its great sea power. The dhows that sailed the length of Africa are now only made in one shipyard. Their curved prows and elaborate fo'c'sles lean in lazy decrepitude on the shore. And the last artisans who still know how to sew planks together labour slowly in boat sheds. This was the fleet that rode the high watermark of Arab achievement, taking Islam round the ancient world ­ along with mathematics, astrology, applied arts, geometric craft, soldiers, pirates and holy men. This is the place from where Ali Baba set sail.

That night I had a surprise for the children. After dinner we drove back to the dark shore and waited for 20 minutes listening to the crashing surf. There was a flash of headlights and out of the dark people began to emerge. We all huddled round a small excitable Omani with a torch who led us out onto the sand. The ocean thudded and the shore hissed as we stumbled in the silver light, and all of a sudden there she was: one of the reasons I'd come all this way. A great greenback turtle heaved ungainly on land to dig a damp, gritty cradle for her eggs. Twenty of us crowded round while the expert lectured in fractured English, lifting her flippers and intruding his torch like a gynaecologist instructing first-year medical students. We were invited to pass round one of the heavy ping-pong eggs. It was all both intrusively voyeuristic and inexplicably tender and moving.

It's difficult to empathise with a turtle, we have so little in common ­ but the enormous power that has dragged this creature back to this beach from across the world after five years at sea to thrust the investment of her future into the cool darkness is really memorable. We stumble and fall into the holes left by other mothers on the beach in a stream of exhaled expletives in half a dozen languages. In the torch light I can pick out the eyes of desert foxes hungry for a meal of turtle eggs, keeping their distance from the clumsy humans. Tourists have probably done more to turn round the fortunes of turtles than anything else. On the shining tide line where phosphorescent krill sparkles like fairy rhinestones, there are half a dozen little clockwork hatchlings manically working their way to the relative safety of the surf.

Next morning at breakfast, beside the cornflakes is a bowl of orphan turtles who have walked towards the wrong light. Oman is a desert kingdom and the Sahara is the point here. It's the beginning and the end. If you think deserts are big, dusty spaces with nothing in them, then there's still plenty to see and do in Oman but it's a bit like going to Aspen without the snow. On the other hand, if you think that deserts are wonders full of awe-defining emptiness, then this is the desert's desert.

We drove out into the red sand to spend a night with the Bedouin and their
absolute hospitality. There is a ritual exchange of greeting, praising God and then asking for news: the reply is always good news. The rule is that it is either good news or no news. To be the bringer of bad news would
be unlucky and make you a very bad guest.

People will tell you that the best thing to do in deserts is to scramble across them on quad bikes and 4x4 trucks, or to slide down them on sandboards or tea trays. Don't listen. This is not being in the desert, it is simply being all over it. The best way to see the Sahara is from a camel. Children love camels; grown-ups can abide camels; camels hate everyone. And better than a camel is your own feet.

The best thing is to climb a dune at sunset, sit and watch the colours change and hear the wind play the curves of the limpid dunes and be aware of that still, small voice of calm. The song of the desert. The Bedouin share dinner and sing and dance, and we dance back and giggle and clap in the skittering firelight. They have lived much like this, tending their sheep and goats, breeding camels, pigeons and chickens and searching for water for thousands of years. In the darkness the handsome faces are lit up by the ghostly light of their mobile phones. We make our beds out on the desert, lying side by side on the cooling sand. We all stare up at the unsullied, pristine sky, the milky way, our solar system, the distant stars. You have no idea how much is hidden from you by progress. How much hides behind a veil of our own reflective glory. Lying in the Sahara with your children, watching for shooting stars, is one of the great unexpected and unadvertised pleasures of a half-term break.

How to get there

A A Gill went to Oman with Original Travel, tel: 020 7978 7333; www.originaltravel.co.uk. Safaris start from £835, including flights with Gulf Air and a three-night safari based on four people in a 4x4, B&B accommodation, full board with the Bedouin. Additional nights from £70 per person per night.