Majestic Muscat is not just a convenient alliteration (though it is that), but there is truly something grand and simultaneously grounded about the capital. When I first arrived, I couldn’t really get a handle on it as it appeared to be all things at once – modern and sophisticated, small and charming, barren and informal, old and new. But it was always accessible and warm. It appeared akin to your third cousin, whose life and quirks you don’t completely understand, but you always enjoy the company.
A month into our time in Muscat, and the city continues to unfold itself. Since it is quite cosmopolitan, and thus familiar in many ways, its specificities don’t always leap out at you – that is, of course, with the exception of the bold mountain range winding itself around and within the city. Aside from one highway that goes up a steady subtle incline until you notice that you are flanked by hills, there is another mountain-related turn I occasionally take that always takes my breath away. In the midst of traffic and an intricate city highway system, focused on attaining the correct lane to take you where you need to go, you turn under a bridge and there before you emerges a truly majestic scene – the mountain range in the distance made ephemeral with the haze of soft clouds, untouched, unbuilt, and simply grand. Perched on one of the lower hills is a beautiful, delicate mosque that looks like it was cut out of tracing paper and gently laid on the canvas – and from this distance, that is all you see, the buildings and daily hubbub fading at the bottom of your line of sight. I never tire of this view, and I feel it was a generous stroke of urban planning that it is so easily attained from the street, opening it up to everyone driving through, rather than exclusively from selected buildings or houses.
The mosques are a whole other story. Having grown up in a very Islamic country and lived in and visited numerous Muslim communities where mosques are omnipresent, I didn’t think that, after all these years, mosques would continue to catch my eye. In Muscat, it would be difficult not to notice them for their beauty, simplicity and grandeur.
The Grand Mosque, named so because it was built to break world records in the number of worshippers it could hold at any one time, and the largest/longest continuously handwoven prayer rug (a record that was later broken by the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi) does not attempt to break records in types of precious material used, or the height of its minarets, or anything of the sort. It is a single-tone terra cotta exterior that expands horizontally across an impressive surface area, decorated only by the intricate, subtle carvings on its exterior. It spreads out octopus-like to its minarets (though not eight of them), with the dome perfectly fitted at the centre looking out at the street like the turbaned head of a sheikh sitting still in silent prayer. It truly is, at the risk of overusing the word, majestic. I won’t go into the description of the other beautifully designed mosques that we’ve seen here, but I will point out that the smaller neighbourhood mosques are similarly attractive in their uncomplicated designs and their harmonic sizes to the neighbourhoods and street corners where they have been installed. When I was a child in Abu Dhabi, we would sometimes dread being around the smaller mosques because they were infamously the ones with the loudest loud speakers. I haven’t been around these neighbourhood mosques around the call to prayer, but their simple minarets seem to imply that they are only there out of respect for prayer times – if you were to come to the mosque or pray at home, the minaret was happy for you to do that of your own will and not because its volume harped on your conscience. The other aspect about these mosques that attracted my attention was that, with the rare exception, they were not named after people or families. Many of them were named for the neighbourhood they were in or after a noble feature (such as dignity). The main reason this caught my attention was because the mosques whose names are known in Beirut are almost exclusively named after a family or person. I won’t go down the path of hypothesizing why that is in Beirut – probably no need – but I have to admit that I was quite touched by the humility with which these mosques in Muscat were built.
As for our last ‘m’, the malls, that are neither majestic nor humble, but they are E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E! So much so that not too far from where we are currently staying, there is one mall right in front of the other (I kid you not, you can drive down one street and turn right to one or left to the other). I am guessing that one way in which it can be profitable to have so many is that they are all, generally, small, or at least smaller than malls that we are used to in other Arab cities. This also means that they are not necessarily always a one-stop-shop, which I believe was the original concept of malls, but they are fun, and air conditioned and quaint, and so I’m grateful they’re around. When on the hunt for maternity clothes (it continues no matter where I am), I was led to a few smaller shopping centres, which clearly pre-dated the mall concept in the capital. I found those fun by virtue of the eclectic types of stores from a mix of eras, and made a mental note to go back and explore them some more. I have a feeling some gems might be found in those stores. Though the real gems are, without fail, to be found in the old Muttrah souq, but that will have to wait for another Muscat installment.
I will, however, leave you with this last note that I feel summarizes the sophistication of this country. While scanning the radio waves for some good stations, I stumbled upon a classical music station. Yes, a station, an entire air-time schedule dedicated to classical music. I don’t remember the last time I lived in a country that had one of those! But there’s more – the pieces of music are introduced with a short explanation about the composer or the musicians, and peppered with interludes that explore some background about the instruments or the movement. All of these are presented in English, but only after the same content is presented in Arabic first. I’m not sure I can articulate why this moved me so much, but it did, and I loved Muscat more. A friend who had visited Muscat in recent years said that this was one country where she found she was proud to be an Arab – I think I am beginning to understand that.
*Time lapse: for anyone trying to make sense of my timeline, this was written in 2016, before new motherhood swallowed up my need to write.
