The bottom right corner of Arabia

 

I visited the Sultanate of Oman in 1997. I've been fascinated by Oman ever since as a little girl I came across an old National Geographic magazine with an article on the Sultanate dated not long after the the recently departed Sultan Qaboos came to the throne. The story of his attempts to develop this small nation and bring it out of a global isolation which had earned it the title 'Hermit Kingdom' intrigued me.

In the mid-1990s there was another National Geographic article on Oman, about it's transformation from a backwater on the Arabian penisular struggling to put down a revolt by tribes near the Yemeni border, to a peaceful fairly prosperous country which had nevertheless succeeded in preserving it's rich heritage despite the dramatic change that had transormed the country in only two decades. The photos showed beautiful landscapes and interesting buildings.I was intrigued all over again, I remember comparing the 70s article with the one from the 90s and marvelling at the change.

In the summer of 1997 I made my dream come true. Well, summer isn't the ideal time to travel to Arabia, in fact it's a pretty lousy time to visit the Gulf, the heat is unbearable and the humidity in the coastal areas is suffocating. I don't think that I understood what heat and humidity really were until my Oman trip! Still, there are advantages to going off season - namely that my mother and I could afford it. The beauty of Oman and the fascinating cultural experience certainly made it worth our while to suffer the trials of an Omani summer. Oman remains one of my favourite places I've ever visited.



One of the lessons I came away with from my sojourn in Oman was a genuine appreciation for the work of Sultan Qaboos and his dedication to bettering the lot of all his subjects. He never married, considering himself married to his duty as sovereign. I didn't get the feeling that the people we met were paying lip service to him out of fear or any kind of enforced reverence for the man. My mother and I were struck by the genuine gratitude and affection local people had for him and the hands on way in which he was reforming and developing his country, whether it was a shiny new project in the capital or more remote rural village infrastructure projects. He seemed to make a point of being very much a man of the people, travelling extensively within the country, hearing the grievances of common people, building, improving and helping as he went.

This is very much in the tradition of the old fashioned local sheikh in the Middle East, a tradition that while not exactly democratic in the Western sense, relies intensely on the support and acceptance of the local people. He is their judge, their arbiter and their benefactor because they consent to his rule and he goes to great pains to care for their welfare.



I only spent a few weeks in Oman, and did not reach all regions of the country, but I did try to speak to as many local people as possible (my Arabic was very basic, but far better than it is today, and we found that many young people in particular spoke decent English)

I realise this sounds very starry eyed, and of course the Sultan also lived a luxurious royal life in beautiful palaces, as one would expect from a Gulf monarch. I am not saying that he was an altruistic saint, but he did strike me as a ruler who took his responsibility to his people extremely seriously.

This responsibility extended to his take on regional Middle Eastern politics too. Oman is in a location that is at once precarious and strategic, on the bottom right corner of Arabia, sandwiched between the instability of Yemen, the power of Saudi Arabia, the glitz of the UAE and with the revolutionary zeal of Iran just across the water. Not an easy place to be.

Sultan Qaboos worked to protect his realm by trying to balance all these players, doing his best to maintain neutrality between these competing powers, but also trying to act as peace maker and mediator between them. It was in this role that he also opened a channel to Israel and hosted visits by both Prime Minister Rabin and more recently Netanyahu. He saw that building bridges, even if for now mostly economic, was in the interest of Oman, but more widely the entire Middle East. In a an explosive region he tried to create calm and lower tensions and make new connections for the common good. His mix of realism and common sense will be missed. One can hope that his appointed successor, his nephew, will be blessed with similar aspirations for regional cooperation and peace.