Eid in Dhabab
It is the second year that I live in a country where Islam is practiced by majority of its citizens. And the second time I observe the holy month of Ramadan and the following Eid holidays. Although this time during Ramadan I was traveling around the world (Congress in Malaysia, then back home to Russia), now I am enjoying Eid holidays in my current home, the Sultanate of Oman.
Wikipedia will tell you more about Ramadan and Eid ul_Fitr.
Luckily, my team and I got an invitation from Nasser (an Omani friend) to visit his village, Dhabab. Just came back from there:)
It was lovely to experience Eid in this place! The village is located outside Muscat (the capital). We started our journey at 5 in the morning, and were welcomed at the place by local people with Omani halwa and Arabic coffee at around 7am.
Very soon men of the village were done with their morning prayers in the mosque, and were coming back singing songs and shooting rifles. Guests (especially newcomers like me and my team) were following them with a lot of curiosity:)
After this procession, we went to Nasser’s house to have a light breakfast of fruit and sweets, which followed by traditional and familiar for me ritual of putting henna on hands.
Anjali and Gail with local women and children
Local girls putting henna on hands
The set up in the village is very interesting. There is a concept of guest room which is usually separate from the main house. It is a different building, smaller than the house and has only one room with cushions on the floor, TV set and a bathroom. The explanation I got is that guests are not invited directly to the house in order not to disturb the family, especially their women, and for the host family not to worry about the atmosphere, as all efforts have already been put to decorate the separate guest room:)
Sitting room in Nasser’s house
Breakfast was one of the six meals we had that day, which included second breakfast in another house, then three lunches at the neighboring houses, finishing with the dinner back at Nasser’s.
I got opportunity to talk to local people, men and women, observe their traditions and taste delicious local food.
Small Ahmed, dressed like a typical Omani man in white disdasha with a hat kuma
Some interesting observations:
- Men and women are celebrating Eid separately in different rooms. Sometimes men were coming to women’ place, but it didn’t work vice versa.
- Women have bright dresses for Eid, very different from what we see during a usual day in Muscat.
- Some sisters have completely the same dresses! Anjali and I looked like we knew about this option before:)
- Most of the people in Dhabab come to their village only during weekends or holidays as they study or work full time in the capital, Muscat.
- I was talking to a local girl. I: “Your dress is very beautiful!” M (responding to my compliment): “Your eyes are beautiful”. I (thinking): “Oh very nice, it’s not often that I hear something like this about my eyes!” Later on, when I repeated my dress compliment to her in front of another girl, M. said back again: “Your eyes are beautiful”, and then explained that in Oman a person make a compliment about the eyes to the one who pointed out to his/her beautiful appearance:)
- And I definitely like this nice Omani style water tanks on the roofs!
All in all, the day was full of food and exciting conversations:)
In the evening, we went to the beach nearby, sat and talked for a while looking at the stars (appeared like an explosion on the sky, along with a new born moon) and the fire, listening to the water waves behind untill eventually fell asleep right there on blankets.
