My Omani family that hosted me in Nizwa was awesome. They were so sweet and welcoming. I spent an entire day with them. When we arrived at the home, we were greeted at the gate by the husband of one of the women who lived there while the two women (who I found later to be the women of the house) stayed in the background at the entrance to the front door of the home. The man came all the way to the outside of the gate entrance. The two women waited excitedly at the front door clad in their regular housewear of a brightly colored and busily-designed thaub with their matching hijab covering their hair.
We were welcomed into their home and guided to the humble majlis. There were a couple small loveseats on one wall, two walls lined with the bedoin style floor pillows, and the fourth wall had a modest sized boxed television set with a lonely 90‘s style vase filled with artifical plants. The rom had no pictures hung up on the wall except for one showing the family’s loyalty and respect for the Sultan Qaboos Bin Said. The majlis is much less grandious than my Muscat family’s special sitting room because the one in Muscat has these fancy large throne-like sofas that line all three walls of the larger rectangular room. These sofas are lined with elaborately designed and almost gaudy textures. It’s got a beautiful and large oriental-style rug in the center and the flat-screen television is mounted on the only wall that does not have the fancy seating. The decorative pillows line all of the free space of the seats. It’s pretty elegent when one first walks in.
Back to the Nizwa family majlis. We are motioned to sit down and we sit cross-legged on the floor. One of the women comes leaves for a minute to come back with a round serving tray filled with gorgeous fresh fruit, an edible form of dates, and a fresh pot of coffee to pour in those tiny little middle esatern style cups. We were given the traditional set-up when a guest in in your home in Oman. The oldest of the house cuts up the fruti, starts pouring the coffee, and then offers the dates or halwa or whatever type of sweet date concoction they have to offer. In this case, we had sweet and nutty homemade halwa. My favorite treat. She said it’s made from dates, rose water, saffron, almonds, and sugar. The women were proud to present us with their tray of treats to greet us in their home. We were the first Americans they invited into their home.
They knew barely any English. But, I think they might have been shy at first. I managed to get out of them that they only lived with each other in this small home and their husbands shared the two seperate bedrooms with them. They gladly gave us a tour of their very clean home. The kitchen with a window in it, their bedrooms, and the “laundry room” which was just a space underneath the stairway. The stairway I guess just went to storage. We were not invited upstairs so I didn’t want to pry and ask. They encouraged me to take photographs of their bedrooms and within the house. I felt uncomfortable doing so at first, especially after being told so many times that Omani familial culture is very private within the families from the public and I’m definitely “the public” to these people. But the photographer in me was eager to so I did. I was able to document some of the most private areas of an Omani woman’s lifestyle by being welcomed and not only welcomed but encouraged to take these photographs. I feel so lucky!
Then, we went outside to the next door neighbor who live in the same house but another section of it with a seperate entrance. They were throwing a birthday party for one of their children who was turning one-year old. We were welcomed in and greeted by the eldest of the home with the traditional coffe set-up again. There were many other women there sitting around. The men were in the other room, seperated by a closed door. The women waited on the men when they would knock on the door to call for some more food or drinks. It was pretty busy at that house. We brought over some sharpened slaughtering knives so the men in the other room could go out and slaughter the live goat so we could have fresh meat for our mansaf. I’m still not sure if Omanis call mansaf mansaf; the communal spiced rice platter with slabs of meat on top. Jordanians call it this and it’s pretty similar minus the yummy cinnamon and cardamom spices in it. We sat and talked to an English teacher who is a young Omani. She told me all about how most women still get married much later than the previous generation of Omanis here. There are no moer people getting married off at age 12 and 15 years old. Many women get married at 20-25 years and men, a little older at 26-28 are the numbers she gave me. She didn’t plan on getting married anytime soon and was proud to say she was already 25 years old. She then, pointed out her younger sister who was 20 years old and already married with a one year old baby. She said “It depends on the person and what they want to do with their life. If they are ready, then they get married, like my sister”.
It’s interesting to note that she spoke really good English and she only studied abroad in the United Kingdom for one year while learning English mostly in school in Muscat. I thought that was really cool.
There were many kids running in and out of the house while the 12 or 15 women, the guardians of them, were sitting and relaxing, tending to the infants, in the very small majlis. At one point one of the women handed a 7-year old boy a lighter to use for something. I assume he used it to start the fire outside so they could cook up the freshly slaughtered goat for lunch. It surprises me still, how Omani children in general seem to be much more mature in the ways they socialize and are respectful, helpful, and trusted to do things within the family that a child of the same age in the States most likely would normally not be at the same level.
No comments:
Post a Comment