A Visit to the Bait Muzna Gallery

After a stay-at-home Friday, doing laundry, reading and relaxing,

and several hours of photographing around the farm,

Idriis picked us up at 9:30 Saturday morning to visit the Bait Muzna Gallery, Susan Al Said's art gallery in Muscat, where we had arranged to meet her. She shows a wide range of modern, largely Middle Eastern artists, and we found the work interesting and mostly to our liking.


This is a portrait I did of Susan at the gallery. When she first met her husband 25 years ago, she was an American fashion model working in Paris, and as you can see, she has lost little if any of her fashion model looks in the intervening years.


The gallery occupies a house that has been in her husband's family for decades, with an interior courtyard...



... and several rooms full of art (including a number of beautiful antique wooden chests). We looked at everything and bought a few unique and (we thought) elegant souviners to take home with us. Later we went to lunch with Mohammed and Meera at their home, where we met several more members of their family.


We were particularly happy that Mohammed's younger son, Ali was there. We hadn't seen him since his father's graduation from Harvard in 2004.

Then it was back to the farm...


...and a quiet afternoon and evening "at home."

A Most Unusual Christmas

Christmas day we went to Nizwa, the ancient capital of the country. Nizwa is about one and a half hours into the mountains to the west of Muscat. These mountains are extremely unusual in that they were thrust up from the bottom of the ocean millions of years ago when two tectonic plates collided, and the oceanic plate thrust up over the continental plate.


They are barren and forbidding, yet fascinating in shape, and brutally steep. In many places they come right down to the edge of the town.


For this day trip our escorts were Mohammed’s son Ahmed, and his nephew Ali. Above, Carolyn, Ahmed, and Ali (with Rodger taking the photo) lunch at a traditional Omani Restaurant, sitting outside at a table. Inside were small private rooms where diners ate sitting on cushions on the floor. We lacked the necessary flexibility to dine in that traditional manner.

We are so fortunate to have as guides these members of Mohammed's family who are interesting and fun to be with, and who speak Arabic and English. Ahmed is currently a college student in Toronto, and Ali is a colonel in the national police.


Nizwa is located at an oasis in a wadi (a dried up river bed) between these mountain ridges.


One of the main attractions of Nizwa is its ancient fort. Forts abound in Oman, and the fort at Nizwa is one of the most famous. We went inside through a carved wooden door between two cannons, and bought tickets from a walleyed man sitting above us.

On the wall above himwas the inevitable portrait of His Majesty the Sultan.


Inside the fort was, by turns, very close...


...and surprisingly spacious.


There was a small but interesting gift shop where Ahmed and Ali bought us souviners.


There was also a snack shop where we had something cold to drink, and where Carolyn took this shot out the window of Ali (on the right) talking with another visitor.


We climbed several flights of steep interior stairs to reach the top of the fort. These stairways were strewn with various ingenious booby traps to ensnare invaders, such things as a series of seven trap doors in the floor of the winding staircase which, when stepped upon, caused warriors to fall into a deep pit – thus the origin of the word pitfall.


There are narrow slits in the top of the battlements through which boiling date juice was poured on unsuspecting invaders below, or water to put out enemy fires. Over time changes were made to accommodate cannons and other firearms.


High atop Nizwa Fort Ahmed points out a spot of dust on my camera sensor.

On the way back to Muscat all traffic was stopped at a checkpoint along the highway because of an upcoming summit of the Arabian Peninsula heads of state, of which Oman was the host country. With policeman Ali driving, we had no problem sailing right through.



The day before, Christmas Eve, we'd gotten a call from Mohammed telling us that a driver would pick us up at 6:00 pm Christmas evening and take us to dinner with members of the Omani Royal Family. Idriis arrived on scheduled, and drove us to the palatial home of a nephew of the Sultan, Kais Al Said and his American wife, Susan. Their home was well up a hill behind the Grand Mosque, and provided a panoramic view of the city spread out below.

Hesitant to ask permission to photograph, Rodger left his LX3 in its bag (so there are no photos for this section of the post).

Besides the two of us, there were four other guests, all friends of the family: a German artist who spends half of each year in Oman, an Indian couple involved in importing cars into Oman from all over the world (him) and in a psychiatric practice (her). After dinner had begun, another guest arrived, a physical therapist who treats his highness for partial paralysis due to a stroke he had several years ago. Also there were two of their children, an older son home from college in England and a younger son home from boarding school in Vermont with three of his European classmates.

When we addressed our hostess as “Your Highness," she immediately told us, “Call me Susan.” In addition to caring for a disabled husband, raising three children (a daughter works in an art gallery in LA), and running a royal household, this high energy lady also owns an art business in downtown Muscat, the Bait Muzna Gallery, where she sells art all over the Middle East.

Dinner was a traditional English Christmas dinner at a long, festively decorated table that comfortably seated the fourteen of us, with waiters hovering, anticipating our every need. There was a Christmas tree and Christmas Carols playing softly on the sound system in the background. Particularly good were the roasted turkey, the garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, and the honeyed parsnips. And we had very fine red and white wines, which we would not have expected in a Muslim country. There was an extensive desert table (which Rodger managed to almost entirely avoid).

After a magical and wholly unexpected Christmas evening arranged for us by our friend Mohammed, we said our goodbyes, having made arrangements to meet Susan at the gallery the following day.

His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said

His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos bin Said (Official Portrait)

Today's post is about one man and the country he built over the past 38 years.

The modern Sultinate of Oman was born in 1970 when the current Sultan, Qaboos bin Said, came to power . At 30 years of age, he overthrew his father, a backward-looking despot, sending him into exile in London for the remainder of his life. When Qaboos bin Saud became Sultan, Oman was little more than a medieval state.

A few statistics:

• Life expectancy in 1970 was 47, while today it is 74.

• Oman had only one hospital in 1970 and now there are 58, plus 897 clinics and dispensaries.

• There were three schools in the whole country in 1970 and now there are 1178, plus several universities. Education is co-educational, with increasing numbers of women as well as men opting for careers in the professions and high tech.

• Today 86% of the country is supplied with electricity and with water, which is mostly piped in, although in the most remote villages water is supplied through truck delivery.

• From only 6 miles of paved road in 1970, a network of highways now links all the major cities and towns within Oman and its neighboring countries, and graded roads reach deep into the interior, linking the smallest villages.

Of course we did not meet or see the Sultan during our trip, but we saw his hand everywhere we went. We saw it especially in the highways stretching across the country, with new sections under construction almost everywhere we went.


The above and next three photos are of As Sultan Qaboos Street, a 4-lane highway that runs through Muscat and out past the airport. The highway is bordered on both sides for much of it's length by esplanades planted with grass, brightly colored flowers, and trees. All are irrigated by water derived from desalination plants.


Not only are these highways beautifully engineered and constructed, but much thought and no little expense was devoted to making them aesthetically pleasing as well, as with this retaining wall for an overpass.


This decorative structure, part of the same overpass as above, was patterned after an historic Omani fort.


Highway construction is not confined to Muscat and the other larger cities. This highway to the ancient Omani capital of Niswa runs along the wadis, or valleys between ranges of mountains.

This rugged stretch of highway leads to the beautiful Shangra La Resort, several miles south of Muscat on the coast.

A highways cuts through hills outside Salalah in the south.

There are well engineered paved roads even to small fishing villages such as Haramil.


We saw the Sultan's hand in the many government-built schools across the country, even in a tiny roadside village like Sarfait, dominated by its beautiful modern school.

We saw his artistic touch in sculptures decorating nearly every roundabout like this one near the University close to Mohammed's farm,

and perhaps his whimsy in this roundabout incense burner in Ruwi,

or this pile of dolphins on the promenade along the Corniche, a harborside street in Mutwah, a popular tourist section of Muscat.

This is the Sultan's yacht in Muscat Harbor, as seen from the Corniche. We were told that he has it because he doesn't like to fly.

An Opera House is under construction in Muscat. Maybe it will be done the next time we are there.

Pictures of the Sultan are everywhere: on the sides of public buildings,


on the roofs of stores,


behind the reservation desks of hotels such as the one where we stayed in Sur,

in a display in the Fort at Niswa,

and even along the highway, as with this display celebrating a meeting of the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council, which took place during our stay.

I think that His Majesty Qaboos bin Said is a genius. I can think of no one in our time who has had such a profound impact on the actual physical development his country. He single handedly brought Oman into the modern age while scrupulously preserving his country's rich heritage, culture, and traditions. Furthermore he has done it with a powerful aesthetic sensibility; former U. S. Ambassador to Oman, Frances D. Cook told me that she considers him a Michangelo. He has chosen wisely which aspects of modernism to allow, and which to discourage. (I wish he had kept American fast food franchises out of his country, but that is about the only thing I can fault him for.)

One last statistic: in the Sultinate of Oman, His Majesty Qaboos bin Said is universally loved, which in the final analysis, says it all. rpk

The Grand Mosque and the Sultan's Palace 12/24

The day before Christmas. We were picked up by Mohammed's driver Idriis for a day of exploring Muscat and Mutrah. Once separate and fortified ancient communities, they are now part of greater Muscat.

Above is the modern gate between Muscat and Mutrah.


A strange structure in the form of a gigantic incense burner near the Corniche, a street curving along the harbor in Mutrah.

First we went to visit Sultan Qaboos's Grand Mosque. It is the largest in Oman, and is, in effect, the official mosque of the country.

I had to cover up completely, to my ankles and wrists, and wear a headscarf that threatened to fall off at any moment (scarves designed for western wear are just not large enough to be held securely in place).

The beauty and scale of the mosque is impossible to describe. From the outside there are four minarets at the four corners of a large enclosure with many archways. It is not unlike the Taj Mahal in it's effect.

Here is the Grand Mosque from the entry way.

Above the main hall is a huge dome, with an intricate lattice pattern, which is strikingly beautiful when illuminated at night. That's Idriis, our driver and tour guide, standing wit me in the foreground.

Inside, on the floor of the main hall, is the largest one-piece Persian carpet in the world (the blue cloth is rolled out during visiting hours).


A huge chandelier is suspended in the center of the dome. Gilded designs and calligraphy cover every wall.

Multiple nooks on every side hold copies of the Koran to be used during worship. Men and women pray in separate rooms off the main hall, and must wash both hands and feet before entering.

Sultan Qaboos's palace was similarly spectacular, although we couldn't go inside of course.

It was on the scale of Buckingham Palace, with a huge area out front for the pomp and circumstance that accompanies royalty. In the center is the palace itself, which was seen at night in an earlier post.

The palace is surrounded on three sides by mountains, on which are a series of five 16th and 17th century forts and watch towers. Above is Fort Mirani, now home to His Majesty's Royal Guards.

A series of three watch towers on a mountain overlooking the palace grounds.

One of two forts guarding the entrance to the harbor.

Next we went to lunch at the Automatic Restaurant, in Muscat, pictured on the left, above. I imagined little doors with dishes inside, like the old Automats still in New York as late as the early '70s, but alas, it was not to be. Instead we found ourselves in a good Lebanese Restaurant where we had an excellent lunch and take-out for dinner home at the farm.