The stereotypical Arabian photo op everyone hopes for still presents itself occasionally. On this particular day, a group of Omani men, just outside Sohar in the Al Batinah Governorate, were enjoying showing off their prize camels. Omanis, and indeed most Gulf Arabs, share a great love for these curious beasts with their humped backs and incredibly long double sets of eye lashes. Besides being prized for their milk and unique ability to travel across vast deserts, camel meat used to be a staple of the local diet, but is now usually reserved for special feast times such as during one of the Eid holidays that follow the Holy Month of Ramadan. The ungulates are far too valuable these days as breeding stock and for camel racing, although camel meat has become a popular (and expensive) restaurant menu item abroad from London to Tokyo. There are even camel beauty contests where judges scrutinize each animal’s chest (a fuller chest is good for racing) and lower lip (the more it curves downward the more beautiful the animal is considered) before bestowing cash prizes on the winner. The Al Dhafra Festival, held each year in the desert outside the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi, claims to be the world’s largest camel beauty contest.

At times, I found life in this desert region lacking in color. The dominant tree species in most of Oman is the date palm with its crown of rigid brownish-green fronds, and though I eventually came to appreciate them for both their beauty and the shade they provided from an often relentless desert sun, I still longed for a more familiar kind of nature. However, just when I’d find myself longing for the greater variety and color of vegetation I’d experienced living in my former homes of North America and SE Asia, I’d spot a marvelous bougainvillea plant with its brilliant crimson (as well as a variety of other hues) blossoms spilling across a wall in front of a house or on the side of the road. While the variety of bougainvillea found so plentifully in this region requires very little water, the constant heat of the region allowed many of my expat friends to nurture surprisingly diverse and lush gardens by manipulating a bit of shade and watering regularly. Still, the desert sensibility of the Omanis was fascinating. I once lamented the fact that the campus gardeners would trim the hedges just as the blooms were beginning to peak, but was swiftly informed by one of my students that he preferred them that way since he’d become accustomed to a less visually distracting life in a desert environment.

Another of my favorite photos from Nizwa, this one taken at the famous Friday morning livestock market where people from the surrounding villages converge for this colorful gathering where they barter for goats, sheep and camels. The Bedouin woman pictured is wearing a head covering known in Oman as a ‘burqa’ which differs greatly from the one-piece body covering garment that goes by this same name in places such as Afghanistan. I would often see Bedouin women in the supermarket in Sohar wearing burqas that were made of a hard material resembling metal that only covered the area around their eyes, noses and upper lips. Most Omani women wear a head scarf known locally as a ‘shela’ (in other Middle East contexts often called a ‘hijab’) that covers their hair, but their faces are uncovered. In the southern areas of the country around Salalah, however, many local women do cover their faces with a black veil –known as a ‘niqab’–when in public.