The Super restaurant is a popular restaurant in Al Ain because the Indian food is good and spicey. Indians aren't into a gimmick to attract customers such as a uniform, logo or such PR crapola. It's good that my son has picked up on this. I told him that Indians are out to make money for themselves and recall what H. told me about Chinese and Indians. They suck out from the capitalist system and do not put anything back into it as Europeans and Americans do as dutiful consumers. The Indian computer programmer I heard about in Dublin, Ohio did not understand why his neighbor wanted to mow his own lawn when he could hire someone to do it. The American wants to try out his latest primitive gadget such as a weed wacker. Incomprehensible to an Indian, the American spirit of pulling your own weight and equality (though sans the liberty and brotherhood that the Muslim and Hindu have that the American has lost after breaking out of the immigrant ghettos and moving into the suburbs and subdivisions).

My wife said that the women at the table across the aisle from ours were Bengali. They had pulled their veils up to the back of their heads, a rare opportunity when one can see that face under the veil that otherwise does not manifest itself but as two eyes peering out of a slit. I said Muslim Bengalis, recalling my reading of Chaudhuri, Bengal being both Muslim and Hindu. They were particularly roly-poly and round-faced. My wife said she just knew, could just tell they were Bengali when I asked her how she knew. She said they looked Mexican with their long noses. Their roundness was so round that the women looked like twins. Their husbands were not with them and they had a diminutive child in a stroller when they left that was at first sitting on the table wielding a spoon like a sceptre. There was even a woman in the back at a table and she was Bengali and had the same roundness as the other two. I even imagined the two signalling to her about my curiosity as if they noted the roundness too for the first time.

They were brown like Mexicans too. We were seated in the family section by the way. They were cushiony looking, had a pliability like a brown leather couch with buttons like eyes embedded in the upholstery. Good baby factories I imagine.

Dialog on Gide

Me: When are you going to start to read Counterfeiters? I've been waiting to start it myself. Let me know.

JP: Was finally able to get a copy of Gide's Counterfeiters. It took me two months.

JP: Why did it take me so long to get to this guy? He's absolutely compelling! Not a bad page in any of his book so far!

Me: Yes indeed. Shades of petty criminality and juvenile delinquency in the beginning. Depicting the shady underside of respectable petit bourgeois professional class being infiltrated by corrupting artistes, the corruptors of youths. Yes, the undertones are riveting. Not like Balzac with his straight forward social commentary. Kind of almostRussian, right? He liked the Russian novelists.

JP: Yes, perhaps so. You might say that he is what Conrad- when not writing about the south seas - might have been had he a brain besides his rhapsodic pretensions.
When comparing him to Balzac keep in mind that when Balzac was writing that way of life, the petit-bourgeois, was still in its youthful vibrancy. By the time Gide got there it was beginning to crumble.
Gide is marvelous!

Me: Marvelous and memorable. Characters such as Passavant and Edouard would not be encountered in Am. lit. Gide writes with such pointed irony. I'll let you catch the allusion, but there is a poignant short little scene between two characters that alludes to an English novelist, I'll leave it at that. I only picked it up after reading Gide's journals where he tells of his reading in English lit. and poetry. (This is my second attempt at reading the novel, the first time I only got halfway thru.) And then his knowledge of Shakespeare, each character has a foil. It makes me realize how I should never attempt to write a novel!

JP: The allusion: would it be Dickens, that ol' repressed pederast? I do not pretend to know a lot about homosexual men, but I am aware that no one hates pederasts more than committed homosexuals. Probablythey feel the urgency to separate themselves from those ailing individuals. I have given some thought to what you have said and must agree with you, one can see Crime And Punishment, A Raw Youth, and The Devils all over the place. In fact Edouard might be Gide's StephanTriofovich (Forgive me, I do not have the last name quite right and am too lazy at this moment to dig through my books) of The Devils. I am presently on the chapter, The Evening AtRambouillet (my god! why can't WE live like that?) The opening paragraph is pure Goethe, his philosophy of natural history, almost verbatim. I can't help but wonder if the character, Robert, is Gide himself, his examination of himself. This novel could never be mistaken for anything but a modern novel, as he shares with Mann the usage of creation for vigorous self-examination.

Me: I knew you would enjoy this novel. You catch theRussian allusions that I wish I could, not having read the great Russians. What a master Gide is. When, before the evening at R.., Bernard and Edouard go out into the corridor of Laura's hotel room there is a brief little interplay btwn the two that reminded me of Fagin and the artful dodger in three chapters before Evening at R. pp. 132-33 in my book. A bit of a comic note.
What American could come near him? Henry Miller perhaps? Americans can only write good picaresque novels like Kerouac. But Miller is definitely not an aesthete, he's too much of a preacher on a soap box, as Luongo put it, though he admires Miller immensely.
Wait'll you get to the chap. Theory of the Novel. I just recalled that I did read this novel when I was in high school because I remember quite well not understanding the chap. Bernard and the Angel whether he actually grappled a real angel. I was a Francophile then and remember reading Steegmuller's great bio. of Cocteau. (Now it comes out, my early youth, a more refined Anderson character, Columbus not being as oppressive as a small town in Ohio where my mother hailed from.)
Yes, why can't we live like that? Where did it go wrong? Gide did indeed form his life thru literature and writing, this he writes about in his journals.
I think Edouard is Gide, at least the homosexuality of Gide. What about this Passavant? Another aspect of his homosexuality? Edouard seems more repressed than Passavant or at least just coming out at a late age, he's 38 at the time of the narration, you know.

JP: So it is Dickens! I couldn't think who else it might be.I haven't read Dickens since HS. I just don't care for his work. I will grant that he had a fecund imagination, and his awareness of the economic underpinnings of life's situations must have had some appeal to both the Marxists and Pound (an indirect influence on Joyce also...?) Even so I can't read him. He's too wordy for my tastes.
What I like about Gide, at least one of the things I like is his penetration of character and motive, might do it the best after Dostoyevsky. It is definitely a homosexual novel, but then to a certain extent so is Magic Mountain. A writer can only write about one knows and, let's face it, it easier to fathom one's own sex. Even so his understanding of women seems pretty good also. In fact I would have to say that the 'healthiest' character in the book so far is Lilian, whatever I actually mean by that. Vincent may be brilliant, but he strikes me as being something of a dud. Am I right about him? I guess I will see. I think one thing a really superior novelist does is that he forces his reader to evaluate his own awareness of things. Gide does this for me, as does Dostoyevsky and Mann.

Me: I think Vincent is mainly a catalyst for the action, the brother of Olivier who becomes the editor of Robert Passavant's literary journal, which is more important to the story. Like the older brother who makes the initial foray into life and who is followed by his sibling. His brilliance in natural history will act as a a kind of comment on Robert's character, who will exploit it for his own ends, you'll see. Vincent reminds me slightly of the main character in Balzac's Lost Illusions, the debutant poet in Paris. But he's a mere small time gigolo. What I like aboutGide is that he allows the reader to fill in the character himself according to the knowledge he brings to the reading.
Yes I have to admit too that Dickens would bore me now, haven't read him since HS. Liked Oliver Twist for its atmosphere. Bleak House I haven't read but it's too daunting, longer than Lost Illusions I think, which I didn't make thru to the end.

JP: Yes! Dickens was definitely a master of atmosphere. Of course the cinema has largely killed off the necessity for that. ( Most current novels, regardless of the author's intentions, read like movie scripts. I suspect that even 'serious' writers now have that in the backs of their gourds, whether they care to acknowledge it or not!)
I think I do sense already that Vincent is more tool of technique than anything else, but - as you say - I will find out. Am reading the theory of the novel now. Why do the post-modies never discuss this book? It seems right up their collective alley! I feel that Robert might have a bit of Gide in him also, as near the beginning of the book Edouard comments in his journal about his (Robert's) work. He calls him a juggler, if I recall right. The Counterfeiters itself seems like something a balancing act.

Me: Robert a bit of Gide but I think Edouard is just as much if not more. Interesting the quartet of men paired off, Bernard and Edouard (though Edouard loves Olivier) and Robert and Olivier. It is the ancient figure of the quincunx with Gide the narrator making it five, only I happen to know thisbecause Jonathan is reading about Roman history and the military and the quincunx was used as a military formation, and Graves mentions it as a mystical figure.
Yes the modies would not include him because he is not really innovative technique-wise because he does nothing that was not been done or accomplished by the French epistolary novel (what was it, Liaisons Dangereuses?, my French lit. background is still lingering back there in my memory of university days at O.S.U.) He's too steeped in the literary tradition, thank God. An actual counterfeit coin does crop up, one that is made of glass with a gold outer layer, think of all the implications of that! Counterfeit, yet transparent!!

JP: Interesting that you should bring up Liaisons because it is ever so apparent that his true model is the 18th cent novel. I was going to write that to you even before reading your email. For me the author reviewing his characters nails it. Also the author introducing himself, very 18th cent. but post-modie too! On certain levels I feel that the post-modies unwittingly are searching for the 18th cent novel. That is why I made that statement.
It is true: there is more of Gide in Edouard than Robert. But I suspect that certain key aspects of Gide are in Robert. I think that there may be a blanket[ed] confession there (am I reading too much into Robert?)
You may remember that Durrell's last major work that he called the Avignon Quincunx. Like Graves he too was a student of the mediteranean world. I triedto read one volume some years ago, but found it inferior to the Alexandria Quartet. The book I read only came alive during those passages where the protagonist flashed back to his days in Egypt! (It takes place in Southern France and Switzerland) Egypt must have meant a lot to Durrell. I am getting off the subject. I intended to openmy email to you today by saying that The Counterfeiters is, I feel, one of the best novels I have ever read - ever!

Me: Yes, Durrell tried to repeat himself. Funny how Luongo is enamoured of Egypt also, the Alex. Quartet one of his favorites.
I don't know, I just get the impression that Edouard is more like Gide but then maybe I'm not reading enough into Robert because Edouard gets more print from his journal entries and so I think Ed. is more like Gide simply because of his getting more attention from Gide.
I'm glad to have turned you on to Counterfeiters. Do you have the Mod. Lib. edition? It has useful supplements to throw light on the novel.

JP: No. I agree with you that Edouard is the character most similar to Gide himself. But Edouard does talk about Robert's writing style. I think it was Gide criticizing how he perceived himself, that's all.

JP: You know, the deeper I get into this book the more I see the influence of The Possessed, though of course it in no way diminishes The 'feiters. Also when reading the various dialogues it becomes obvious that Gide was also a playwrite. They often have the feel of playwriting, as if he thrashed it out in his mind to make a play of it or parts of it. I really love this book.

Me: I must read The Possessed.
Racine and Moliere are to the French as opera is to the Italians.

JP: Yes. But also I am seeing more and more of Dickens in him also. The way he colors certain characters seems more like Dickens. The Argonaunts dinner seems to have a bit of both. Jarry comes across as that buffoon in The Possessed. I forget his name. Was Jarry really like that? What a fool! Olivier is one of those unique young men who is teetering. Fall one way and he would be a saint, the other, a girl. He appears to be heading in the direction of the second. He is a less elevated Alyosha (The Brothers Karamazov). He at times almost has some of A's saintliness, or would if he were able to free himself from ambition. Is it that some women are drawn to gay men because they see that potential in them, or at least some women do? I have wondered that. Unfortunately very few homosexual men are so elevated, and almost none in this time of self-interest. Ah, yes; as with Dostoyevsky christianity underscores this book too.

Me: Yes, I think Gide probably in Counterfeiters is struggling with the perceived immorality of homosexuality that in our times is accepted by most liberals as not immoral but merely an alternative lifestyle whatever that empty term means, but Gide was trying to fit it into some kind of transcending Christianity that was mystic at the same time as not puritanical, not dogmatic. Hence his attraction to Protestantism and its propensity towards self-redemption rather than thru the Church and its teachings.
I think Gide was intrigued with youth and the"delicate psyche" of the male youth, very Greek I suppose and their notion of the union of intellectual love that was not sexual but nevertheless homosexual. He tries to redeem Edouard's love for Olivier as a fatherly love that is accepted by Olivier's mother. Yes, Oscar Molinier is a putz (my Yiddish escapes me) as far as a father goes (but what father isn't) and not the father Olivier was seeking, the "father"that was the real father in the adopted father of Bernard, the latter finally realizing that a real father could be one not of your blood (an ancient custom I've just read about in the Golden Bough). This is where Gide loses veracity perhaps, but then he says at one point thru Edouard that fiction does not really reflect the unresolved happenings of real life. In short, how would a mother ever accept that her son found a lover and father wrapped into one? Well, who knows? (There's a short story in itself.)

JP: Well, obviously, in Ancient Greece that wouldn't have been a problem, as women were for having children. The american indians, or at least certain tribes would have a boy come under the guidance of a man other than his biological father. That makes sense, as there is often in a boy too much that is like his father. It must make it very difficult for a man to raise his own blood with any astuteness.

G had referred to it as retro, and indeed the Qurum Beach Hotel was retro, which made it all the more interesting with the lurid red carpet in our double room and the spiral concrete staircase towering at the back of the foyer. A large portrait of Sultan Qaboos stared from above the reception desk. My wife and I decided to take a trip to Muscat on the spur of the moment when we were in Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago to redeem some air mileage through Thomas Cook. We took the cheapest trip, Muscat, a 40 minute flight from Abu Dhabi. The weather was the same as in Al Ain though I was expecting it to be cooler.

The baggage screener saw the scissors in our carry-on bag and this was the second pair of scissors we have lost at airports, the last time was in Hong Kong when the screener in a very strident tone of voice pronounced 'nail file', 'nail file' a number of times as if he were repeating the words in an English vocabulary lesson. We did not bother to pick up the nail file and scissors on our way back through Hong Kong despite the receipt given to us to reclaim them. I was to blame this time because my wife had told me to take them out.

Our double consisted of two rooms which were long and narrow with high ceilings and ceiling fans, which my wife didn't want on because she claimed they made artificial air that made her sick. The black painted doors I noticed were cut high and so there was a wide gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. Our room was S-1 though the key had a tag that had S-4 on it. This did not seem to bother the receptionist at all. My wife asked the Indian who escorted us to our room, what if we got confused, and he said just look above the door, and sure enough S-1 was posted above the door and the skeleton key with an S-4 tag fit the lock and opened it. My experience with skeleton keys in my days in West Africa did not bode well with me, since I was robbed in a villa that had a skeleton key to the front door.

The dark, almost navy blue toilet and bidet were of a tone in agreement with the red carpet and the walls were white. The small, squat frigo was empty and once at night it lurched, scaring my wife when I said that something was moving in the room.

We had arrived around midnight and had to apply for a visitor's visa at the Muscat airport, called the Aseeb airport. Two young airport officials, a couple, identified by tags greeted us as we were filling out the forms and offered to help us. I was delighted since I had heard that Omanis in general were friendlier than Emiratees. I deferred to my wife's discretion when she said nonchalantly, as she was filling out the form, how much, that phrase which is much shorter in Arabic, kam. I kindly refused and we proceeded to the visa counter and did not encounter the usually surly officials in the Dubai or AbuDhabi airports. They appeared less imposing since they were not wearing uniforms. A tall youthful official beckoned us over to his counter and reached into his pocket to pull out a pen before he sat down again, having quickly returned to his cubicle seemingly in time to serve us, another good sign rather than that cool efficiency one usually encounters in visa officials as if they are plodding along with their heads in a mesmeric cloud. He evinced some small consternation at one point and applied index and second finger to his lower lip but proceeded to stamp our passports and also our visa receipts. We were done.

There was no line behind us, and the three Germans (?) next to us, a white haired couple with their granddaughter, were being helped by their Omani guide, the curious guide having thought she was their daughter, a woman probably in her early thirties. Oman seems to be a favorite place for those intrepid far-ranging tourists, the Germans. I noticed a number of books in the lobby of the Qurum Beach Hotel that had German titles.

There was a taxi in the queue outside the terminal and we took it. We asked how much to the Qurum Beach Hotel and the driver said eight riyals. After we got in and were on our way he said nine. One riyal equals ten dirhams. My wife's brother had told us that it would be no problem to use dirhams in Muscat. We paid the taxi driver in Abu Dhabi 40 dirhams for a half hour drive to the airport and it is usually 30. The prices seemed to be inflated in Muscat since we were tourists I supposed. The drive from Aseeb to the Qurum was not half an hour. He gave us 10 dirhams in change after we gave him a 100 dirham note.

The next morning we had breakfast in the hotel. A small Chinese guy with rectangular glasses and a predatory look of lonesomeness and strained friendliness greeted us in the breakfast room. He seemed to be on the make. He started to talk with my wife who reacted in turn with friendliness to the elan of his ESL classroom English. He was a bit surprised to hear we were from Abu Dhabi though he did not show any sign of knowing where the United Arab Emirates was when we told him it was a 40 minute plane ride away from Muscat. We sat down at the long table behind him, it being obvious that he could not make us out and did not continue to engage us in conversation. He was a bit dismayed when in the interim two Spanish speaking women sat down at his table and ordered breakfast as if before he had, and so he was kurt with the Indian waiter in reminding him that he had ordered already. Then, after he, and my wife and I, got our order almost simultaneously he reminded the waiter about his tea, which, when he got it, he sipped and slurped as he periodically swivelled his head toward the Spanish women to glance at them, perhaps thinking that the prey was too large or unwieldy to handle when he turned his head back to stoop over his breakfast and continue to slurp his tea and eat his cornflakes. An older man with a drooping paunch came in and joined the two women and spoke with them pleasantly with one hairy arm perched on top of the back of the booth but not touching the woman he had sat down next to. I heard him say that he had thought they were French and they giggled at this. The Chinese guy finished his tea quickly and nonchalantly got up and walked out of the breakfast room alone. Oh the joys of having all the time in the world for site-seeing and being alone!

Before breakfast, in our room, we had decided to visit the Mutrah souk, after having consulted my guide to Oman. I asked the receptionist how much was a taxi ride there from the hotel. He said three or four riyals. My wife and I did not take a few steps outside the hotel before a taxi stopped. We asked him how much it was to the Mutrah souk and he said five or six riyals. I begged to differ but we got in the taxi anyways. I honestly don't remember if we got in the taxi first but I think he motioned us in before we asked. He was adamant about it. In any case it was not as if there were a lot of taxis passing by. He agreed to five. Then he began a litany of places we could visit and insistently asked where we wanted to go as we were driving to our destination. I sat in front while my wife sat in back. I had not the foggiest idea where I wanted to go and did not suspect that he was any different from the taxi drivers in Al Ain. However, I soon twigged because I recalled reading in the guide that all the drivers in Oman are Omanis who own their taxis, they have no meters. I thought we could just be dropped off at point B having traveled from point A and khalas, make short shrift of it. On the way to Mutrah souk I remained noncommital in response to his constant litany of places and insistent how much, how much. He wanted 10 riyals, which computed 100 dirhams in my head and registered too expensive, but I really had no idea what was expensive or not. When we reached Mutrah souk we debouched and I paid him 5 riyals. I really didn't like his gruffness.

Mutrah souk reminded me of the souk in Tunis, which I visited in the summer of 1992 for an intensive Arabic program at the Bourguiba Institute. However, the souk in Tunis was larger. Silver is the most attractive item. In our favorite shop you could sit at a large container of nothing but silver baubles or pendents for necklaces and spend hours rummaging through it until your fingers are grey from the dirty silver. The silver is pure and so can simply be washed with water to regain its luster. There were also mixed in, pendents of agate, onyx, opal, moonstone, and lapis lazuli. A container with nothing but silver rings, too. Also, coral. My favorite was a large container of nothing but old silver coins. Apparently Oman did not have its own currency until the 1960s or 1970s. Prior to that time they used all sorts of coins, mainly Maria Teresa thalers or dollars for trade. Each coin no matter its year was going for 3.5 riyals. A coin collector would go nuts. Maria Teresa thalers were incorporated into the Omani jewellry, soldering the thaler to a round hollow piece of silver that could then be strung on a necklace. Bedouine jewellry for trousseaus are elaborate heavy looking multi-tiered rectangular pieces of silver with hanging pieces of silver like chain mail. I found one that had one of those flat, round, red, plastic bicycle reflectors incorporated into it. I forgot to mention the many artefacts and relics for sale as well, such as old muzzle loaders that were no longer serviceable. A favorite item for tourists are old brass compasses and the ubiquitous Omani ceremonial dagger called khanja. Some of the silver items showed intricate crafting, a fish with reticulated scales that made it undulate was one of my favorites. Also, the little silver pendent of a camel with moving legs that I got for my daughter and son for two riyals each.

We continued to walk further into the souk, going off on a very narrow tangent, the shop attendants, mostly Indians cajoling you as you passed with bits of English, the most common being an announcement of the item of most common attraction to the tourist such as Pash Cashmiree scarves, or frankincense. Often it was simply 'welcome'. They often say what they've heard endlessly, especially from Americans, 'just looking'. One particularly obnoxious phrase I heard from a shopkeeper, who no doubt was merely parroting it, was 'come on, come on'. I couldn't resist parroting him as I walked past. You have to walk through the gauntlet of shopkeepers in an almost somnambulant state. Here is the observation I wrote down in my notebook at the time: Walking through it [Mutrah souk] as in Cocteau film where in the corridor the arms beckon with torches, the shopkeepers drifting out of the shops to get your attention with a hello and an exaggerated smile, the seasoned tourist walking in a zomboid state, the greenhorn politely saying no to each one with a smile. The Cocteau film reference is I believe in Beauty and the Beast where there is a dream sequence in which arms holding torches emerge from the walls of a corridor.

As I was waiting outside a shop my wife had gone into I was delighted to make my second sighting of the ballpeen hammer head man. I had first sighted the ballpeen hammer head man on the streets of Tunis in 1992. This chap had the same head whose cranium was rather small, the occiput resembling the round part of a ballpeen hammer. He was greeting all the shop keepers as he passed before he went up a narrow aisle to his house probably. The rest of his body was normal.

Two days ago my wife called Saleh our Omani taxi driver to ask him to retrieve a purchase of scarves that she had left behind in a shop in Mutrah souk. Fortunately he knew the shop. He was our salvation after our first encounter with the gruff taxi driver outside the hotel. We met Saleh outside the Mutrah souk. We hired him for both days we were in Muscat. Sultan Qaboos was wise in encouraging Omanis to own and drive their own taxis. The Emiratees are spoiled because they get most things on a silver platter. There is a law that every company in the Emirates must hire Emiratees, a certain percentage. Therefore, in general, Omani men are not stand-offish and aloof as Emiratee men tend to be.

Saleh is from one of the three major Omani families, the Waheebi. His English was very broken but we could manage with our broken Arabic. It was rough going at times but he kept going the flow of English words with Arabic interspersed. He had strange usages of words, for example 'total' was used frequently but I could not decipher its meaning and often he would punctuate his phrases with 'la', the negative in Arabic. My wife was at times better able to understand him than I was, having worked with Arabs at a former job and at a job she has now. But Saleh definitely had what in sociolinguistics is called an idiolect, one's own personal language. Saleh's use of language recalled a concept of language formation in my reading of Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders' book The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind which throws over the literate- based assumptions of what language is. There is a whole trend in linguistics to study language as orality rather than as written texts, extracting the orality of ancient epic poetry, for example, from its written texts. Saleh was a speaker exhibiting the learning of English largely orally rather than from reading. The interface between speakers of different languages probably transpired similarly the way my wife and I communicated with him. One is forced to communicate in these situations. I had a very long delayed reaction before I first began to spout French. This was because I had learned French largely from written texts. Though I listened to tapes in French and endlessly repeated phrases into the microphone of a headphone, it was not until I lived in French-speaking Africa that I actually used French as an oral means of communication and all my book learning finally kicked in. And even then, as I said, it was a delayed reaction, it was not until much later that I could engage in a conversation in French, my first encounters with French being with French men and women in West Africa as well as African French speakers where I would understand the conversation I was sitting on the edge of but did not know how to add to or interject any utterances whatsoever despite the fact I understood what was being said.

So we hired Saleh for 5 riyals, a considerable cut down from the 10 the gruff driver wanted. After he took us to Sultan Qaboos' palace, which we took photos of outside the walls we could not enter because it wasn't allowed, we went to a spectacular three hotel complex cut into a mountain outside Muscat called Shangri La. Only one of the hotels has been finished and open for business. It's called Whadhah. A short one lane tunnel cut into the mountain ends in the parking lot of the Whadhah. The hotel is literally at the end of the road and the wall of a mountain shoots up on the other side of the parking lot. A tall young Omani man in traditional dress greets you at the entrance and an Omani woman greets you inside. She speaks English and warmly welcomes us and we head for the beach which we can see from inside the hotel in the foyer. We pass a pool on the way to the beach and Saleh goes for a walk while my wife and I pay 1o riyals each for the buffet. We sit near a table where two businessmen talk business about wireless phone networks, one had a British accent and the other a German accent of confident, subtle, braggadocio. Another nearby table was occupied by an Omani family. The food was spicey and good but my wife thought one of the fish dishes was too salty. The plates were pastel colored and square shaped with the edges curving slightly up. The coffee cups had a slight off center curve. One of the Indian waiters told us it was cheaper the standard of living in Muscat than Dubai where he had recently moved from.

The rest of the day Saleh took us to a number of shopping centers where I found bookstores to browse while my wife shopped. I was ready to drop from exhaustion by the time 6 o'clock rolled around and we decided to go to one more where my wife bought a necklace that I later discovered had been stolen. The only suspicious acting character that was near me was an Indian boy of about 12 or 13. He was watching me closely while my wife was buying the necklace and while I paid for it. The last I remember of the parcel was looking at it in my hand and debating whether to put it into a larger bag I was carrying, though it wasn't all that much larger so I decided not to put it in. Then I sat down next to Saleh on a bench and it could have been stolen while I was sitting there but the only one that came near me was a little Indian boy who had a toy car he was varooming on the bench, and I watched him move away when his father called him. That's all I remember. My wife and I later decided the next time I would carry a backpack when we traveled, like the Germans do.

That night at the hotel we watched a Jackie Chan movie, Around the World in Eighty Days, on MBC2. There was also an interesting belly dancer on another channel who was dancing to live accompaniment while other belly dancers swayed to the beat on a couch. The singer was youthful, maybe in his late teens, and sang passionately. One instrument I found interesting was a long drum held under the arm and that had a head the diameter of the size of the palm of one's hand. It gave out a very staccato sound the drummer hammered with the tips of his fingers.

Our flight Friday was at 4:15 so we didn't have much time to shop since the Friday noon prayer meant the shops in Mutrah souk would close at 11:30, which they did. We had to wait until about 1:30 before we got in touch with Saleh again and he took us to the airport. We paid him 15 riyals and he was happy with that. The flight was delayed about two hours and we made it back to Al Ain by midnight as I had to drive back to Al Ain from Abu Dhabi, which is about an hour and a half drive.