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.