How do you describe an Omani woman? How do you relate a world of black to a lifetime of color?
I crouch on the couch, a red, firm haven a safe distance
from the storm cloud of fabric sitting across the room, typing on her eggshell
computer. I keep hearing they are friendly, that they are perfectly normal, but
still. How does a nineteen-year-old
American, prone to wearing tie-dye kaleidoscopes (catastrophes) approach a
terrestrial black hole, which appeared before her?
Eyebrows plucked on a face done up “just so,” she purses her
lightly glossed lips as she wrestles with the screen before her. In a culture
famed for hospitality, it would appear that the trait skipped at least one
person… still. I look around me. The American Goth, that one glaring gap in the
vibrant life of picture school photo, would blend in perfectly in Oman. On my
right, three walking advertisements for Emo Today giggle in a language void of
vowels, while to my left, two dour shadows hold up pieces of paper with lines
and dots strewn about haphazardly.
No real choice, then, I conclude with Eeyore-like resignation,
shuffling my Teva-ed feet up to the desk.
“Erm…. Excuse me. Uh… do you know… where the church is
around here? Or the hotel…. Oh? Where’s the hotel? Oh yeah, that’s in Ghobrah…
uh huh. Uh… Church. Church? Church, yeah that’s the word… mhmm…” I stutter in a
third language, despair of ever understanding thickening each word until they
ooze unwillingly off the tongue, like that last bit of syrup from the bottle.
“Oh. You don’t know where one is? But you will look it up
for me on the computer?” Gee, that’s nice, I think bil injleezi, temporarily
halting my nervous plucking at my sleeves as I watch her type.
More typing. More answers in vaguely understandable Arabic.
“Uh huh. You can’t find the list? But you will ask everybody
here for me if they know?” I parrot her statements back, adding question marks
to spice up her drab world of knowledgeable statements. She nods in the affirmative,
switching to universal sign language for the benefit of the foreigner.
“Ai-wah.”
Ai-wah…. Ai-wah ai-wah ai-wah… yes! It’s yes.
“Ah! Shukran. Thanks.”
I return my gaze to the room, my shuffling cautious steps
upgraded to simply tired flops of the sandals across the marble floor. The
black sheep are still there; the country of cassocks and night remains the same
today as it did yesterday, the day before yesterday, and five hundred years
ago. Sameera the Storm Cloud’s positive affirmation, though (and my dashing
foray to the other side), leaves me with new perspective on my Rainbow Americana.
Yes, the woolen cloth, dyed with death’s dark blood, remains the same. But
beyond the black, beyond the folds of fabrics that drape and swarm their shapes,
I see… color. A discreet ribbon here, a blatant fire stripe down the center. An
eclipsing moon splashed across the back for those special occasions.
And the black itself… black becomes a gift. No longer the
looming cave into the monster’s den, it shows the way to a cheery shelter.
Black has become warm, inviting…. It does match anything, after all, and I
realize the solemn looks that surrounded me but a moment before, in truth,
belong only to the lonesome frump in the corner. (Every country does have to
have one.)
The abaya is a symbol, yes. In the media that we Americans
take in each day, on our Fox News, CNN, and Dateline 20/20, we see the abaya
represented as repression, pain, eyes gone blank from tragedy and weakness.
Backward cultures, Uzi-toting men, fierce eyes and ready curses. Forgotten
dreams, quashed at birth.
Like pulling up the rock of our own inhibitions and ideas,
though, life in Muscat has exposed me to a whole other world that teems below.
A world where black is white, covering
is good, and an abaya becomes strength and refuge. A niqab covers a woman’s
face, leaving only slits for eyes. Has she become extremist? A watch list
contender, perhaps? A terrorist in disguise? Or, option D, does she merely
exercise her right to shield herself from foreign, lustful eyes that scrape
across her body limb from excruciating limb?
Yes, Sameera Storm Cloud and Company did scare me at first. Freshly arrived from a culture where black is
the kid melted into the corner, wrapped in trench coats and insanity, the
nebulous fabric skimming the ground did further slow my Mississippi pace
towards greeting in an unfamiliar language.
But.
But in a world where they laugh just like me, with me, where
smiles crinkle the dimples creased into cheeks, (where they attempt murder by
scarf strangulation,) it all becomes the same. Black is beautiful. Color is
beautiful. Or, as the Omanis would say,
“Nifs al shay.”[1]
[1]
Arabic (Arabish) for “It’s all the same.”
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