My driver cannot figure out how to get me to the building on campus I need to be since the regular road is blocked off. Omani men don’t like to ask directions, either, it looks like. He tours the campus twice not being able to find a way, finally calls my hostess. She can’t get him find the right path, either. The solution: My inviting hostess comes to the turn-out where we are parked at to pick me up instead.
She, who is a professor of Pediatrics, in her 40s, is very elegant in her own way. She is wearing a light brown gown with tiny beige pattern printed on it, from neckline all the way down to cover her feet. She has a matching solid brown head cover. Her hair is neatly covered with not one strand showing. She is driving a huge SUV that makes me think “there must be big money in this country”. As a professor of pediatrics working in the USA, I don’t have the means to buy this type of a car, not that I would ever consider such a “gas-monster”vehicle. I wonder if there is any movement in Oman considering small carbon footprint, climate change, and similar things. As I get to know her better, perhaps I may ask these questions, not now.
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| One of many models of SUVs driven by many in Muscat. |
As she is making some phone calls to let others know that she and I finally connected, I am back to the third tool Dr. Yalom describes: We came from nothingness we are sailing to nothingness, the rule of symmetry. Our existence is but a crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although, the two are identical twins, man perceives the prenatal abyss with calm and getting out of it is celebrated big time, while the one he is heading for is not. I had never thought of our existence in that manner, pulling back and looking at our trajectory from a zoom-out perspective indeed makes a difference.
Throughout the day, I will observe that all women except for those clearly of Indian origin have their heads covered. Three quarters of women wears the typical black hicap/abaya/burka covering the entire body from head to toe; The rest of the women wears colored gowns or a jacket and a long skirt and covers their head with color-matching scarves. One thing common though among all: The hems of their skirts are invariably sweeping up the floors. I wonder how they keep their attire clean. Do they have lots of outerwear and wash them daily, or do they just not care about the dirt their hems accumulate day in day out? This is not a safe question to ask.
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| Most Omani women dress in black not allowing their hair show without any veil and gloves. They seem to be proud that they differ in that from their Saudi peers. |
They seem to be very friendly, confident, and strong. My hostess will explain this with Omani population descending from Bedouins of the old times. As a result, men and women had to work side by side out in the nature, and they were essentially equals. That past national characteristic is alive in the modern Oman, she shares with me. It is great to hear this if I am to continue working with these women. My brother and my best friend Levent will tell me otherwise. His position is that Omanis are also Wahabis like Saudi Arabs and there is very little difference between the two “nations”. I will have to see for myself…
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| Very few women at the conference was allowing their hair leak out of their scarf, however, I saw many women with colorful scarves, mostly matching their dress color. |
The question of why am I doing this? Why Oman instead of other cultures that will not be so suffocating for me as a woman? Dr. Yalom gives the answer in his discussions about how to best deal with death anxiety. Part of mankind’s death anxiety is related to the meaninglessness of finiteness and transiency. Those, who have less death anxiety are those who live their lives to the fullest and in the process create ripples of some act, some idea that would help others attain joy and virtue in life. The fact that good deeds accompany one to death and will ripple onto succeeding generations. That’s what mymother did, and that’s what I am trying to do, hopefully, that is what my daughter will do in her own time.
A male pediatrician meets us at the entrance to the conference hall. He is very friendly, shakes hands with me eagerly, and is in a regular man’s suit (turns out, he is originally from Egypt). The more men shake my hand with no hesitation, the more comfortable I feel with men in this setting. Perhaps, since they are all pediatricians with experience with the western world, mostly England, they are less restricted. No man so far has put his hand on his chest indicating “I don’t shake hands”. They are not reluctant to have eye contact. All is good so far. As long as I make a conscious decision to be at peace with all women being under covers, I can be OK with this audience.
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| A scene from the conference |
The audience doubles in volume over the first 15 minutes of my lecture. There is around 150 people in the conference hall by the time I am half way through my lecture. I notice men and women give a bit of differential response to my lecture. While, women are affirmatively nodding their heads almost non-stop as I speak, men are whispering to one another with smiles at times. I don’t know how to read this. I am used to this, though, in any developing country I have lectured at so far, initial reactions are very similar: Women are more willing to change both their thinking and professional practices in the country, when men are more resistant, initially. The resistance is always something like, “What you tell us may apply to America, but not us”. Is it just because there is an inherent difference between men and women or is it in the fact that the lecturer is a woman? I can’t figure that one out, yet… With so many women nodding so fervently, if we work together, I know we can change this to a more motivated attitude.
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| Seeing pictures like this witness to the dominant patriarchy in this society raises questions in my mind about how effective a female leader may be in this society. live and see... |
As the next speaker comes to the microphone, I drift back to Yalom’s statements and teaching: No positive change can occur in one’s life as long as one believes the reasons for not living life well lie outside of one’s self. “You and you alone are responsible for your life and you alone can change it.” Nietzsche puts it very economically “Create the fate that you can love”.Looking back, for most of what I experienced in life, I am very grateful that I was given the power and resources to be able to create my fate. I hope all young people may have the same possibilities.
During the coffee break, my hostess tells me she is happy with the effect of my lecture. Soon I will learn that the collaborative decision of the group is to bring me back for longer training activities in Oman, perhaps help them find proper training sites for pediatricians on child abuse and neglect, and establish a national system to address child abuse and neglect in Oman, something close to what I did in Turkey. I am all for it. After the morning lectures, she takes me around. Half a day of chatting allows us relax as we drive on narrow, side roads all the way to the waters of the Arabian Sea. I discover how ignorant I have been about the Middle East and Arabic peninsula. I learn the 6 countries around the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Kuwait call themselves Gulf Countries Council (GCC). I will hear over and over again that GCC countries are different from the rest of the Middle East. It sounds like they take pride in that, but how can one be proud of being in the same boat with Saudi Arabia? Are there things I need to learn about Saudi Arabia, too? Or are the optimistic views I am gradually developing about Oman, not so realistic?
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| One wonders if Gulf Countries Council is grounds for Saudi Arabia have more say around the Gulf pretending it is part of a council? And why is Iran not in this? Is it Shiite versus Wahabi conflict? |
My hostess is so gracious, after showing me around, she takes me to my hotel and waits in the lobby doing her work as I crash into a delirious nap for an hour due to my jet lag. As I wake up Nietzsche’s experiment that Yalom shares in his book comes to mind again: Death anxiety is usually due to one’s sense of having failed in living life fully. Nietzsche asks “What would you do in the next five years not to accumulate more regrets when you look back at your list five years?” A great question to ask ourselves since I cannot imagine anybody who won’t wish they had done something differently in their past…
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| Delicious soup with wheat and chicken |
As I promised my hostess to be at the lobby at 2:30, I am ready for lunch. We go to a restaurant that apparently is one of her favorites. It is indeed a lovely place with Arabic and Islamic touches to the ambience. The food especially the haris soup (made with chicken stock, chicken bits, and wheat crushed into a mush, but a super-delicious one), another mashed rice dish served with a phenomenal Moroccan sauce are definitely my favorites. I eat some of the beef dish cooked over earth-burmed embers over 18 hours in a sack of palm leaves, but not my favorite at all. Finally a vegetable dish cooked with Omani bread, wouldn’t crave for it, either. I learn from her that they prefer beef over all, second comes fish, and last is chicken that is cooked in their home and most Omani homes. I tell her that I prefer chicken and fish equally, eat red meat maybe once or twice a month. Unfathomable to herJ She reports some vegetables are grown in Oman and some are imported.
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| Shuwa, meat cooked in a dug pit for 18 hours. |
I am asking myself whether I will find enough goodness and intellect in this society to connect at least at a minimally optimal way to collaborate with our minds and hearts. As Yalom states, what we have (wealth) and what we represent in the eyes of others (reputation) have not been the central foci of my existence. I have always said my “God” has been improved with an additional “o” and I have always been after “doing good” for my people, sometimes in my family, sometimes in my community, society, and finally globally in distant lands. I guess this is another tool Yalom recommends to use in our dealings with our mortality as well as interpreting our experiences in the most constructive way rather than focusing on the experiences themselves. Don’t all religions preach in a way the same message: “You can take with you nothing that you have received in this world, you can take with you only what you have given” Is Oman a place to allow a secular, modern, western woman to enter a give and take relationship with its citizens, all I can say is wait and see.
After making plans about how we can make our collaboration possible, we naturally open up and share with each other our lives. It is so beautiful, when two people feel equally at peace sharing with the other at least some features of their lives. That you can find not very often, cherishing it when found is a great gift. She and I connected today, I felt it, and she did, too, her eyes were sparkling when she shared this with me. It was such a humbling honor to hear from her that the greatest three things in her career happened in the last 3 weeks, meeting me was one of them. I am already looking forward to my return trips and getting to know her family, her mother, her husband, and children. She promises me the next time I will meet her mother and we will cook together, what a delightful promise. It will be an interesting process.
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| Can Omani women accept me (not the one in the picture) the way I am to find working grounds to accomplish good work? |
These emotional experiences lead to revisiting what Yalom outlines in his book under the title of “Human Connectedness”. Our need to belong is powerful and fundamental and intimate relationships are a sine qua non for happiness. Dying however, is the loneliest act of life. It separates us from others as well as the world itself. The older we get, the more pronounced this existential loneliness becomes. I bet, this is more pronounced in western cultures, where individuality has become our God. I recall the story in “Being Mortal” about an Indian patriarch, who is allowed to lead his tribe until his death through empathy and cultural impositions. No more of that in western cultures. I wonder how it goes in Oman.
On the way back to the hotel, she tells me about a time when she and her sister attended a cocktail party at a conference. Although they didn’t drink alcohol themselves, it was traumatic for them even to be sitting at a table where others were drinking alcohol, although very measuredly. It sounds like how I would have felt if I had been in a nude’s beach. She tells me, since then she doesn’t go to gatherings where alcohol is served. Does that mean, she won’t come to dinner tonight? Will alcohol even be served at dinner tonight? We will see. This becomes a barrier in the modern world of course. When your culture dictates certain things like this, and the rest of the world has a different practice, some connection is lost. I guess she and her fellows are at peace with this, I should be, too. I wonder though, how she would perceive me with a glass of wine in my hand when I am totally OK with her no-alcohol policy…
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| Can intercultural friendship be established between two women from such different cultures? we will see.... |
As I am waiting for somebody (I don’t know who) to pick me up for dinner, I devour some more of Yalom. He recommends those debilitated with death anxiety to “look straight into the heart of your panic. What do you see?” One client tells him “It’s no more me!” He recommends “sheer presence is the greatest gift you can give to those that are dying or simply experiencing death anxiety for no reason”. The next section is about self-disclosure: The more one reveals inner thoughts and feelings, the easier for the other to reveal themselves. How many times did I experience this throughout my life. The most recent with my becoming-dear friend Marcia, in two hours, from acquaintances, we moved to becoming two women, who understood and embraced each other’s life.
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