My driver takes me to a hotel, announcing it is either a 5-star one or 6-star. I wonder what makes a hotel a 6-star. I recall my daughter telling me of her and her then-boyfriend staying at a 6-star Indian hotel, when they were fleeing an attempt to be either robbed or kidnapped, or both in a Delhi taxi-cab. I think, I heard of such hotels in Turkey as well but never stayed in one. I never heard of a 6-star hotel in the USA. I ask the question to my driver. He either doesn’t know, or doesn’t have the English to describe it to me. One of my bewt friends, who is well traveled all over the world including developing countries will tell me upon my return, it is a self proclaimed vague level of service! Not surprised.
I ask him to come into the hotel until registration is final to make sure I have a reservation and all. Organizational structure in a society is one side of a medallion: In developing countries, the other side of the medallion shines with hospitality, warmth, close and welcoming interpersonal relationships. The more that side shines bright, the less organizational skills. In the western world on the other hand, organizational skills are impeccable most of the time, at the cost of a pale back side of the medallion. Since, I don’t know enough about Omanis’ organizational skills, yet ,better safe than sorry, I feel. Registration is a breeze, this country clearly has all the commodities of modern, globalized, business-orientation. No slip in the organizational skills, yet! If I know anything about developing countries, though, the possibility is there.
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| I didn't realize I stayed at this complex until after my return! I wonder, if I had decided to swim in the Arab Sea, had I had the time, what the reaction would have been. Is it even possible to safely do so in Oman? Don't know, yet. |
Which brings back to mind the quote from Heidegger, who defined death as “the impossibility of further possibilities”. How true. We, as human beings need the possibility of being able to do things, create things, produce and experience eternally. Yalom is so empowering when he states “We need to understand that in the scope of human history, each individual life is a speck. We come from not knowing and no existence and will go back to it when we die. In-between two loneliness and non-existence, whatever we do to live our life richly, with joy and sorrow, with full appreciation of all that comes our way that is what makes life worth living and our brief existence on earth worthwhile.
Oil, apparently is the major income source in Oman and wealth that comes along with it. Add to this, lots of people being trained in the western hemisphere as part of a national strategy that Sultan Qaboos started for the last 3-4 decades shows at least in the business world. At least the hotel business seems to run smoothly. However, when I check my e-mail, I find no message from anybody regarding, where the conference will be held, who will pick me up in the morning at what time. I send them an e-mail letting them know I am planning to be ready at 8 am in the lobby, assuming the first lecture wouldn’t start before 9 am, as is the case in most developing countries in scientific conferences. After a difficult night of jet lag following my 24-h trip across the Atlantic, I wake up with a phone call from a doctor from the organizing committee at 7 am. My talk is at 8 and I have to be ready in the lobby in half an hour. “Welcome to the world of developing countries!” I smile to myself.
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| My driver is proud of this oil refinery right by the Arab Sea and pints it out to me as wee pass by it. I wonder what it does to the atmosphere and the Arab Sea. |
I had woken up at 5 am, thoughts and phrases from Staring at the Sun running through my mind. Epicurus’ statement on “The mission of philosophy is to relieve human misery.” I thought, it was also the mission of religion. However, looking at the world, organized religions are in the middle of every chaos thinkable, if not the very cause of the same. I agree with Yalom in his totally secular stance in trying to help people, who are debilitated with death anxiety. In fact, partly, death anxiety is created by organized religions: Doesn’t Islam, Christianity, Judaism all threaten people with hell if they don’t behave the way God wants them to? Isn’t it a fact that every single human being may and does falter at some point in life? I recall, how devastated I would be for days when I did something bad as a child for fear I would burn in hell till eternity…
Since I wanted to sleep, I did some meditation and drifted back into a smooth, deep sleep. The moment the phone conversation ended, I jumped out of bed, and the rest is fast forward type of a morning routine. I am now in a taxi at 7:20 to learn that we are 65 kilometers away from where we need to be! Perhaps 75, he doesn’t know! A silent “What?” rises inside of my chest, but my cortex takes over: “Calm down Resmiye, you are not the organizer of this conference, it is their responsibility to get you to where you need to be”,and I do.
I stay in the moment and try to enjoy the ride. In daylight, it is clear that Oman is using the Islamic architecture to the best of their ability. As much as I am put off by some aspects of Islam due to its oppression of and discrimination against women, among other medieval dogmas, Islamic architecture has always appealed to me with its round features, domes,courtyards, arches, and all. In fact, the same applies to churches. Whenever, I find myself visiting a church, I meditate in the peace I find there, trying to ignore all the atrocities the very church hierarchy committed in the medieval Europe, South America, North America, and elsewhere. I can now see that the mountains and hills around us are totally barren rocks, almost bedrocks, creating a sharp piercing skyline, harsh but beautiful.
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| Muscat Opera House, which displays Islamic architecture fused into modern style. My driver tells me many initernational opera singers come and perform here, but I cannot learn from him whether there is any Omani women, who perform here. |
I think of this harsh terrain and imagine Bedouins roaming this harsh land to survive. I know from history that Bedouins are both hospitable and brutal and strive for power and honor. Epicurus states in Yalom’s book “…Excessive religiosity, all-consuming accumulation of wealth, blindly grasping for power and honors, are all counterfeit versions of immortality.” Every living being does a bit of at least one of these or a combination of any, doesn’t it? Is the need immortality so engrained in us then? I will learn from my hostess later on that Bedouins were at least relatively secular and their society was not segregated based on at least gender. Omanis basically being the descendants of Bedouins give me some hope for their future.
Finally Arabian Sea is in view (although the driver tells me it is the Red Sea). I learn from my interesting driver that along a certain section of the beach all the embassies are lined up including American, Turkish, Iranian, British, among others. He is very proud of how big and elaborate these buildings are. He is the most friendly man I have had contact so far although my sample size is pretty small, 5-6 at the most. He asks me about my children, surprised that I have only one. I will learn soon that even the young generation usually has 3-4 children in Oman.
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| Arabian Sea against the harsh rocky terrain in Muscat |
He keeps on telling me “you should come back with your family, then, I will take you around and show you all the best places in Oman”. I think, he is referring to my “husband” when he says family, but hesitates to ask me where in the world my husband is and what was he thinking sending me to Oman all by myself! I don’t volunteer to tell him I don’t have a husband, he doesn’t ask. Of course, it is appropriate for him to say “I will show you around when you come back with your family”. On the contrary, if he volunteers to show me around when I am alone, it might be perceived in Omani culture as a sexual advance. Who knows, just speculation on my part, at this point but I believe this is an educated guess.
I wonder how this culture perceives death. Yalom recommends to keep three ideas in mind in dealing with death anxiety: The first is: The soul dies along with the body.This is diametrically opposite of religious doctrines’ teaching: Clergy, to both create and preserve societal order and exert control over their congregation preaches all types of punishments for sins that the surviving spirit/soul will suffer from afterlife. I recall, couple of times when I was confronted with my own mortality thinking “When I die, I won’t feel sorrow for having died, for what I may be missing, or for how my loved ones may suffer from losing me.” I am glad to discover that being a secular, not believing in afterlife has positives after all! I guess I had got that one down, already, Dr. Yalom.
My driver distracts me from my thoughts again. He has five children aged 14 to 1.5 years. Clearly younger than I but definitely looks older. He receives several calls on our ride and I start catching words he uses that I recognize from Turkish. He is impressed with my “intelligence” ! He believes I learn Arabic so quickly and guess the meaning of words on my own on the spot;“You are very intelligent! I try to explain to him it is just because Turkish, my mother tongue is loaded with Arabic words. Based on that, I am simply making educated guesses. His English is not good enough to understand this explanation. I will have forever impressed at least one Arabic man!
As I try to verify the meaning of some Arabic words that I recognize from Turkish, he starts giving me a list of the same word in French, German, and whatever other languages he knows that particular word in. Clearly, the little bit of vocabulary he has in multiple languages, he is very proud of and he would like to impress this western woman in turn. I praise him big time, he is happy, I am happy. So far, Oman is not a country that would hit one as “Oh, my, I want to spend some time here…” I know, though, the beauty must lie in the details, that I still need to discover. I will give myself time. As he goes silent for a few kilometers, I am back to what I read in Yalom early in the morning.
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| This image represents best what Dr. Yalom and Epicurus teach... Life is but an explosion of a light beam inbetween two eternal darkness, before birth and after death, so let's enjoy that light to the best of our ability! |
The second tool Dr. Yalom has learned from Epicurus is that death takes us back to non-existence and nothingness. In other words, what is dispersed doesn’t perceive, what is not perceived is nothing to us. It goes along with the first tool in harmony. Physical being dies, taking along with it the soul/spirit. When there is nothing to perceive anything, there is no more suffering or pain. Where I am, death is not, where death is I am not, in other words, death and I cannot coexist! I love not only this paradigm, but also the fact that my agnosticism has given me great tools to face death in dignity.
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