Secrets from the Empty Quarter
I saw smoke swirling in the distance two Thursday mornings ago, as I stepped out of my hotel in Muscat, Oman to begin my morning run. Maybe it’s frankincense, I thought, and imagined all the magic that awaited me during my road trip around the Sultanate.
But magic was the last thing the aroma that soon flooded my sinus cavity evoked. Someone nearby, it seemed, had decided to burn their plastic waste. I did my best to avoid respiring until the air cleared, and simultaneously picked up my pace. I’d soon be at the Corniche, where I’d watched the sun go down just hours earlier.
Realistically, the chorus of howls and barks began in the same moment the pack of wild dogs appeared in my path, though in my frenzied mind the feral beasts sang their song to warn me. Still paranoid thanks to the threat of rabies that had loomed over my August trip to Mongolia, I did an immediate about-face, retreating back through the hydrocarbon haze.
Had my decision to finally visit Oman, after two aborted trips over the course of the previous five years, been a mistake?
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