She remembers the shop in Muscat’s souk, a pint-size King Solomon’s mine draped floor to ceiling in trinkets and jewelry made from Omani silver. She remembers reclining on rugs and pillows in the only restaurant we could find with “Oman cuisine” – run by an Indian man. She remembers having the fort at Rustaq entirely to ourselves.
But what she talks about is the terror of the Old Naked Guy in al-Hamra.
Like most people, my wife, Ann, is better at remembering (and recounting) when things go wrong. In general, we as a species tend to better remember, relive, relate to (and revel in, after the dust settles) when the situation goes off the rails.
And other than in weddings, most of these wide-of-the-mark moments seem to happen on the road, when we’re vulnerable, out of our element, unsure of the situation and more aware of the consequences (having heard the memorable cautionary tales of other travelers).
(Weddings, it’s worth noting, are only truly memorable when there are events that seem like catastrophes at the time – the couple forget the vows, the ring-bearer is missing, Uncle Basil is snoring, the groom faints, the bride has two different shoes, the reverend gets the names wrong, the glass refuses to break, and so on. The only folks who really remember a wedding that goes off without a hitch are the ones who got paid to plan it.)
There are a couple of exceptions to the “it’s always more interesting when it goes wrong” theorem. The first is when the bad situation is so aggressively common it’s commonplace. Everyone has the same “wrong” experience and there aren’t enough variables to make one tale about it significantly different from another.
We’ve all heard them at some point: the rude waiter in Paris, the insane cabdriver in Istanbul, the lost luggage on United. And, of course, the exotic spa or hammam tale. The great majority of bizarre spa/hammam stories are essentially the same, pretty much to the point of being a template – strangers, public nudity, eucalyptus whips, lack of personal boundaries, scalding steam, steel wool, general wackiness. Now you don’t need to hear another story about it. Seeing the template reminded you of the last five stories you heard that were, essentially, the same.
It’s almost to the point where I’d rather read a story about a Turkish hammam in which everything – the massage, the treatments, the bathing – was perfectly comfortable and calming and lovely. That would be an exception to the rule, which by definition would make it noteworthy.
The other exception to the rule, however, came to us a little while after finding the Old Naked Guy of al-Hamra.
After a long day of searching the hills near Nizwa in Oman, we finally found the tiny village of al-Hamra, drove through it and parked at the edge of town. Ann planned to stay in the car to read while I explored and took photos. (She was a bit cranky from being dragged through the desert and into the Jebel Akhdar mountains without a reliable map, enough water and, it turns out, without four-wheel drive, another not-so-funny-when-it-happened tale.)
“Um, is that guy taking his clothes off?” she asked, nodding at the man in the street.
The slightly hunched gentleman in traditional Omani garments might have been 70 (give or take 20 years), and he was standing outside the door of the wall around his home. Standing, and taking his clothes off.
It didn’t take long to figure out he was preparing to bathe in the falaj – the channels cut through villages for water distribution and irrigation. In al-Hamra this falaj was a deep, wide gutter running down one side of the street, including in front of this guy’s house – about 30 feet from us.
By the time he was naked, it occurred to me we were in a traditional Islamic country, with a woman in the car, essentially peeping on an old man taking a bath. Without a word, we both slouched in the seats of the Toyota Rav 4 and hunkered down behind the dash. Every few minutes I bobbed up to see if he was gone – or if the local police had been called.
Eventually, it was over and we laughed nervously. I went out for my photos – hoping Old Naked Guy didn’t have a brother – and we started to drive out of town. Ann was eager to leave, until we stopped at an intersection and spotted two young sisters of about 4 and 6, in matching ankle-length dresses, jet-black ponytails and shy, giggling smiles that seemed bright enough to cast shadows on the drab, mud-brick walls.
I waved at the barefooted girls, triggering a giggling spree during which they traded off trying to hide behind each other. I started to drive away.
“Wait!” Ann said, and she snatched the cannon-like Canon off the floor. She held it up for them to see and, when they didn’t seem to mind, she aimed and started snapping away. The camera only seemed to embolden them – they giggled more, waved and, at one point, fell over each other, making them laugh harder. Ann was laughing, too, her outlook changed, and I was laughing despite being exhausted.
At that moment, there was something better – and more interesting – than things going wrong.
Surprise. And wonder.
An unexpected, sweet, funny moment changed our impressions about a place – enough, even, to overshadow the terror of the Old Naked Guy.
Without a doubt, she remembers al-Hamra. But she talks about the girls.
Spud Hilton is the editor of Travel. E-mail: travel@sfchronicle.com
Old Naked Guy, and others, in al-Hamra
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