I Have Iraq in My Shoe (36 page)

Before getting back in the car after the mosque visit, Kamil had to have a cigarette, so Josh and I waited. We then headed farther inland toward some market that was a feature of the tour. Kamil spent the majority of the drive trying to engage us in political discussion, and would say things like, “George Bush, he did a mistake! The people of Oman, we hope Obama does not do another mistake!”

Josh had been living in Australia for several years, and I had been in Iraq for almost a year. Neither of us was particularly political, and we were very uninterested in carrying on that particular conversation. When we wouldn’t engage in discourse with him, Kamil would then expound on his own country’s politics (which was fine, and somewhat interesting). According to him, 1959 was the last time Oman was involved in a war, the war with Yemen. Kamil said the Yemeni were “troublemakers.” He said the border was where all the military were, and “Sultan controls the religious. You got the name, you got the oil, now shut your mouth.” We interpreted this as the sultan doing an effective job of controlling the religious fanatics in the country.

Kamil took advantage of his captive audience at lunchtime to explain to us why Oman was the most superior of the Gulf States. “When driving in Bahrain, if you lose your way and ask directions? The people you ask will not be local. They are Indian or other thing and just tell you the wrong way. In Saudi if you ask directions, they say, ‘How much will you give us?’” Josh and I hadn’t been to Saudi Arabia, and I had really only been in Bahrain’s airport, so we just had to take his word for everything.

Kamil spent part of the afternoon drive on his cell phone, yammering away in Arabic. He explained to us that he and his wife were trying to buy a house, and his wife’s friend had a house in which they were interested. While Josh and I found this to be fairly unprofessional, we were just glad that he had stopped talking about George W. and all the mistakes he “did.” There was some entertaining irony about how Kamil nagged on and on about “George Bush doing a mistake,” since he was almost thought of as a hero to the Kurdish people. Warren had told me that it wasn’t unheard of for random Kurdish restaurants to have a framed 8x10 glossy of W right alongside other framed photos of their political dignitaries. Although that
was
Warren talking.

On the most recent call, Kamil’s wife had said something about her friend changing her mind about wanting to sell the property, so he said, “I tell her! Go and eat her brain! Find out!” I corrected him, “
Pick
her brain.” I couldn’t help it, it was the English teacher in me. But he ignored me and said “eat her brain” several more times that day, making for a very gruesome visual.

Josh was still being diplomatic and polite and was asking Kamil about the specifics of the house: have your kids picked out their rooms, etc. Kamil had two children, one boy and one girl. He explained to us that yes, his son had picked out a room, but, “The girl, she is a visitor in your home. When she grow up, she get married and move out of the house with her husband.” That made me so sad. I couldn’t imagine growing up with a family that only thought of me, really, as a temporary guest.

Being on a somewhat organized tour, we had the compulsory stop at a “typical” Bedouin tent, where Kamil introduced us to the Bedouin family and then brought us inside the spacious tent and subtly pressured us to buy ugly scarves that had allegedly been made by the Bedouin woman. The scarves were packaged inside neat plastic squares and did not appear to be handmade. Although he kept saying, “No pressure!” he would then continue with, “But this how they make their LIVING.”

This typical Bedouin family had a late-model Jeep Cherokee parked outside of their tent, and the head male figure of the family had a very expensive-looking watch on his wrist, so I was guessing they were doing okay. All the same, Josh bowed to the pressure and bought a thin burgundy scarf with a faint beige plaid print. He wanted to wear it right away and had the quiet Bedouin teenage boy wrap it properly around his head.

We walked back out to the car, and Kamil pressed the ignition button on his remote-control key chain. Josh exclaimed, “That’s a fancy start button,” to which Kamil responded, “Yes, all family. Brother, father, mother…” Listening was not his forte.

From the tourist trap of the Bedouin tent, we drove to our overnight destination of yet another tented camp in the Wahiba Sands desert. We were supposed to stay at the luxury tented camp that had been previously discussed with the Ministry of Tourism, but something had changed and Josh was informed that we would be staying at another tented camp, just a half mile down the desert from the luxury camp.

Boooo. I loved luxury. Having to spend all this quality time with Kamil was wearing on my good humor, and the luxury tented camp might have remedied that. Oh well, it was just for one night, and the normal camp might not be too bad.

We drove across the wide expanse of beautiful reddish sandy dunes and passed the luxury camp. I had my nose pressed against the window and whimpered as I noticed the camp’s gleaming white canvases. We drove a half mile farther and arrived at the standard camp. There were four Bedouin men smoking shisha while sitting on large pillows, on a raised platform near the entrance to the camp. They did not stand up to greet us but merely sat and smoked until Kamil approached to shake their hands and pat them on the backs. These were our hosts.

The main Bedouin told us we would be in tent #11 and waved in the general direction of the dingy canvases off to his left. Josh and I took our overnight bags and wandered over to a canvas that had “#11” scrawled on the outside flap in black Magic Marker. The inside of the tent was a study in hodgepodge décor.

Kamil had been crowing on and on about the standard camp, saying how it was “real Bedouin camp” and a “real experience,” all the while pooh-poohing the luxury camp. We did have a real orange plastic garbage pail in our tent, and there was real mold on the floral and plaid sheets that comprised the tent’s interior. There was a Kelly-green plastic woven mat covering the floor (upon lifting this up, we found only sand underneath), and two black-framed single beds, the kind you might find in the aisles of Target, flanking each side of the tent. There was also a dusty, rickety, old electric lantern hanging in one corner.

Now, I prefer fancy, but nonluxury can be done well. Simplicity is charming when things are clean and well attended to. This camp was sloppy. It felt haphazard and had a film of griminess covering it. It just seemed like a few Bedouin dudes got together and were like, “Yeah, we’ll bring tourists out here. They love the authentic experience. They’ll pay our monthly expenses.” I was sure that somewhere, there would actually be the ubiquitous grubby backpacker who would just inhale deeply and say, “Ahhhh, this is
great
! It’s so
authentic
!” Just because something’s “authentic” doesn’t mean it’s good.

The big draw of desert camping was the desert itself. The scenery was stunning: miles and miles of reddish sand dunes, with the occasional flock of camels wandering through. Josh and I had arrived about an hour before the sun set, so after surveying the squalor of our tent, we wanted to get out of there and spend some time enjoying the
authentic
beauty of the Wahiba Sands. We were also dying to get away from Kamil, who had thankfully plopped himself down with the other men and fired up a shisha. We climbed up to the top of the closest dune, which took about fifteen minutes of trudging, then parked ourselves at the top, facing the descending sun. It was absolutely breathtaking. The air was silent, as there was no traffic anywhere nearby, and we could just barely make out the faraway voices of the shisha-smoking men.

We survived the night in the squalor, and the next morning I woke up and brushed a flying cockroach off my blanket, then got up and hurriedly packed my things. Josh and I made our way to the breakfast area to meet Kamil, who was having his morning tea and cigarette. Breakfast at this camp was appalling. Appalling meaning I could have made it myself. I don’t cook. There were hard-boiled eggs, lentil mash, and two loaves of store-bought white bread. There was also a tray with one small jar of hot sauce, one jar of jelly, and one giant vat of mayonnaise. Seriously? This was an authentic Bedouin meal? I was so relieved we had been invited to the luxury camp for breakfast.

It was that day that I realized we had already spent exactly half of our vacation with Kamil. This made me rumpled and unhappy and so much less tolerant of his incessant yammering.

Kamil claimed to have once met, and had a brief chat with, Brad Pitt in the lobby of a Muscat hotel. He had been very impressed with Mr. Pitt, and began discussing his marriage with Angelina Jolie. He seemed surprised when Josh and I informed him that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie weren’t married. “They not married?!” So Josh explained something he had read somewhere that Brad and Angelina had said they would only marry when it was legal for gay people to marry, because they thought it was very unfair that gays couldn’t marry. This statement was met with stunned silence from Kamil. I vacillated back and forth between being thrilled we were finally able to shut him up and very badly wanting to hear him discuss that particular issue.

Lunch was supposed to be included on the tour that day, but Josh and I had had enough of Kamil and asked to be taken back to our rental car in Muscat. We were both dying to go to the Muscat McDonald’s to try something called the McArabia sandwich. Yes, it is somewhat of a travesty to eat at an American chain restaurant when you’re overseas, but since we were both living away from America, we figured it was perfectly acceptable. Plus, nothing said “I’m lovin’ it” more than time away from Kamil.