Oman 2024, Part Four: Homeward

We end the trip the same way we began it — warm DoubleTree chocolate chip cookie, comfortably large suite.

I’m wrapped in the hotel bathrobe, sorting all our purchases on the living room floor, and wondering how I will fit all of Oman’s generosity into our luggage. There are those Ikea parcels, remember. There’s a caftan and an abaya and shawl, but also: rose tea, a large box of frankincense, perfume bottles, rose and frankincense candy, camel-milk chocolate, sidr honey, and those snacks from Carrefour. And there is an assortment of Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers for our colleagues as we’ve decided to get a head start on our festive shopping.

We are debating whether to upgrade tomorrow’s seats — the gremlins are firmly advocating for the J class cabin — when the smoke alarm goes off in the bedroom, summoning the night manager and the duty engineer.

The gremlins time the response and observe that the team arrives so promptly that it really is a credit to the hotel’s safety procedures.

***

It is the first day of the new Oman Air winter route, a direct connection between Muscat and Malé. At the terminal, we are met by a dignified porter; he loads our luggage onto a birdcage trolley and leads us to a quiet, high-ceilinged hall. There are carpets in the airline’s signature shade of blue at each check-in counter, and seating with organic curves and privacy screens. We go through a separate passport control, and make our way to the light-filled lounge, a collection of tastefully furnished spaces glinting in muted gold and bronze. The gremlins confabulate and announce they rate this experience slightly ahead of SilverKris, but behind Al Mourjan.

Oman’s kindness and warmth continue in the skies. Onboard service is excellent, as is the food, and the cozy pillows and blankets are much appreciated. I have a final cup of karak chai (this comes with sugar-dusted cookies) as we are delivered back to our Indian Ocean atoll.

We are able to get ahead of the usual queue that stymies arrivals, and hop on a boat post-haste to make the 20-minute dash to our island workplace. And we arrive just in time, wouldn’t you know it, to join the team in welcoming our hotel group’s CEO and APAC president. As we take a photo with both of them, I say a silent thanks to those ever-prescient gremlins. Wouldn’t have made it to this professional appearance if we hadn’t upgraded those seats.

Oman had been a hastily arranged Plan B, but it met us with luminous generosity and hosted us beautifully. And then flew us home.

***

I would follow in my father’s footsteps, though we never got to take a family trip to the Gulf, or to compare expatriate stories; he had long since departed by the time of that Easter weekend excursion to the Inland Sea.

The nickname is tucked away now, only to be used by family and childhood friends. And these days the sultan’s favorite collects favorites of her own: fragments of people and scraps of places that she loves. These bits and pieces of Oman — the mountains, the sea, the rosewater and frankincense and silver, the kindness and ineffable calm — are carefully added to a mosaic of memories, where, if I squint just so, I can see my father’s outline, off to the side.

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