Oman 2024, Part One: Before the Beginning

It begins with a trip that wasn’t.

But it really begins with a nickname.

***

I was already a toddler when I first met my dad; he’d been working north of Riyadh when I was born, so my first few years didn’t contain a physical father figure, but they did have sand-tinted photos of the kind man, occasionally sporting a ghutrah, who sent baby presents: dresses from England, blankets from Spain, tiny earrings, musical books.

He had also chosen my nickname. It was derived from Arabic, and my parents’ preferred etymological explanation was that it meant “the sultan’s favorite.” It was also, funnily enough, the name of a Yardley perfume (and soap), and adults of a certain vintage may well remember the exoticized commercial campaign around it.

***

I grew up and began a career that at one point, moved me to Doha. On Easter weekend, my friends and I drove to the Inland Sea, white Land Cruisers sailing through billowing sand dunes.

I’d gazed across the Qatari border with Saudi Arabia; we were over a thousand kilometers away from where my dad had lived, but it was the closest I’d been to this part of his story.

***

And while I only lived in Doha for a little over a year, it was enough to absorb permanent preferences.

Grape and apple-apple shisha.

Halloumi and baba ghanoush.

One-riyal karak chai by the roadside.

Clouds of bakhoor and oud.

Habibi, shukran, yalla, sabah al khair, inshallah slipping into daily speech.

I didn’t manage to visit all seven of the emirates in the UAE, but Dubai was certainly a maximalist spectacle, and Abu Dhabi, while more laidback, was the setting of a memorably chaotic anecdote.

Important note: if you attend a yacht party, always tell your friends if you are going to stray overboard for a sunset tour of the corniche, because the boat might sail back to the marina and leave you stranded in the Gulf in only your swimsuit, with no phone and no ID, drifting on a Jet Ski with an attractive stranger whose name you can’t recall anymore.

***

In 2024, an Egyptian holiday fell through, much to my dismay, and it would not even be the last time I would have to begrudgingly cancel a booking at the Waldorf Astoria Heliopolis. The inner hotelier gremlins were even more unhappy about this than I was, and sulked for days.

With the Pyramids temporarily out of reach, we studied the map for an acceptable Plan B, and said, Well, why not Oman? It looks nice and calm.

And we can stay at Al Husn, the gremlins added brightly.

So the Qatar Airways flight to Cairo rerouted to Muscat.

Now we can begin.