Another Year in Oman: Between Iraq and a Hard Place...Free Sample

Another Year in Oman

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

by Matthew D. Heines

Sample-not for sale or reproduction of any kind

Chapter 1

Asylum in White

   

     As she walked into the room, the first thing I noticed was the way that she smelled, which I thought was strange for a dream. Her perfume was a sweet Omani fragrance. It wasn’t overbearing like the stuff women spend fifty dollars an ounce for in the shopping malls. It smelled sweet, almost like candy, and it seemed to invite me to come closer to her, which I usually did.

     Along with the smell of her perfume, she seemed to have a certain hormonal scent that, at times led me to suffer several delusional waking fantasies. But, every time, the dream was the same. I tried to look into her eyes but I couldn’t. They were never there. Her eyes were never there because there was nothing ever there but a black scarf around emptiness. Below the faceless head was a black dress that the Arabs call an abya.

     I took one side of the black scarf that covered her hair in my fingers and pulled it up and around her head to try to see the face, but in every dream, as the scarf came off, her long, shiny black hair fell out of its confinement and draped down, past her shoulders, but still there was no face.

     As I moved closer, I could feel her breasts against my chest as the air passed quickly in and out of her lungs. We both were breathing heavily as I tried to touch her lips with mine, but there were no lips to touch.

     I don’t know how long the dream lasted, but it was always the same. Maybe five minutes, maybe ten, after all, it was a dream. Every time we reached a point where we would either stop or continue to where there was no return. At that moment in the dream, I pulled my face away from hers. We were both breathing heavily and I wanted more, I wanted her and I wanted everything. I knew she wanted the same thing and maybe that was why I always stopped. I looked into the void of her face, thinking, dreaming.

     Suddenly, the walls around us were gone. For a few moments, it seemed we were married. We were in our imaginary bedroom and we were on our imaginary bed, getting ready to make imaginary love. Then, we were in a lush green forest and the sun was setting above the swaying tree tops and we were holding each other to keep warm in the chill of the afternoon breeze. After that, we stood together on a mountain. We were shivering in each other’s arms as the snow fell silently around us. Finally, we were standing on the beach and the sun heated our bodies while the cold sea washed sand onto our bare feet.

     “My love,” she whispered.

     The blue sky and the sea disappeared. The white walls slammed down into place, the fluorescent ceiling lights replaced the hot sun.

     “Yes, my darling.”

     “I love you so much!” she said and pulled me closer. “I don’t want you to go.”

     I touched her where her face should have been with my fingers and gently caressed the emptiness. I hadn’t stopped trying to look into her eyes, not even to blink, half afraid she would disappear altogether.

     “I know,” I said. I again put my arms around her and held her close to reassure her that I was always going to be there for her. She put her head against my chest and we stood, holding each other as the walls disappeared again and the smell of the sea filled my nostrils, mixed with her perfume.

     In a second, I would look at her and whisper, “We are free now, free to do whatever we want, so you don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

     I felt her body shudder slightly. She pulled me close and whispered again, “My love, I don’t want you to go…”

      The walls reappeared, the sea went away and the sun once again changed to a pair of fluorescent tubes.

     “I will never, ever leave you, no matter what,” I whispered.

     “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she sobbed. “You are my life.”

      I leaned over and tried to touch her lips again with mine, and again there was only emptiness. I moved my hands lower on her back and the lower I moved them, the closer she tried to get to me. I could hear her let out a slow, silent sigh and I knew that we were getting close, again.

     After a few moments, something again made me pull back. Whether it was conscience, fear, respect, my love for her, or maybe it just wasn’t that kind of a dream, I stopped kissing her, smiled and slowly buttoned her dress and abya and straightened them.

     “We should be careful.”

     “My husband, I love you more than anything,” she said, panting.

     “Me too,” I told her. “I remember the first time I saw you. I thought you were so beautiful. I knew there was something different about you…”

     “What was it?”

     “I don’t know, maybe it was your eyes, or the color of your skin…”

      But there were no eyes, and no skin, there was only nothing. I leaned over and tried again to kiss her cheek and then her lips. “…Or maybe it was your voice.” I said still trying to kiss the lips that weren’t there.

     “Or maybe it was the way you look in that abya…”

     She threw her head back and her body started swelling again with each breath. “Our honeymoon is going to be veeeerry interesting,” she said. “We will kill each other.”

     “There are worse ways to die,” I pointed out.

     As much as I hated to, I looked into the emptiness and said, “We better stop this for now.” I looked down and began to close the buttons at the top of her dress.

     “Okay, but only for now,” she whipsered.

     “Do you want to stay for a few minutes or do you want go?” I asked her as I pulled away. I sat down in a comfortable chair and leaned my head back.

    “I will stay with you my love, for now and forever,” she answered. For some reason she started crying.

    She sat down in the chair across from me and for what seemed like forever, we didn’t say anything, but at the same time, we said everything. I looked at her and I watched her cry.

     In the end, we talked for a few more minutes, but inevitably, I always had to look at the clock.

     “I think it’s time for us to go,” I said.

     “Okay my husband.”

     She wiped her face with a tissue and got up to look in the mirror. I sat and watched her moving slowly to the mirror and then I looked up at the clock again. The clock, like her, never had a face, or hands, but in every dream, it was time for us to go.

     She wrapped the black scarf around her head, making sure that her long black hair was tucked completely inside. I watched her, still trying to see her face as she turned again to face me. She straightened her abya and waited. I too, got up from my chair. I moved a pile of books and papers that lay on my desk aside until I found the one I was looking for.

     I looked up at her, trying desperately to see something where her eyes should have been. I handed her the book and said, “I love you.”

     She took the book from me and whispered, “I love you, too.”

     “Someday we will tell our children about this and laugh,” I told her. What a stupid thing to say, I thought.

     “Yes my love,” she said and turned slowly towards the door. I got up and reached for her again. We held each other until the time had inevitably come that we were supposed to leave and then we said goodbye for the last time. She turned, and I watched her walk down a long shadow and disappear into the light at the end of the darkness. I heard a small whispered, “I love you,” in the emptiness and she was gone.

     I looked at myself in the small mirror that hung from the wall. I hated looking at the mirror, because in every dream it was the same, where my face should have been, there was nothing. As I looked into the mirror, I began to hear a low humming sound.

     My head snapped violently backward and my eyes opened.  Where was I this time? I looked at my blurred surroundings and all I could see was white. There was a stabbing pain in my neck as I tilted my head, trying to figure out where I was. As things came slowly back into focus, I saw a white ceiling above me. The tiled floor below me was white. The bare walls around me, made of cement blocks and plaster, were also painted white. Even the air conditioning unit above my head was white. Behind where I sat, the writing board that covered the entire wall at the front of the room was also, white.

     Was I still dreaming?

     The only objects in that surreal setting that were not white were the desks in front of me that students used for writing. The desks were black surfaced tables. They were sturdy, with long, thick, stainless steel legs. Placed underneath each sturdy black table were two chairs that were solid like the tables. Their seats and backs were made of a hard ceramic substance that was lacquered over with a chemical varnish that left them somewhat shiny and at the same time, easy to clean. The chairs were also supported by stainless steel legs and though sturdy, were quite uncomfortable after short periods of time. As I looked around the room, it all came slowly back to me.

     My first clue was the fact that I could differentiate the colors of each chair at each table. The variety of colors of the chairs was limited to the primary color scheme of the visible light spectrum, or red, yellow and blue. I could differentiate the color of each and every chair with ease for the simple reason that each chair was empty and had been so since the college had begun its new semester, nearly two weeks before.

     If I can see colors, this must not be a dream… 

     I began to take stock of what appeared to be my conscious reality, but I didn’t want to be in my conscious reality. I wanted to go back to the dream. I wanted to find out who that woman was and stay with her. I had a lot of questions to ask her that I never seemed to get around to asking her in the dreams.

     As I thought about the questions I would ask the mysterious woman, I began to think of more questions.

     Why did I have the same dream over and over? Had I been in Oman for too long? Was she from my future, or from my past?    

     Having not been able to remember any emotional attachments to faceless, spectral beings, I was leaning toward the possibility that she might be from my future. However, I didn’t really believe in a lot of hocus-pocus, and, knowing a little about psychology, I tried to explain her away as scientifically as I could.

     Maybe the woman is no woman at all, maybe she signifies something else?  Or, maybe there is an-other-than-scientific explanation for the dream and the woman. In a country that was famous in the past for black magic imported from Africa, maybe someone has put a spell on me…

      That was the best I could do to keep a scientific and rational outlook. Whatever the reason for the recurring dream was, in reality, I was sitting by myself in the front of an empty classroom. It was a ritual I had repeated every day for the past two weeks, or since the beginning of the semester in early January of 2003.

     To the uninitiated, it may have seemed somewhat odd that two weeks into the semester, not one student had yet shown up for the class.  As a veteran of over a year of teaching at a small Middle Eastern college that rested between a vast expanse of brown, treeless, mountain covered desert on one side, and a vast expanse of turquoise blue sea on the other, the fact that I was looking at an empty classroom was no surprise at all.

     A little over a year before, when I had first arrived in Oman two months after September 11th, I may have gone to the Dean the first week and asked him to notify the wayward students that their swift dismissal from the college was imminent. However, I had learned early on and sometimes the hard way, that Arab Culture was not Western Culture. The students would turn up eventually, but not before they had extended their semester break to their own satisfaction.

     There were a few other reasons the students hadn’t, as yet, bothered to attend the college as was dictated by the schedule. The most blatantly obvious reason was that all of the students who adorned the class roster were young Arab men. They had failed to show up, do homework, or achieve any measurable learning for a year and a half. In a Western, or Eastern, academic setting, this failure to produce any measurable results in the realm of learning would mean that they would carry with them the title of, “former” student.

     This however, was not the West, nor was it the East. This was the Middle East and this was the center of Oman, a country rich in the heritage and culture of the Arab peoples. In a culture which dated back almost beyond culture itself, things like schedules, timetables and individual achievement still were seen as peculiar concepts imported by foreigners. If anyone made a problem for the students, there was a father or an uncle that had some influence that could get them out of any tight situation, such as failing a class. For that reason, the students who were enrolled in the class saw no immediate need to attend until they were good and ready.

     I sat by myself at the front of the room in one of the uncomfortable chairs with the lacquered finishes and asked myself more questions like, what in the Sam Hill am I doing here? Is this what all of my life’s dreams and aspirations have amounted to? Sitting in an empty classroom halfway around the world, waiting for students that I know won’t come for at least another week? And dreaming pseudo-erotic dreams about forbidden women with no faces? 

     In the year since I had watched the attacks on the World Trade Center, it was getting harder and harder to remember why I was there at all. I had gone to teach in the Middle East to show the Arab people that all Americans are not bad. Events in my personal life and in the world, however, were making it harder and harder to remember that I had come there to show the people of the Muslim world, albeit a very small corner, that we are more alike, Americans, Arabs, Christians and Muslims, than we are different. I really thought when I boarded the plane in Seattle, back in November of 2001, that possibly by understanding each other, the peoples of the world could solve our problems ourselves.

     Oh, yeah, I thought, that’s why I’m sitting in this classroom by myself looking at empty furniture.

     Empty furniture and naïve idealism aside, I had found Oman a fantastic refuge from life in America. The people were very friendly, it was almost always sunny, and there were great places to escape to. It had become so much a part of me that sometimes I felt as if was becoming an Omani myself.

     Maybe that was what the dreams were about.

     As I sat there alone, deliberating my fate, naivete and possible insanity, I noticed something very interesting, and for a second, I thought I made what might someday be described as the greatest scientific breakthrough since the discovery of the atom. I realized for the first time that the color white, which surrounded me on all sides and top to bottom, in its concentrated form had its own distinct sound. It was a very slight sound to be sure, but it seemed to have a distinct humming sound nonetheless. I listened intently until I realized that the sound emitted by the color white had a peculiar resemblance to the sound of an air conditioning unit at its lowest setting.

     I sighed and reached into the clear plastic bag sitting on my lap and pulled out a perfectly ripe, yellow banana that I had purchased the night before at the fruit and vegetable souk (market) in the middle of the town of Sur. I peeled the yellow banana skin and took a bite of the white fruit inside. As I sat there, I listened to the barely audible white humming sound mixed with the sounds of myself chewing the perfectly ripe banana.

     Once I finished the first banana, I pulled out its sibling and began to tear off its skin and consume it in the same manner as I had done before. Once I had finished with the two bananas, I pulled out my third breakfast entrée, a Washington State Red Delicious apple, imported, like me, from Washington State in the Northwest corner of the U.S. I peeled off its trademark “Washington,” sticker, wiped it clean on my pants and took a loud bite.

     I hated times like that more than anything. Being alone with nothing to do gave me time to think. I didn’t think about the absurdity of waiting for students that wouldn’t show.  I didn’t think about helping the cause of world peace. Being alone with nothing to do, my mind always wandered to Paula, my Indian girlfriend.

     Paula had left the country a few weeks before because her parents had arranged for her to be married to some Indian in her home country. She had explained to me that she had no choice but to accept the marriage or suffer the brutal consequences. She also promised me, as horrifying as it may sound, that she would go through with the marriage and return within the next year.

     Paula had been everything to me. She had been my best friend. For almost a year, she had occupied my thoughts, my dreams, my hopes and my fantasies. She was funny, exotic and very, very intelligent. She was younger than me by almost ten years, but seemed to possess more common sense than I ever would.

     Though she had lived far away in Muscat, the capitol of Oman, we always seemed to be together. I called her every morning at seven a.m. to wake her up. Throughout the day, we exchanged calls or messages on our mobile phones or we sent each other emails on the Internet. At night, we seemed to talk forever before finally we went to bed.

     On Wednesday, the last day of the work week, the minute I finished my work at the college, I would drive over two hundred miles just to be by her side until Saturday morning. On Saturday morning, I would wake up at four a.m. and drive the two hundred plus miles back to Sur and the college. She had encompassed my whole life and suddenly my whole life was gone.

     I glanced at my mobile phone sitting on the desk beside me. I still carried it with me everywhere I went, “just in case,” she called. It was a futile gesture; my phone didn’t ring anymore. I hated moments like those so much because I had time to think about how much it hurt and how miserable and lost in the world I felt.

     Anyone who has lost a companion may know that feeling of despondency and loneliness. For me, it was worse because I didn’t know if I had really lost Paula or, if, a few months down the road, I would get a telephone call and I would hear her say that she was back and then our ideal existence could begin again. Common sense said to move on with my life, but, move on to what? At least if I believed that she’d return, I would have something to hope for.

     It was then that I realized life and hope share a proportional correlation. If I was to give up hope, I was afraid I might wish to give up my life as well. My own survival dictated that I hold on to her words and hope that she would return. Besides, I had other more important reasons to stay alive than just my own naïve self.

      The other reason I didn’t like being alone was because if I wasn’t thinking about Paula, I was thinking about the main reason I had for being, and that was my three year old daughter. Because a woman judge in Oregon had allowed her mother to lie in court and falsify court paperwork to get not one, but two restraining orders against me,

I hadn’t been able to see her since the day after she was born    

     The first order, she told the courts to drop after she told me she would do so if I paid her three thousand five hundred dollars. The second one she took out, she lied again and wrote everything she knew would destroy my career as a teacher so that I would never have enough money to fight in court to see my daughter.

     When I appealed the restraining order in a hearing, I told the woman judge in Oregon that she was lying under oath (which, had she not been a woman, would have been perjury) and the judge just laughed and said, “Oh, I forgot to swear you in.” To further make a mockery of justice, the judge told me to be quiet when I told her the woman was lying under oath. The judge just looked at me and said, “…be quiet, you will have your turn.”  When it was finally, “my turn,” to speak, the judge stopped me in mid-sentence and told me to, “Hurry it along,” as she had a “…luncheon to attend.”

     When that happened, I knew that it was all about the lie. The fact was, someone stole my child and ruined the career I worked and sacrificed so much for with the help of a government and a court system that I was stupid enough to believe in. The worst part was, they were so eager to do it to me based on nothing but the lies of a woman who knew how to play the court’s ‘game’ because it was her third divorce. When I realized how much the court thrived on the lies, I really didn’t believe in any of it anymore. Well, I was little more inclined to believe in the benefits of lying in court.    

     When I watched the events of September 11^th, I thought that somehow, that was a lie too. It seemed like a lie anyway, to label all the Arabs as terrorists. I knew a few Arabs, as well as Muslims. They were always kind, civilized people to me. They were different, to be sure, but they were nice.

     I finished my Washington State Red Delicious apple and I tossed it into the waste basket. I closed my eyes and wished I could go back in time. After Paula left, I had stopped sleeping at night and I was tired, even though it was just after eight o’ clock in the morning. I wished I could go back just a few months so that I could have a little more time with Paula. We would go to the sea at night and we would sit on the beach under the stars…      …maybe she was the one in the dream…

     At that moment, the door opened and broke the near silence of the white room. My head snapped violently upward.

     I fell asleep again?

     I laboriously and painfully turned my head and body in the chair in which I sat at the front of the empty room. I saw the goateed head of, “Young Rob,”* the head the English Department, sticking through a narrow crack in the opened door, just a little over six feet above the ground. I checked my chin to make sure there wasn’t any drool dripping onto my shirt.

     “G’day, Matt,” he said in his usual cheerful Australian manner.  Young Rob had been the Director of Studies and a resident of Oman for a few months, having taken over the duties from the previous Department Head. He was a young, good looking chap and was still naively trying to keep the teachers inspired with his cheerfulness and his ability to look at the brighter side of each and every depressing situation that arose. He hadn’t been there long enough to become disillusioned, but he was getting close.

     “Hey,” I replied.    

     “Any of them show up yet?”

      I really didn’t see a need to answer that question. If he couldn’t discern that the only occupants of the room were his head, the flies he was letting in the half open door and me, then it was my opinion that he should have to go through the rest of the morning trying to figure out the answer to that question himself.

     However, Young Rob was a good guy. He was nice. He smiled a lot and, unlike most of the staff of the little college, he never had a bad word to say about anybody. I relented.

     “Nope,” I answered.

     “Well, mark them absent,” he said.

     “I will, don’t worry.”

     “Cheers,” he said and his head disappeared as the door closed, leaving me alone to enjoy my own despondency and the sounds of the empty white room.

     I looked at my watch. By the rules of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Sultanate of Oman, which stipulated, among other things, the requirements for a college lecturer to be present in the classroom until twenty minutes after the start of class, if no students showed up, I was free to leave. With my contractual, as well as ministerial obligation fulfilled, I picked up my teaching materials and left the room.