Just over two hours out of Sharjah the little four-seater aircraft seemed to be in trouble. Pitching around in the turbulence it began to drop rapidly towards the ragged mountains below. Alarmed, one of the passengers – a young man from Iran on his first trip to Muscat – looked out, spotted the sea in the distance and asked the pilot “Why are you going down to the mountains? If there is a problem it would be better to come down on the water!”
The pilot smiled and said, “Don’t worry. We are landing here. This is Muscat airport.” Ahead of them the mountains parted and there in the middle of nowhere was this little landing strip.
The year was 1971. Ceross Rahmanian had arrived in Oman, touching down in the area that is now what we call the Central Business District, then open and bare, with Bait al Falaj in the distance. The drive from the airstrip was along the only surfaced road in the area at the time – a 3m wide and 10km long concrete lane that wound past what is now the Stars Cinema and up into the mountains around Muttrah to come down by the side of Riyam Park and into Muscat.
The city was very different from the place we live in today. Pleasures were simple. Ceross remembers that you could watch a movie in two places – Ruwi where Hindi films were screened in a walled off area, or the PDO club where you could catch an English movie. Popcorn and nachos were not on the bill however. You carried your own comfort, a blanket or a chair with you, and settled down to watch whatever was being shown.
Every drive those days was a voyage of discovery. Since roads were virtually nonexistent, a 4WD was absolutely essential. You could choose to bounce along to the area that is now the Qurm Park – being one of the few freshwater sources in the area, you would see gazelles coming down from the Al Khuwayr wilderness to slake their thirst and perhaps you might spot a wolf or a wild cat.
Or you might choose to drive down to one of the hot springs – there was one accessible in Wattayah and another somewhere in the vicinity of Al Ansab. Wherever you chose to go, in those days you had to get back behind the city gates before sundown or risk being locked out for the night.
For the off-roading aficionado, Oman was paradise – without roads every trip was a trailblazing adventure. Returning to Muscat after a brief spell away, Ceross drove down from Dubai, “I stayed near the sea because I knew that the beach would bring me to Muscat.” Crossing the border was also rather different in those days, “The checkpoint then was in Aswad. You stopped there and had a tea or coffee. They tore a piece of paper from some book, any book, stamped and signed it and you could enter Oman.”
If the drive from Dubai seemed to be an adventure it was nothing compared to the dangers of travelling to Salalah. Ceross would do that trip at least once or twice a month through most of the seventies. In the early seventies, you had to have a road permit which would be checked at Nizwa. From there onwards it was entirely up to you to know where you were going. In an open desert criss-crossed with tracks it is very easy to get lost. Remember, these were days with no GPS, and no mobile phones. You navigated with a compass, the stars and the sun. If you were lucky the trip could be made in four days. It could take a week or even longer if you got bogged down in the sand. Some unfortunates would never make it through. “They would go round and round and get lost. The heat. No water. No petrol.”
A convenient pitstop on the route was the Desert Line camp at Haima. Ironically it was an accident at Haima that stopped Ceross’ frequent long distance desert drives. “In ‘77 I had a very bad car crash in Haima. I overturned my car, and this accident put me in the hospital for nearly one year.”
It took Ceross almost three years to fully recover, after which, he returned to Oman to build up the steel company that bears his name. Asked if he misses home he says, “For me when I came here in ’71 I thought maybe I would stay one year. And then after the year, I stayed one more year. And then again another year.”
Almost 40 years have passed now and Oman has clearly become a home he loves. After all, this is where he has spent some of the happiest years of his life and it is here that he met his partner, Daynise. Pressed as to whether there is something of Iran that he misses, he pauses a beat, then laughs and says, “Snow!” Both he and Daynise come from far cooler climes – she’s from Canada – but the searing summers of Oman have been all but cancelled out by a different sort of warmth.
Ceross says, “The people here are nice. That’s why you stay. I came here in ‘71 to work but if I hadn’t liked it, I would have only stayed one year. When I used to go to the desert and meet the people who lived there, may be all they had was a barasti. But when you visited, whatever they had – food, water – they offered some to you.”
As the afternoon comes to a close, Polka and Miko – quite possibly the luckiest dogs in Oman – strays who found their way into Ceross and Daynise’s garden some years ago, vie for his attention. This is in addition to Bandar, the African Grey and three cats. There’s just one last question.
When asked whether there is one place in Oman he has a special corner for, Ceross commits himself with a twinkle in his eye, “Bandar Khayran”, the coastal getaway that he would escape to on weekends. Clearly, when Ceross said that he would rather splash down in Omani waters 39 years ago, he meant it.