For two hours I found myself inside a frenzied Arabian livestock auction, right out of some National Geographic video.
Nomadic Bedouins would herd goats and cattle in a circle like sharks around prey; buyers would interrupt goat owners and commence an impassioned ritual of bargaining and counter-offering; masked women would patiently wait while their husband sold off the clan's precious baby camels as payoff for years of labor.
This was Nizwa's famous Friday Goat Market, held once a week on the morning before Jumu'ah when men traveled in from tens of kilometers away to worship at the nearby Grand Mosque. For herders it's the big pay day, and for the local townsmen it's a chance to pick up that coveted goat to fatten the entire extended family, as this day also happened to be exactly one month before Ramadan fasting.
For more than 1000 years this marketplace has been the crossroad of caravan routes where overseas commodities from Muscat would cross path with Dhofari frankincense from the southern tip of Arabia. Today it remains an open-air market in the most traditional sense, thriving on the ancient trade of livestock herding in a region of the world that's still remarkably tribal even in the 21st Century.
Deals are negotiated in Omani Arabic, but the drama and amusement certainly transcend language barriers, especially if you're tolerant of the local standard of animal treatment. Cattle prod the handlers impatiently, goats thrash about and camels bark at their new owners as they get shoved onto pickup trucks. Everyone gets a good laugh aside from the goats which would soon become somebody's family dinner.
Within 5 minutes of my arrival I was almost convinced to buy a goat.
"Twenty six," this man pushed hard for the sale in reasonably good English, "Twenty six. Very good goat!"
By traveler's instinct I declined ... but at the back of my mind I also calculated that it's actually less than CAD$70. For a live goat!
For a moment I wavered ... wouldn't it be cool to own a goat for a few hours? And then what ... releasing it in the desert? Or gifting it to some random stranger? In any case I decided to keep my 26 Rials and spend it on something more useful. Like 2 nights of hotel room rent.
As in any traditional old-world market, the timeless art of haggling was an intense seesaw affair requiring concessions from both sides. Buyers probed, sellers countered, and everybody else watched on the side for a feel of the day's price fluctuations. These two had been haggling on for a good 15 minutes, until ...
... the prospective buyer turned his back, and the seller chased him down! But instead of lowering the price and closing the deal, the seller lectured the bargain hunter in a serious tone then pulled his prized bull out of the sale. Deal or no deal, the man stood his ground.
For city dwellers like myself there's much to learn about the essential skill of goat inspection, checking its teeth for nutritional issues and grabbing the hind leg beside the crotch to gauge its fat reserves. Inspection was generally swift and business-like, as most of the livestock would change hands by 10:00 and the auction would wind down.
All around the market cash and goats changed hands, and the new acquisition would be towed away or tied onto an unattended pole should the new owner decide to shop for some more. Stealing someone else's goat wouldn't even cross the mind. Eventually the sheepish little guy would be brought home, butchered according to the practice of Dhabihah and appear at the family table for the next 3 weeks. Those large droopy ears are cute, but one really shouldn't get emotionally attached with the main course.
This was before the whole coronavirus scare and every child around came to admire these gentle giants, loved by all Omanis for their durability and life-giving milk in harsh environments, not to mention big money camel racing. Only a few years later 50 people died and Omani camels were specifically identified as carriers of the MERS virus.
On top of all this the herders would occasionally lose control of their cattle, and bystanders would dash out of harm's away as naturally as avoiding motorcycles at a crosswalk. There's a bit of Pamplona in the atmosphere and was definitely not for the timid.
This was the perfect time and place for people watching, as men dressed their best for the upcoming Jumu'ah at the Grand Mosque sporting gleaming white Dishdashas and beautifully embroidered Kumma caps.
Most intriguing were the Bedouin women in black, draped in their loose Thawbs and hiding their faces behind the distinctive Omani Burqa. Getting a good picture of these women was risky business given the conservative tribal culture in this land, and I had to be careful with my camera etiquette, often employing stealth techniques taking blind shots at waist level.
In Canada I do see Burqas once in a while as a statement of religious observance, but in this desert climate one can easily appreciate the sensibility of a pieces of clothing that can protect the face against the hot sand and dust, and possibly provide some minor UV protection as well.
These Bedouin women had probably worn the Burqa for most of their lives, at least from puberty onward when in the presence of any men outside of the immediate family. The local non-Bedouin women however dressed somewhat more moderately, only covering their hair with the Hijab and leaving their faces exposed.
Fancy the Kumma (3 men on the right) or the Massar (2 men on the left)? While both are considered national headdresses of the Omanis, I generally saw a lot more Massar in the desert regions of Central Oman and more Kumma closer to the capital city of Muscat. After all the Kumma is an East African invention, imported into Muscat through centuries of seafaring tradition.
It was here that my solo trip unexpectedly turned into a social adventure as I bumped into fellow backpacker Jose, the only other foreigner in the crowd. I had a rental car; he didn't. He had a few days of experience around Nizwa and Muscat; I didn't. It was natural that this Canadian and a Spaniard decided to travel together for the rest of the trip. We decided to separately finish up what each of us wanted to see in Nizwa, before meeting up again at noon for a drive to the nearby towns.
Just outside the auction grounds there's another small market for those without enough money for a live goat. This is one of the largest Souqs in the Arabian peninsula after all, and goods of all varieties streamed in from different corners of the Middle East. There's the aforementioned Souq for goats, a Souq for pigeons and quails, a Souq for handicraft, and a Spice Souq among others.
I was surprised to find a Fish Souq in the middle of a desert, 150 km from the nearest coast. Not sure whether this was tuna or shark, but the kid was clearly a Real Madrid fan.
There's also a Souq dedicated for dates of all types, many locally grown from the date palm groves at the peripherals of this oasis city. To this date Nizwa remains Oman's powerhouse for date cultivation, 1400 years after it was originally established as the capital.
This little roadside stall gave me my favorite meal in Oman, better than any sit-down restaurants I encountered in Nizwa or Muscat. Grilled meat and flatbread has always been the traditional food of the Arabian desert, and the Omanis do it really well with their Mashawi.
Look at this juicy kebab of lamb with spiced garlic paste in the Mashawi, two for 800 Baisa (CAD$2) at the street corner before the masses headed for the Grand Mosque. No unhealthy carb fillings like rice or French fries often found in the Turkish or Greek versions, just charbroiled lamb, fresh veggies and oven-roasted bread.
Even the locals concurred that this was good stuff! I had to shrug off these feral-looking cats to meet Jose back at the Souq entrance. That afternoon we would journey to the medieval villages of Tanuf, Al Hamra and Misfat al Abryeen, before returning to Nizwa for the night.
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