The White Houses Down the Road

One of the first few things that we immediately noticed upon entering Muscat, Oman’s capital city, is the abundance of white houses.

The following shot was taken by my sister, Sophia, the proud owner of the Nikon D3000 that we used throughout this trip. We—Sanaf, my other sister who is also my photography buddy, and myself—kept Sophia busy behind the wheels as we took charge of the more difficult task at hand: photography. Masood had less pressing matters in his mind, like finding us a hotel to stay in, for example, since we didn’t book beforehand. We didn’t even know where the hotels were located in the city.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, I was showing you this photograph taken by Sophia. Did I tell you that she isn’t the least bit interested in photography? She hardly took four pictures throughout the trip. One of them was this one.

So she ended up focusing sharply on the leaves and branches, and left the main subject blurred in the background. “That’s a nice picture, Sophia!” I told her, taking the camera from her hands. “I’ll take it from here.”

She’s better at sketching, while I’m better in photography. Life is fair.

These low-lying white houses typify most of Muscat’s urban landscape.

“Wow, this looks like Greece!” exclaimed Sanaf, who has traveled to Europe several times. “Oh yes, it does!” the rest of us agreed, without the slightest idea how the houses in Greece looked like.

Not having skyscrapers obstruct our view was a pleasant change. We—the residents of the UAE who cannot imagine a building without a construction crane sitting on top of it—felt so liberated, like we were able to breathe.

And if Dubai is clean, Muscat is even cleaner.