From An Email to a Professor

Dear Professor,

I hope that your semester has begun well and continues smoothly.
Oman is fascinating, although at times my perspective from within a home-stay family feels like trying to look at a mural with a magnifying glass. Although the family provides interesting cultural insights and anecdotes, I have felt frustrated at times with the lack of access to information regarding larger socio-political trends, as census data is only barely available, and even basic internet access has been at times difficult, particularly now during Ramadhan.
However, part of trickiness in trying to pin down “facts” about Oman as a political whole has been a product of the Sultan and his government: a theme that has been constantly reiterated by our lecturers and readings is “Oman is different”, meaning different from its more restive neighbors. And while it is far more stable politically than Yemen for example, and less conservative than Saudi Arabia, it is also quite strictly controlled. Another theme that has been reiterated, explicitly or not, is the self-censorship that the government has somehow managed to so effectively induce. A saying I have heard is “We are more worried than the government is" [about saying something that the government would not like]. I am unsure as to how this fear of criticizing the Sultan has been so widely invoked. Other than the clever practice of imprisoning dissonants briefly, then releasing them to their families with the accompanying social stigma which puts the responsibility on the families to watchfully control the activities of the "trouble maker", I have not evidence of extreme punitive violence nor overt pro-Sultan propaganda. Perhaps I have not yet learned to recognize it.
This governmental control seems to be a major factor contributing to Oman as "different". In the words of people here, "Oman has good relations with all the world." "We are under control, control is good for us." "Oman is safe." Part of the "national narrative" depicts Oman as "a seafaring nation", rendering it historically tolerant and open to other cultures, dependent upon interaction with outsiders. This naarative matches current Omani efforts to expand its tourism industry, and the recently passed free-trade agreement with the United States.
Yet I am still at a loss to understand why exactly Oman is "different". And it is; from what I can tell, it is politically stable, any whiffs of political jihad are quickly waved away. People ask worriedly about impressions of the Middle East in the United States. They are equally quick to point out that September 11th was not conducted by Muslims. Either they say that the terrorists had so corrupted the idea of Islam that is no longer qualified, or they say that other agents were responsible and Al-Qaeda is a red herring.
What all this means for my research is hard to say. Trying to ask "What could the US do to improve relations with the MIddle East" would have to be modified, because Omanis would probably not assume to speak for all the Middle East, and from an Omani perspective, the US is a friend. Although the same issues that unite the Middle East hold true here: the US needs to get out of Iraq and stop supporting Israel. These ideas are learnt by heart; some people do not even know where Israel is, (they know hwere Palestine is, but have not been taught that Israel controls what they think of as "Palestine"



I have therefore considered looking at the identity of Oman as "different" (this implies differnt from states such as Yemen that produce jihadists). Part of the Omani national identity program has been a repression of the Cold War proxy war in in the 60's to the 80's, in which socialists and dis-satisfied peasants in the southen region of Dhofar tried to resist the consolidation program of the Sultan. The war itself is nearly erased from the physical environment and mainstream memory. This fascinates me, aespecially after experiencing places like Cyprus, Argentina, Bosnia, and Nicaragua, where past conflict and collective trauma both informs identiy and is manipulated for contemporary politics. It seems that the war would not gel with the mantra "Oman is different, Oman is peaceful, Oman is stable" and therefore it is rubbed out.

I am curous to study the extent to which this is only the wishful thinking of the Sultan's Adminstration, and to what extent people have internalized this as part of being "omani". I am unsure how I would go about this.

If you know of any other situation in which past conflict has been erased rather than exploited for the sake of a national narrative, I would be very interested to know.

(Fanon speaks of identity as always congealing around a collective trauma).

I am also trying to find evidence of Derrida's "other" in Omani identity; if it is truely the "violent" this seems almost unprecedented in my experience, and exciting from a perspective of conflict resolution. However, I doubt that it is actually so black and white.

I would love to hear your thoughts!
(That means everyone's thoughts--it is hard to do online research here, and libraries hardly exist, so I am counting on the knowledge I can gather from people!)

Best,
Annelle




These are photos from the trip to a village near "Ibri" in the interior, perhaps three hours southwest of Muscat. I went with Elizabeth and Heather, the only other "intermediate" Arabic student, to attend the "Aza" of our teacher's mother. The "aza" or funeral ceremony, is a three-day period of mourning and visits from hundreds of relatives, neighbors, friends. For us it consisted of sitting among women wearing the full face mask, with hennaed hands and feet, swatting flies in the heat while the bells of goats, cows, and camels tinkled from behind the compound. The daughters cried, (the men, of course, were in a sepearate area), mostly the guests sat in silence. When we arrived we took the right hand of each woman and murmured "Salaam Aleikum", and whenver someone new arrived they did the same. Also went around to everyone to say goodbye; Elizabeth had resist the repeated requests that we stay for iftar, and the night.