Middle East trip, part 10
2/22/2013
The hotel in Sur put up a good breakfast, which we ate as Chenbl regaled us with tales of a ghost tickling his feet the night before. “They’re probably curious,” he said, unconcerned. It turned out that the hotel, which features an echoing, multi-storied atrium with each floor a different color, is actually located next to extensive burial grounds.
Sur is home to a large concentration of mosques, and once they start up with the calls to prayer, it quickly becomes rather cacophonous. We walked around the boat museum, Ahmed pointing out boats that his grandfather captained. Offshore we spotted a couple of sea turtles lounging around in the bay. The area nearby is Ahmed’s family’s historical home, and he is related to everyone there, it seems.
We walked around the shipbuilding factory, looking at the large wooden craft being made there by Indian workers. Then we walked along the shore again. Sur is a pleasant place, a sleepy town where there was once only a spit of land by the sea.
Ahmed and I talked about Islam as we drove south again. “It’s ‘Issssslam’, not ‘Izzzzlam,” he said, correcting my pronunciation. Lunch was tuna on the bright blue carpet adorning the floor of another friend of Salim’s (my, but that man has a lot of friends). We passed scene after scene of brilliant light and wonderful compositions, but I took no shots as it was all going by too fast. Dinner was had at a locally famous diner/mosque on the old road out to the desert, where we munched on fried things and tea while Ahmed and Salim prayed next door. After that we drove out to the desert to play with some camels and goats in the gathering darkness, before following a bedu fellow in his Landcruiser out to our camping site, located in a hollow, surrounded by dunes. The Bedouin was thin and talkative, while his partner seldom said a word. We settled in our tents and then sat out on a platform talking for a while. It wasn’t as isolated as the Wadi Rum camp, but it was nice.
