The loss of magazines in Oman: A summer longing for print
Magazines were curated, beautiful, imperfect — they slowed you down and gave you a world outside your own. In a country where summer stretches endlessly, where heat confines us indoors, magazines used to be a ticket to elsewhere.
Published: 05:07 PM,Jul 21,2025 | EDITED : 09:07 PM,Jul 21,2025
There was a time when Thursdays in Oman were not complete without a trip to the bookstore or corner shop to pick up the latest magazines. The glossy covers of National Geographic, Elle, TIME, and even People beckoned from their tidy displays. Some were gateways into worlds I longed to enter — worlds of fashion, art journaling, slow living, and global affairs. Others were guilty pleasures, filled with celebrity gossip and colourful layouts that provided a sense of lightness at the end of a long week. Today, however, that ritual has all but vanished. In Oman, the era of printed magazines is gone.
The disappearance has been slow but brutal. The Covid-19 pandemic delivered a final blow to what was already a dwindling market. Imported magazines became harder to find, more expensive, and eventually disappeared from even the most well-stocked supermarkets. Local bookstores downsized their periodical sections, replacing print with digital subscriptions and Instagram reels. Some people moved on. I did not.
This past spring, my longing for the tactile joy of flipping through a printed magazine reached a breaking point. There was something unbearably sterile about the infinite scroll of Pinterest and the monotony of e-magazines, which lack the texture and smell that make reading a sensorial experience. In a moment of desperation, I asked an American colleague and friend — who was visiting the US for just a few days — to buy me Daphne’s Diary, a whimsical Dutch magazine I treasure for its dreamy visuals and art journaling inspiration. I also begged him to bring back anything he could find: fashion glossies, travel monthlies, even tabloid weeklies. I just wanted to touch paper again, to feel the rustle of a page turning in my hands.
When he returned, handing me a small stack of magazines — some glossy, others matte, some refined, others wonderfully trashy — I nearly cried. I sat on the floor that evening, flipping through the pages like I had been reunited with long-lost friends. It was not just the content I missed; it was the ritual, the slowness, the pause in time that print allows. There’s something meditative about leafing through a magazine, dog-earing pages you love, cutting out images for collages, or reading an article without pop-up ads and notifications.
This summer, I couldn’t wait to travel — not just for a change of scenery, but for a chance to stand in a foreign airport or train station and be overwhelmed by a wall of printed magazines. In London, Berlin, or Washinton DC, magazine culture still survives, if barely. It may be niche, expensive, and curated, but it exists. I wanted to run my hands along the spines, pull issues off the shelves, flip through them at random. I wanted to buy too many and cram them into my suitcase like someone smuggling back a piece of a lost era.
The loss of magazines in Oman is more than the loss of a format; it is the loss of a certain kind of dreaming. Magazines were curated, beautiful, imperfect — they slowed you down and gave you a world outside your own. In a country where summer stretches endlessly, where heat confines us indoors, magazines used to be a ticket to elsewhere. Now, we scroll endlessly but absorb less. We click, but we don’t connect.
I still hope that one day, a new generation in Oman will rediscover the magic of print. Perhaps small independent presses will rise. Perhaps nostalgia will triumph over convenience. Until then, I will keep collecting issues where I can, asking friends for favours, and travelling not just to see new places, but to hold old pages.
The disappearance has been slow but brutal. The Covid-19 pandemic delivered a final blow to what was already a dwindling market. Imported magazines became harder to find, more expensive, and eventually disappeared from even the most well-stocked supermarkets. Local bookstores downsized their periodical sections, replacing print with digital subscriptions and Instagram reels. Some people moved on. I did not.
This past spring, my longing for the tactile joy of flipping through a printed magazine reached a breaking point. There was something unbearably sterile about the infinite scroll of Pinterest and the monotony of e-magazines, which lack the texture and smell that make reading a sensorial experience. In a moment of desperation, I asked an American colleague and friend — who was visiting the US for just a few days — to buy me Daphne’s Diary, a whimsical Dutch magazine I treasure for its dreamy visuals and art journaling inspiration. I also begged him to bring back anything he could find: fashion glossies, travel monthlies, even tabloid weeklies. I just wanted to touch paper again, to feel the rustle of a page turning in my hands.
When he returned, handing me a small stack of magazines — some glossy, others matte, some refined, others wonderfully trashy — I nearly cried. I sat on the floor that evening, flipping through the pages like I had been reunited with long-lost friends. It was not just the content I missed; it was the ritual, the slowness, the pause in time that print allows. There’s something meditative about leafing through a magazine, dog-earing pages you love, cutting out images for collages, or reading an article without pop-up ads and notifications.
This summer, I couldn’t wait to travel — not just for a change of scenery, but for a chance to stand in a foreign airport or train station and be overwhelmed by a wall of printed magazines. In London, Berlin, or Washinton DC, magazine culture still survives, if barely. It may be niche, expensive, and curated, but it exists. I wanted to run my hands along the spines, pull issues off the shelves, flip through them at random. I wanted to buy too many and cram them into my suitcase like someone smuggling back a piece of a lost era.
The loss of magazines in Oman is more than the loss of a format; it is the loss of a certain kind of dreaming. Magazines were curated, beautiful, imperfect — they slowed you down and gave you a world outside your own. In a country where summer stretches endlessly, where heat confines us indoors, magazines used to be a ticket to elsewhere. Now, we scroll endlessly but absorb less. We click, but we don’t connect.
I still hope that one day, a new generation in Oman will rediscover the magic of print. Perhaps small independent presses will rise. Perhaps nostalgia will triumph over convenience. Until then, I will keep collecting issues where I can, asking friends for favours, and travelling not just to see new places, but to hold old pages.