Painting mugs with a New Yorker in Muscat

“Right,” I lie, when the lady beside me at a pottery studio (run by an Omani mother of two) in Muscat says Michael Jackson’s music is not from our generation. She gives me a look with her big eyes. Did she mean just Billie Jean and Thriller, I wonder?
Sunlight, candles and calming music fill the cute space, where my friend Roya took me for a trial class. Ceramics are not usually my cup of tea, too much chamomile.
As we paint the plain mugs, I ramble to strangers at the table about the latest Michael movie and geopolitics. Inspired, one woman starts drawing a watermelon on her cup.
“I am from New York,” my neighbour says in an American accent, though lacking a New York City twang. Earlier, she walked into the cozy Pilates studio (run by another Omani mum of two) opposite our pottery place, wearing an abaya and scarf. I thought she was from Muscat, not Manhattan.
Our New Yorker has been in Oman since last August and is still learning to put up with the blazingly hot summers (except for in Salalah and the mountains). But she loves it here, especially the halal food, and is even learning Arabic.
“Don’t you miss it?” I ask her, knowing that New York City (once New Amsterdam) has a slightly neurotic “never sleeps” vibe similar to Amsterdam, where I am from (more or less). Muscat has a calmer energy, one that makes you either fall in love at first sight or long for a bigger city.
But she feels New York is no longer as open-minded as it once was for her. She asks if I am Muslim too, then mumbles something about Jewish people in NYC.
I think of Bernie Sanders, who has spoken out against the genocide in Gaza, and Fran Lebowitz, another Jewish New Yorker, who describes the citizens’ habit of ‘leaving each other alone’ as a form of cultural and religious tolerance. I have even heard people say that Trump is not considered a true New Yorker because he is not open-minded enough.
“Learning Arabic is not easy,” the New Yorker suddenly sighs.
“True, I cried when I first tried to learn the alphabet. I get easily distracted by English, as it is widely spoken in Muscat, and some Omanis also speak another language at home because of the country’s historical ties with East Africa and Balochistan. We also have many expats and a few immigrants, like me,” I reply, a wannabe tour guide.
My neighbour asks me how long I have been in Oman. Long enough to have searched for the real Michael when he was here.
Now hyper-focused on painting cats on my mug, I want to tell her she can still be a New Yorker in Muscat. How driving along an empty beach in the early morning, sunlight glittering on the sea, can feel peaceful until a slow car in front of you brings out your inner city kid.
I can tell her how Roya and I recently visited an Azza (mourning gathering), as the mother of a mutual friend sadly passed away, may she rest in peace. In Oman, many cars parked outside a house might signal an Azza or a Malka (the main part of a wedding).
I once felt a similar confusion in the Netherlands, while caring for my dying father in his backyard as loud music and speeches echoed from a Church garden across the river. Was it a wedding or a funeral, I wondered, until a little boy cried out into a microphone: “You were the best Grandpa ever, I’m going to miss you!”
I am not sure if my New Yorker neighbour appreciates these observations, but I share my cross-cultural two cents anyway, just in case she wants to be a part of it and make a brand new start of it in old Muscat.
Her painted ceramic mug looks much better than mine, and she will probably call me the crazy cat mug lady, though she must have seen worse.