Two rifles, one question

Bushra Khalfan’s novel Al Bagh (The Rifle) builds its narrative around two main voices, each following a separate journey until the two finally meet in conflict.
The first belongs to Rashid bin Saif al Aaifi, who leaves his village of Al Sarair in Al Rustaq and pursues a military career that takes him through three major conflicts in modern Omani history: the Buraimi conflict, the Jabal Akhdhar War and the Dhofar War.
The second belongs to his nephew, Zaher bin Ali al Juwairi, whose journey takes him from Muscat to Kuwait in search of education and knowledge, before he returns by sea and enters Dhofar through Yemen.
Their paths eventually meet in Dhofar — but on opposite sides of the battlefield.
This encounter lies at the heart of the novel. Rashid and Zaher both recognise the poverty, ignorance, illness and hardship surrounding them. What separates them is their answer to two fundamental questions: What caused this suffering, and how can the country escape it?
Rashid places his faith in authority and military strength. He sees the established power, supported by the British, as capable of bringing unity and stability. Zaher sees the same relationship as imperial domination. For him, liberation requires defeating imperialism and creating a radically different social and political order.
Both therefore carry rifles, believing they are defending Oman.
This is one of Al Bagh’s central paradoxes. The two men are political opponents, but their ultimate concern is the same country. Bushra Khalfan herself has described the conflict as one taking place “within the same house”: Omanis may have followed different political and ideological paths, but each side believed it was seeking what was best for Oman.
This position gives the novel a conciliatory quality. At times, however, the narrator explains this shared intention too directly. The characters might have been stronger had they been allowed to express and judge their competing visions more independently, leaving the reader to interpret the conflict. In this sense, Al Bagh becomes more a novel of reconciliation than one of ideological confrontation.
The contrast between Rashid and Zaher is also reflected in the way they are portrayed.
Rashid is a man of action. He is defined by physical work, movement and silence. His journey begins on the farm, continues through Muscat’s port and ends in the Sultan’s army. His tools change with his circumstances: from the plough to the rifle.
Strength becomes central to his worldview. He has experienced injustice within his own family, then the harshness of labour in Muscat. Gradually, power appears to him as protection against humiliation. Joining the army is therefore more than employment: it fulfils his desire to become strong enough never again to be at the mercy of others.
Zaher develops differently. He is initially a man of observation, questions and ideas.
His journey to Kuwait is therefore more than physical travel. It transforms his understanding of himself, Oman and the wider world. On arriving at Shuwaikh Port, he immediately begins comparing Kuwait with the country he has left behind. Encounters with others force him to consider how Omanis are viewed from outside and why his country appears trapped in poverty and an earlier historical moment.
The questions multiply: Why is his country in this condition? What must change? And, above all, what is to be done?
His frustration gradually becomes political awareness. He reads books and newspapers and encounters Arab nationalism, Nasserism and Marxist thought. His personal concern for Oman expands to include the struggles of the wider Arab world, particularly Palestine and resistance to colonialism.
Zaher consequently moves from thought to action — from the eye to the hand, from the pen to the rifle.
This transformation brings him towards the same instrument carried by Rashid, but with an entirely different ideological meaning. Zaher joins the fighters in Dhofar opposing the British and the forces of Sultan Said bin Taimur. His rifle eventually faces Rashid’s rifle.
The tragedy is that both weapons emerge from attempts to answer the same historical question.
A recurring phrase in the novel captures this shared fate: roughly, “We cross together: either we all make it, or the wadi takes us all.” Individual salvation is impossible. Whatever ideological position the characters adopt, they remain part of the same historical moment and vulnerable to the same consequences.
This may ultimately be Al Bagh’s most important proposition. Ideologies offer different explanations of history and different promises for the future, but history itself is larger than any single person’s understanding of it.
Rashid and Zaher stand on opposite sides, each convinced that his rifle points towards a better Oman. Yet when the two rifles finally face one another, the novel leaves us with a deeper question: can either side ever possess the whole truth of history?
Ahmed al Hosni is an Omani researcher.
Translated and adapted by Badr al Dhafari
This is an adapted translation of the original Arabic article published in the print edition of the cultural supplement of the Oman Daily newspaper on August 26, 2026.