Last weekend, we took my sister, who is like a sister, visiting us in Oman all the way from Amsterdam, to Bidiyah to explore the desert, and perhaps find ourselves out there after a year during which we had both lost a father.
I had a vision of a scorpion in the desert the morning my father passed, which his nurse, originally from the Caribbean, said was a good and symbolic sign, though I barely remember why through the haze of that dark day’s emotions. My late father himself had visited the Oman desert several times, and the memory of him there seemed to quietly accompany us on this specific trip.
True to my usual habit of leaving late to go anywhere on a Thursday, a delay that still frustrates my husband, a desert’s child who likes to go dune bashing before it gets dark, the sun was already near setting when we reached the camp for what would be my sister’s first visit to the Rimal Al Sharqiya.
Thanks to my adventurous spouse, I had crossed the Oman desert for the first time many years ago and many times since, but on their first-time visit, my sister and her son had to take in every detail. The sand dunes were glowing reddish‑gold in the warm light when they stepped out of the car and, city kid as my beautiful sister is, brushed the sand from her shoes.
She slowly turned to take in the endless expanse and quietness. “A once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she screamed several times, even as she immediately promised she would come back one day.
Run by a lovely local Omani family, like so many who are allocated a piece of the desert to run a business, this site where we stayed at the Rimal Al Sharqiya featured elevated luxury cabins casting long shadows across the sand. It also had running showers and comfortable beds, a far cry from how we used to set up our own tents, search for wood, and shower using water bottles perched between the car doors, which had its own down-to-nature charm to it. But it did not make the experience any less special or spiritual.
That night, my sister and her son slept for the first time under a sky illuminated by countless stars to which they looked up as they appear in the absence of artificial lights and all other noise.
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well,” says The Little Prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic. I first read this book after a Parisian-Moroccan friend sent it to me when we were eighteen, worried my reading had become too focused on the depressing existentialism of Saint-Exupéry’s contemporary, Albert Camus. At that age, I had only seen many cities and beaches, but no desert or tent overstays.
The story in the book begins with a pilot stranded in the desert, who meets the extraordinary Little Prince, who helps him realise that even when some of life’s events are too hard to understand, one must accept their mysteries. Thanks to their encounter and genuine connection, the pilot gains a deeper awareness of the beauty hidden in all things, learning that conversation and love can resolve his inner conflict and ease his fear and uncertainty.
The Little Prince symbolises that even in seemingly empty places, either literally or figuratively speaking, hope, meaning and hidden treasures can be found, often through an inner journey or a genuine, real connection. That is what my sister and I found that day in the desert.
But on a side note, taking in all the beauty of the desert in Oman, we also took note of all the plastic litter, left behind by people who seem to assume the government will come and clean it up.
It reminded me of something else, “It’s a just a question of self-discipline,” the Little Prince explained. “First thing in the morning you look after yourself, you brush your teeth and wash your face, don’t you? Well, the second thing you must do is to look after the planet.”
Bregje van Baaren
The author is a freelance contributing writer
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