author - oman observer

“Donald was the name of her orange cat. That was a bit creepy,” I chatter to my friend about my late father’s girlfriend as we sit at a large shared-with-strangers table at the bohemian No Name...

Dear EcoGPT, hi. It would be weird to ask you, "Salaam Alaikum, what's up?" Granted, many people may treat AI assistants as their not-so-private digital diaries or even as their unforgetting,...

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born,” I once read in one of the diaries of the...

“Bye, Beach. I love you, too,” she said to me the other day. Calling me a beach. I guess the unintended mix-up could have been worse, and I decide it is close enough to Breg, the short form of my...

Despite a five hundred and seventy-three-hour wait for this food delivery company's customer service representative to finally call me back, we somehow managed to keep the conversation about a...

"I want to listen to Enrique Iglesias or Celine Dion, please auntie," insists my eldest niece, who sometimes has this cute, childish presence, as she touches the pin that holds together her tightly...

I went to a Christian high school in Buitenveldert, Amsterdam, but apart from Religious Studies, there was little that was particularly religious about it. In those days, one of my friends had a...

“Khob Khun Ka, Rapunzel, kha!” she said to my favourite girl while running her fingers through her brown curls. Vivian, a spa therapist in Phuket, was friendly, but not in the typical Thai polite...

“All I care about today is Messieeee!” Once again, a phone case with the Argentine flag and a picture of “the greatest football player ever” is waved in our faces by one of our colleagues....

“Oman is okay now, right?” the tuk-tuk driver suddenly asked, smiling at us through his rear-view mirror as we gripped the sticky handrails, plastered with stickers advertising nightclubs, while...

“Your iPhone contains almost everything about you, yet Siri has never been able to use all of that information when you need it,” read the New York Times Wirecutter newsletter. A bit of a tech...

“Is your family still safe in Beirut?” I asked the familiar face I bumped into at a coffee shop. I was on a short break after almost writing on the office windows with a permanent marker, feeling...

“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...

On a Saturday afternoon, I got three whole 'likes.' Offline at a soiree on a farm in Muscat, that is, not as reactions to some unpolished post on my low-follower private Instagram account....

Tuesday, last week: A cup of coffee at the café downstairs with our guest, a Parisian, though originally American. Fair enough: He moved to France in the 1980s, making him an immigrant like me here...

“You have many lovers!” “Thanks, habibti! Wait.. what?” “I mean, we really like you as our team member!” Without looking up and a little lost in (Freudian) translation, my sweet colleague...

“What if it had been a baby inside that cage, mama?” I was calmly asked after we met Bruno, the Doodle Dog, at a local veterinary clinic that made global headlines last week. It was a loaded...

Should I blame Bella Hadid, the glamorous American supermodel of Palestinian and Dutch descent who wears Prada to the Oscars and posts frequently about Gaza and health? After all, following her (on...

“Astaghfir Allah,” I muttered after one or two curse words did cross my mind while chasing the cat who was once again trying to ruin my late parents’ furniture by using it as a scratching post....

Go or stay, stay or go. Apprehensive, maybe even afraid. That was the Muscat state of mind I anticipated of first-time visitors to Oman who normally live on the bustling yet close-knit Dutch street...