author - oman observer

With a heavy heart, I’d been following the wake of stray dogs shooting that happened in many areas here. Emotions were high on social media, between anguished locals and concerned Europeans...

Years back, while exchanging e-mails with my dear American friend Deanna and while discussing yoga classes she asked if I’d ever tried something called hot yoga. Never hearing of it before I asked...

A few months after the Spanish Civil war broke in 1936, George Orwell travelled on the pretense of covering it but, his true intention was joining the fight against fascism. He enlisted in an...

After leaving Mani’s still feeling hungry (what’s with the new Barbie portions of pancakes and French toast for breakfast? My unsatisfaction is best described by grandma’s words ‘the fox who...

If you’re not familiar with classic Indo-Pakistani writers, I’d like to invite you to watch Nandita Das’s film Manto (2018). Born in 1912, Saadat Hassan Manto was an author and a playwright who...

In July 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — an American couple of Jewish ancestry — were arrested by the FBI for espionage and passing top-secret information to the USSR that helped them build...

Mansoor was curious about the new visitor and tried to make contact from the second day by jumping on the artist’s lap. The artist was freaked out by the act and apologised by saying that he still...

The minute the artist set his foot in Kitzania, he was pretty nervous. Never being around cats meant that he had the typical misconceptions of all non-cat owners: cats are sly and good for nothing but...

When my aunt announced that she’s coming for a short visit to Muscat along with her husband the artist — a man with no pet experience and innate hate for cats- it was the time for an urgent...

Whether you’re a fan of Iranian cinema or had never watched an Iranian movie before, Mohammed Rasoulof’s There is No Evil is a must-watch.The original Farsi title of the film is: Satan doesn’t...

Being from the Gulf and going through its education system meant two things: 1) The words Darwinism and Evolution were merely mentioned in our biology syllabus but were never taught as it opposed...

On one of those mornings where you expect nothing, I heard one of my kittens meowing persistently and went out to check if it was stuck on a tree (the usual kitten trouble!). As I approached the...

What is love? Is it everlasting the way it’s presented in art and literature? Most importantly, what happens to it after marriage? Does marital bliss exist or is it hard to attain? These questions...

16) There was a man who owned a date shop in the city of Al-Mada’in near Baghdad. He had a young assistant who sometimes locked himself in the shop. The owner suspected that he’d be eating dates...

12) Stories of Mohammed ibn Abi Al-Mu’mal:Was a miser who had interesting theories regarding food and water. He said that the worst enemies of bread were condiments as it made people eat more. He...

8) A miser shared a story with his other miser friends: “I suffered from a bad cough for days. People I know recommended eating Persian sweets called Faneeth and Khazeera (made from starch, sugar,...

Stories from Al-Jahiz’s Book of Misers, from the chapter covering the people of Khorasan (Iran):1) “If a guest arrives to a person from the city of Marv and stays for too long, the host would ask...

One of the most important classical writers in the Arab world comes from the Abbasid Caliphate. Born in Basra in 776 A.D, Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr will become known by his nickname: Al-Jahiz (the bug...

Like many Omanis, I felt anxious when reading the news about the search for the cousin fishermen Ali and Salim Al-Jafari who disappeared while fishing in Al-Ashkharah in Sharqiya region on June the...

Just when the bird rescues were over, a new influx of kittens flooded Kitzania. By the end of Ramadhan, I received a call from my friend Joseph, who’d found a litter of five kittens at his workplace...