straight down

She’d de hardes’ road to trabel evah mortal had to pull;/ But she knelt down in huh cabin till huh cup o’ joy was full;/ Dough’ of Satan tried to shake huh f’om huh knees wid scowl an’ frown,/ She jes’ “clumb up Jacob’s ladder,” an’ he nevah drug huh down.
James Weldon Johnson, Black Mammies, The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922

One such driver is Sayid bin Azzan bin Sultan al Ghadani. His name is as long as a sentence, and his route even longer, snaking up and down a mountain several times from 4am till 6pm. That dirt track starts at Fins, on the sea, and gnaws its way up to the Selma Plateau.

Sayid the water deliverer could be excused for being overshadowed by the presence of giants. Underneath him, one of the greatest cave systems in the world is poised for development, and the Majlis al Jinn – its star cave – has already premiered in National Geographic magazine. Such international fame, and the future fortunes it immediately conjures up, is a world away from the reality of flea-bitten goats and huts in which up to ten villagers might huddle together, as they have done for centuries. On the bare wind-ravaged limestone top of the plateau, there is nothing to mask the dead-end outlook of the three villages, and the lack of opportunity that stares back at you. Little has changed over the ages, and the villagers would follow a semi-nomadic life, moving with the water source.

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