rock in a hard place

She “kep’ lookin’ ovah Jurdan,” kep’ “a-trustin’ in de word,”/ Kep’ a-lookin’ fo “de char’et,” kep’ “a-waitin’ fo’ de Lawd,”/ If she evah had to quavah of de shadder of a doubt,/ It ain’t nevah been discovahed, fo’ she nevah sung it out;/
James Weldon Johnson, Black Mammies, The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922

The three Abu Shenabs still remain the only vehicles owned and worked atop the Selma plateau. Why buy this particular vehicle? “Because spare parts are easily available and cheap,” says Sayid. “And because everyone says the Abu Shenab is number one.”

We are sitting under the sparse shade of thorns and dried branches, between goats, huddled women and the gaping yawn of the Majlis. Sayid has effectively shaken off the life he was born into, and might just be one of the most important people in the three villages. Although his 26 years are crammed into the weather beaten face, wiry body and penetrating eyes of the Shawawi of Selma, his cap is more intricately woven, and his dishdasha fresher. It was not always so.

Even the hardened road that occasionally destroys the differentials of Abu Shenabs didn’t exist when Sayid was a child. He lived with relatives at Fins, where his school was, and came home on weekends using the donkey path that ran up the mountain. Compared to those days, any road – even the near vertical crumbling one now – is better. For a first timer, the track is an exhilarating, scary, adrenaline-charged rush to the caves. Tourists and adventure seekers champion such bone jarring ways, bemoaning the ever-decreasing stretches of dirt roads in Oman. To many, such tracks are our last remaining connections to the land, elevated to almost sanctuary-status. Tell that to the people of Selma. “We want a concrete road,” says Said. “We want it today.”

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