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Home: Middle East: Oman: Desert: Abu Shenab:
dripping squid ink
April is the cruellest month, breeding/
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/
Memory and desire, stirring/
Dull roots with spring rain./
Winter kept us warm, covering/
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding/
A little life with dried tubers.
T S Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
Squid ink drips down fishing boats, desert sands and Bedu fishermen, staining dishdashas and pickups black. Here, where the desert meets the sea, at the midpoint between endless water and endless sand, activity reaches fever pitch. This anonymous coastline is a stretch as strange as it is unknown. This is a land where time and space seem to stand still, a topsy-turvy bubble where everything is upside down: here, the Bedouin look to the sea for their livelihood, not the desert. And they drive pickups, not camels.