the mahri of mitan

I mean, that God neither created us nor wished us to be created, but that we are the work of an inferior deity, a Demiurge, who wrongly believed himself to be God? Heavens, how probable it seems; and this overwhelming hubris has been handed on down to our children.
Lawrence Durrell, Justine

Walk into Mitan and you will find yourself in the midst of the Mahri, a Bedouin tribe speaking a language different from Arabic – or Jebbali, the language of the mountains. We are sitting in one of the cabins in Mitan, between four wafer-thin wooden walls, bare except for a broken television in one corner, a wall to wall carpet and a couple of cushions strewn around. This cabin isn’t the house, it’s just a part of it. The actual home is spread over four, if not five separate sandakas, each a handful of metres away from the other. They include the majlis where we were, the kitchen behind, the dining room to the side and the master bedroom, a grand affair a cabin or two further.

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