baskets & necessity in haat

Kaint defy it, kaint deny it,/ Kaze it jes won’t be denied;/ Its a mos’ pursistin’ stubbern sortah thin’;/ Anti Tox’ doan neutrolize it;/ Doctahs fail to analyze it;/ So I yiel’s (dough I despise it)/ To dat res’less, wretchit fevah evah Sprin’.
Sprin’ Fevah, Ray G. Dandridge

Haat itself seemed deserted when we got there, apart from a few shawawi tribesmen on its fringes, heading out with their goats. Most able-bodied men were in the mosque, and we waited nearby till they trickled out. Salim bin Said bin Nasser al Hatali was the first to greet us, with his old wizened face, complete with a mostly toothless smile that he broke into regularly over the next hour. Salim has been earning his income through his agriculture and a by-product of the dates – the fronds of the tree. These, he explained, were plucked out, laid across each other at right angles and woven together to make baskets. He called the finished product khasaf, or darf, which translates into ‘envelope.’ They were huge, longer than wide, and their sides ran parallel, not curved, and would hold up to 20kg of dates. Salim sells each at one rial a piece, and will make a couple of pre-Eid trips a year and sell up to 200 baskets in markets across Rustaq, Bahla and Seeb. He’ll pay RO5 as petrol money to get a ride on a passing pickup there, and return with halwa, fish, meat and bread.

Who taught him how to weave? “Necessity,” he says. “I have nothing else.” At 60, Salim gets RO40 a month from the Ministry of Social Affairs, and asks for only one thing more: “My health.” Haat has nothing: its 600-700 strong population doesn’t warrant a school, or hospital.

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