the big city

The only artists I have known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque their work. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistable. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

One such man is Jassim Suleiman al Abri, just 18 years old but already with his sights on the big city. "The route up is really tough," he says, grimacing in make-believe pain, "and you have to have a very good head for heights because some parts are very exposed." With his crisp brown dishdasha, trendy haircut and weekend plans, Jassim doesn't look like he would make it very far up anytime soon, for the college in Musanna is calling, and after that perhaps even Muscat. He breaks into English, testimony to his current year through foundation course, before financial studies begin. It will be another three years before he gets out and starts looking for a job in the capital.

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