Home: Middle East: Oman: Howling over Yasab:
No people are uninteresting. /
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets. /
Nothing in them is not particular, /
and planet is dissimilar from planet.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, People
"The old people say that since we didn't have any utensils in the old days we used to drop the flour for the bread right on the floor," says the wizened old man. And that's how our village gets its name. Yasab means 'to drop.'"
Yasab isn't any ordinary village — its 14 houses and three tribes huddle against the cold rock, staring up at Oman's highest mountain, howling back at the wolves that eat their goats. The only way to get there is to leave Wadi Sahtan, west of Rustaq, and gnaw your way up one of the steepest, most thrilling dirt tracks in the sultanate. Two hours from the highway, Yasab sits in the fold of mountains, hidden from everyone, even its closest neighbour.
Not much has changed since the old days, although they don't have to pick the dirt out of their bread any more. Electricity wires are now strung over this settlement, but they lead nowhere, because Yasab is just too small and too far away. Ditto for GSM coverage, which dies somewhere between the sheer rock and mountain air, lost in the echoes of shawawi songs and wolf howls.
Why stay in almost utter isolation? Why choose this spot and not another on the slopes that stretch along the northern edge of the Hajar? The exact reasons have been lost between the generations — no one alive today can tell you when it was that they settled here. Of course, the answer lies somewhere among the assets of the place and the need to move away from competition.
Those assets include the shallow wadi walls that shelter them from the ravages of the wind over bare slopes, and the sheer inaccessibility ensures security. They talk of a small seasonal spring and four faltering wells. The little water they do tap into irrigates the fields of mahendu and shair for the goats, handful of imported cows and donkeys, while borr, dara, alias, basal (onion), thom, asfarjal, anab (grape), khas, fijil, belinj and laymoon (lemon) are grown for human consumption. That sounds like a lot and it is — you will find terraced gardens wherever they can be sustained, and the dry remnants of those abandoned with time, as the water dried up or the income wasn't worth the effort.