In any man who dies there dies with him / his first snow and kiss and fight / it goes with him.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, People

Eisa Homaid al Khatri turns his wizened face to the sun and says he receives RO100 worth of assistance a month, or ten rials for every member of his family — "Just enough to buy soap."

When he was young, he met a man from Ibri who told him of jobs in Saudi Arabia. "I worked for seven months there as a cleaner in the railways," he says, "and earned 700bz a day." Tiring, he came back, only to return to the kingdom through his friend, who organised a construction site assignment. This time he lasted a year, earning even less: 400bz. His wanderlust cured, he spent the rest of his life in Yasab, tending to the goats, ploughing the fields, revelling in the dirt track raked through the mountain eight years ago. Before that residents had to make their way over the mountains by donkey to Rustaq, or by foot up the sheer rock to the other side and al Hamra.

"There are two routes to the top," he says, squinting into the sun, "about four hours up." That might be enough for a shawawi, but don't expect to make it within that timeframe if you try it. You can see a new dirt track somewhere in the distance, being hammered into submission from the radar station (you can see the white of its dome sticking out of rock) that sits near Jebel Shams, or al Qannah as it was originally known. In months — or years — it will connect to Yasab. The settlement will gain importance and lose some — it will see traffic, but that traffic will pass it by as it does all the settlements in all the wadis that run down the slopes of the Hajar, leaving dust in its wake, but perhaps ensuring GSM coverage.

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