the shopkeeper

If it means nothing after all! / And nothing lives except to die— / It is enough—that solemn light / Behind the barns, and you and I.
Richard Le Gallienne

August 2007

The village shop’s only claim to fame is that it is on the T-junction in Birkat al Mawz where you turn off towards the Jebel Akhdar. Apart from that it is like any other general store cum foodstuff shop in Oman, packed with everything from bottled milk to plastic animal toys to telephone cards. If you ever stop at this one it will be purely by chance, if you happen to choose it over its near-identical neighbours, perhaps to stock up on water before your journey uphill. Moosa Omar has been manning it since 1984, and will be happy to share his stories with you if you get there after evening prayers, when his customers have thinned to a trickle.

Moosa wasn’t always his own boss. He used to be an electricity meter reader a long while ago, but gave that up when he could come up with the RO800 he needed to stock the shop with. When he shifted to his present location, it was just a shanty of plywood that cost him RO40 per month to rent, with a dusty road outside. Still, business was good, for their was little competition – a fact that changed with Oman’s immigration policies. 1986 onwards saw a huge influx of expatriate labour, and Moosa found himself fighting off the competition. Business turned so bad that he took a break from the foodstuff business from 1995 up until 2003, returning to his initial choice when more financially secure.

Moosa has been through a lot, and although he has taken hits over the years, he’s managed to weather the ups and downs of owning a small business in Birkat al Mawz. “I would drive to Nizwa, even Mawaleh, to stock up on material,” he says, “and purchase stock with cash in hand. I’d prefer an anonymous cash dealing rather than credit.” A lot has changed over the years: the road outside is now tarmac, tourist restrictions for the jebel have been eased and suppliers now come to him. The plywood stores have been replaced by a concrete complex, built by the government in 1990.

“I used to wake up at six, but there are so few customers I get an hour more of sleep. With blacktop roads and cars, the village people have got mobile and drive for hours to see the big cities. They might just as well buy their provisions from Nizwa, or even Muscat. I can’t compete with that.” Still, Moosa has seen too much of life and business to be ruffled. Walk in and you’ll see him at ease in his chair, firing away the prices of bottles of wadi honey, blue sunglasses and a toy Hummer with equal ease. Items higher than arm’s reached are hooked by his thin ceremonial stick.

Like Birkat al Mawz itself, Moosa Mukhtar is one of the many side attractions you will find under the Jebel Akhdar if you look hard enough. He is open till midnight, speaks relatively good English and is happy to organise a tour of the mountain for a fee.

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