We arrive in the capital, Muscat (Masqat)
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Muscat,
Oman
Friday, February 21, 1986
It was night when we landed in Muscat (aka Masqat) and went to meet my father who had now been there for just over five weeks. My sister, mother and I, were completely buggered and still in that weird state of initial culture shock from when we left the airport and saw our first glimpse of Muscat.
All of our posessions had been sent while we were staying in Newcastle, so when we arrived at our flat it was like we had already been there, but could not remember where everything was. Maybe someone had moved everything around and painted the walls or something. It was like instead of moving house, my parents had just paid some builders to move the walls around and then shoved our things here and there to get them out of the way. I remember it being an incredibly bright evening with a large moon shining down on us.
Upon arriving at the flat, I followed my parents up the path to the door, lagging a little behind in my wonderment. Lining the stones I now walked on were bushes taller than me and completely dry and lifeless, no water had touched them for a long time. It was almost as if they drank the salt from below the surface and that was what gave them their ghostly ash-white colouring. Not yet knowing what exactly had happened to the world I had known since that day in the Stirling Hospital back home, I went inside and started riding my tricycle around the flat.
I rode that dye-cast yellow metal tricycle around and around and around the edges of the room, moving strangely in a daze. A child who has no comprehension of his surroundings and the purpose behind it all, looking for normality in a tricycle. I rode and rode and I rode and rode, smoothly and slowly - passively passing into this world and sinking further into it with each revolution of the tricycle's pedals.
