When we arrived at Muscat Airport my visa was not waiting for me. An immigration officer searched through a few metal filing cabinets and squinted at his computer screen a couple of times.
Before leaving my home in England, I received an email with a ten-page attachment entitled Cultural Advice and Rules for Foreign Lecturers. My new employer was a little-known university in a little-known town in the middle of Oman. Muscat, the nearest city, was an hour and a half by highway through dusty valleys and stretches of uninhabited scrublands. I was winding down my academic career and saw this overseas stint as a final job – a spell of desert calm.
I had read in Cultural Advice and Rules for Foreign Lecturers that foreign women must cover their shoulders, elbows and knees. A separate sentence was devoted to the covering of cleavage, euphemistically referred to as a plunging neckline. This served as a reminder that I would be living in a traditional country, a euphemism for patriarchal and overtly sexist.
At the same time, the Sultanate of Oman is often regarded as one of the more progressive countries in the Middle East. Women work in senior positions, own property and have had the right to vote since 2002. Such points rattled in my head as justifications for working there in case anyone accused me of compromising my feminist principles.
At least I was not told to dress in clothes that I would not otherwise wear. No one was forcing me to don a headscarf or veil. I have nothing against the wearing of veils if men cover their heads as well. This is the case in Oman, where women wear hijabs, which leave their faces exposed, but keep their necks and hair well hidden. Omani men cover their heads either with turbans, called massahs, or with caps that look like truncated fezzes, called kumas.
I received another email about work visas. It said that after I received my work visa, my husband, who was already retired, would need to apply for a family visa so that he could stay with me, and he could buy a tourist visa in the meantime. In another part of the same email, it said that I would have to arrive alone, and my husband could join me only when his family visa was ready and that could take two to three months. My heart sank at the thought of living in a new country – this mysterious desert – by myself for three months while my husband remained in the UK, no doubt worrying about my welfare.
Given these contradictions, I searched online for an explanation – could my husband come with me or not? I soon learned that under new Omani laws women workers were not allowed to bring their husbands into the country – at all. Foreign husbands could sponsor wives, but not the other way around. So much for Oman being a progressive country.
This prompted me to contact the Head of Department, my new boss, who was British. He spoke in a straightforward way as if not surprised by the confusing email and told me to “not worry about it.” Workers’ laws in Oman are not set in stone like they are in Britain. There were ways of working around them, especially since I am a Westerner and “in Oman not all people are equal.”
On the surface, these new laws appeared sexist, but deep in their interior also lay a heady mix of nationalism and racism. Foreigners made up some forty percent of the workforce, mostly as low-paid manual labourers from the Indian subcontinent. Women from that part of the world often end up working as housekeepers or nannies, with tales of being victims of physical abuse not uncommon. The new visa laws targeted these female workers because their husbands could enter on family visas and later take jobs away from Omani men from the poorer classes.
After another round of emails, it was agreed that my husband could travel with me, entering the country on a tourist visa and that his family visa would take another month. Only a month. I was told that my work visa would be waiting at the airport upon arrival. This was doable. We packed our bags, me with my clothes covering my shoulders, elbows and knees.
At Muscat Airport, after an hour of waiting, a passport officer advised me to buy a tourist visa along with my husband. If not, it would have meant a seven-hour flight home and losing the job.
In the days to follow, I discovered the phrase inshallah, which literally means God willing, but in practice also means who knows, who cares and stop bothering me. My work visa should be processed soon – inshallah – whether it takes a few days, a few weeks, or possibly up to a month.
In my frustration, I took the bold move of visiting the head of HR, who introduced herself as Miss Aisha. That was her first name. My Arabic speaking colleagues did the same. There was Mr Ali, Miss Fatima and several Mr Muhammeds. Aisha was a petite Omani woman, who appeared quite thin and delicate under her abaya (a long, nun-like dress). Her name, which has several meanings, including “small one” suited her. With a gentle smile, Aisha offered me watery coffee and dates, a tradition of their hospitality.
Before I could say anything, she pushed up her wired-rim glasses and complimented me on my career, referring specifically to my work history as if she had memorised my CV. I was being buttered up. By the end of her introductory remarks, I was so greasy I could not very well come off as harsh or unhappy with my visa situation. I turned the question around and I finally managed to mention that I was concerned about working illegally while waiting for my visa. This was not fully true. I was concerned about my visa because I needed it to get a residence permit that would entitle me to health insurance, an Omani driver’s license (required after three months), home broadband and the coveted alcohol license issued only to non-Muslim foreigners. She explained between sips of coffee that the immigration services were suffering a backlog, and everyone knew this. I could work in the country under a tourist visa and “do many things” while waiting for a work visa. “It should come soon.” She smiled again and stared into my eyes for a few moments. I wondered if she was sending me a signal. If she was, I could not read it. She appeared suddenly busy with some documents and stood, indicating that I should leave.
In some ways, Miss Aisha was right. I could manage some things without a work visa, even those things I was told I could not get legally. With the help of my British bank, which had branches in Oman, I was able to open a local bank account. With that account and an employment contract, I was able to negotiate home broadband. Equally important, thanks to my Western colleagues, I was soon on the receiving end of contraband South African Cabernet Sauvignon. Had my colleagues been discovered passing me the box of wine, we all would have faced deportation.
During these early weeks of waiting for our visas, we set up home in an apartment provided by the university. As with most ex-pat lifestyles, television and internet serve as daily reminders of our lives left behind in the West. When I was not looking at a boxy television, reminiscent of the 70s, or my computer screen, I stared at our picture window that looked out onto a desert field of sand, rocks and shrubs. In the distance was a two-road village which looked like a cluster of palm streets. Some days wild camels were eating at the shrubs and chewing on plastic bags from our rubbish. Other days the shalal windstorms swept across our tiny town stirring up the sand into a canvass of beige. Observing life in the desert provided the sense of calm and reflection I was seeking.
I had also started teaching. Every time I entered an Omani classroom, I was acutely aware of being the only Westerner in the room, the only woman not wearing a hijab or an abaya. Despite censoring my shoulders, elbows and knees, I felt underdressed with my forearms, neckline and hair exposed for all to see.
Without exception, every abaya was black. The occasional colours slipped in with their hijabs, though most female students stayed with black for their head coverings as well. The serious display of colour came from the handbags – all large, bright and boldly decorated in stripes, plaids, polka dots, flowers and paisleys. Trying to make small talk, I complimented a group of these young women on the colourful bags, and one explained that it is one of the only items they can display with colour in it. Another student added with her eyes narrowing in their accusation, “A devout Muslim shouldn’t even wear a non-black hijab.” Arabic – incomprehensible to me – went flying back and forth across the lecture hall. Words were spat out and glottal sounds elongated for emphasis before I could make a joke about our “English-only” classroom.
A student started speaking in English. An animated debate followed on whether it was the influence of the Saudis or the Iranians that in the past decade or so insisted that women only wear black. As with some other countries in the Middle East, in reaction to the Arab Spring, conservativism was on the rise. One student lamented over memories of growing up with her mother and aunts wearing multi-coloured abayas and headscarves.
The men in my classes wore white dishdashas, appearing starched, bleached and, having been dried over a rack with frankincense burning underneath, there was often a sweet, musky fragrance when one passed by me. The kumas on their heads were also white with a few threads of colour articulating an embroidered pattern. My older male students in the post-graduate program wore patterned turbans, signs of their status and daytime employment. Turbans were akin to a man wearing a tie.
In these basically black and white classrooms, I must have appeared like a circus clown, a polychromatic foreigner. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about being too warmly dressed in the heat, since classrooms and offices always kept their air-conditioners running at full blast.
With each teaching session came a growing awareness of the inequities in this society. For the undergraduates lecture halls, seats at the front were always reserved for the males, the few that attended this university in the desert. My postgraduates were in small rooms and as men and women were equal in number, they stage-managed themselves into two gender-defined groups, divided by a makeshift aisle. It may have paled next to the adventures of T.E. Lawrence or Gertrude Bell, but these customs made me feel that I was truly immersed in a foreign country.
Perhaps, too, my willingness to go along was because there were no overt signs of sexism in the students’ language or demeanours. I had heard more sexist remarks among students in America and Britain than I had in Oman.
Classroom inequalities also surfaced with ethnicity. Omanis are a tribal people and amongst their tribes is one of East African origin. This has its roots in the era when Oman was an empire that spread as far as modern-day Mozambique. Students with darker skin and more African facial features always sat together at the back of the classroom. When I naively tried to join these different students into small discussion groups, I was met with shaking heads and embarrassed expressions. I had breached some unwritten rule.
A complex web of hierarchy and inequalities not only to do with tribal and regional backgrounds, but also family relations were understood and greased the wheels of Omani life. Having a male relative in a position of power was always useful. This applied to several students in my department who regularly missed assignments and failed exams and miraculously passed all their courses – something to do with an important uncle. At the bottom of the hierarchy and subject to all sorts of inequities was the foreigner.
The needs of the foreigner, such as my need for a work visa, appeared low on the priorities of the Omanis. I went to the university visa office about twice a week to see if there was any progress on my application. Most days they would say that they did not know anything. Other times it was that my visa would be ready by the end of the week inshallah or early the following week inshallah. Each promise evaporated as the days and weeks followed without a work visa. For the first month, my husband and I could renew our tourists’ visas at the police station in our town. After that, we had to leave the country, usually spending a day aimlessly in Dubai shopping malls, and re-enter, purchasing new tourist visas at Muscat airport. My employer paid for all of this – a sign that they still wanted me there but were perhaps suffering from a common developing country malaise – administrative dysfunction.
Another couple of months passed, and my husband and I were still on tourists’ visas. Frustrated with going to the university’s visa office, I went back to Miss Aisha. Unlike my first visit with her where she talked of backlogs, she took on a completely different position. This time, Miss Aisha told me that the government’s immigration department had it in for the university – something to do with someone who worked for the university upsetting someone else who had an important uncle. Because of this animosity – real or imagined – the new laws pertaining to foreign female workers applied to me after all. I would not be allowed to sponsor my husband’s stay in the country.
Perhaps it was the change in her tone of voice, but something in my gut told me that this new explanation was the truer one. I suspected she knew all along and had tried to signal to me that first time. I was being punished for being a female with a professional qualification who was the breadwinner and needed to sponsor her husband. In this traditional country, which was growing more conservative, I was setting a bad example. I had exposed my shoulders, elbows and knees.
With a pleading woman-to-woman look on my face, I said that I was sorry and explained that I really needed this job, my last fulltime job before retirement. Once more, we ate sticky dates and drank diluted coffee in silence as she thought about it. When she spoke, Miss Aisha told me that her name means “living” and “woman living.”
A few days later, a quick trip to Dubai culminated with smiles and a work visa stamped on my passport. All was dream-like and fine until I received my final batch of forms to sign. That was when I discovered that Miss Aisha had only submitted my paperwork a couple of days before my visa was ready. The stories I had been given about immigration backlogs were, as I suspected, totally fictitious. The laws about foreign women working in Oman, however, were real. The visa application form that I had signed months earlier in England had been altered to say that I had no dependents – no husband was with me. Falsifying a visa document was most certainly illegal. I said nothing and signed the agreement confirming that these were my documents.
In the days that followed, I acquired an Omani driver’s license, health insurance and an alcohol license. As for my husband, who still existed for me, Miss Aisha bestowed upon him a very dubious student visa. With some unease, I grew to tolerate this society of contradictions and inequalities, keeping my objections as well as my shoulders, elbows and knees under wraps. ##
Paola Trimarco 