Bushra Khalfan is a short story writer, novelist, poet, essayist and cultural activist from Oman. She has published four collections of short stories and three novels, as well as several independent literary texts. Her second novel, Dilshad, won the Katara Prize in 2022, having been shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in the same year.

I'm taking you to Muscat tonight. No: not the Muscat you know, as any foreigner does - the dark market of Muttrah, the crowded shopping malls of Al Qurum and the street of ministries you walk along twice a day to get to your office, on the third floor of that disfigured fortress-like building; like all the architecture you see, an eternal reincarnation of a single image, as if the Omanis had never known any other.

No, tonight I'm taking you to Muscat, my Muscat. And I won't say that it belongs to me alone; I've shared it with others, those who have known it and who, through their presence, have drawn a part of its memory and mine. Yes, I'm going to retrace, with you, my first steps in a place that distance, both spatial and temporal, has transformed into a special kind of fascination - a fascination always linked to abandoned and remote places, which form, among other things, a white background to the formation of the being I've become. Without denying the role of other places, however, these remain, in my memory, less intimate and vivid.

Now fasten your seatbelt, for we're about to set off in my car, ravaged by heat, humidity and time, on a journey through space and memory. But remember: the woman sitting next to you is nothing more than an adventurer, trying to retrace the thread of pain that has woven her entire existence around an idea.

Tonight, I'll take you to Muscat, and just for a moment, let's pretend we're watching a movie. I'll comment on it with what has remained in my memory, and you'll discover it with the curiosity of a foreigner, of those who usually only perceive the surface of a city, without ever bothering to delve into its dusty nooks and narrow alleys - those that shaped the destinies of so many people, now faded into the shadows of a bygone era.

I must confess to you, my friend, that for an hour you will inhabit the memory of a vanished being, trying to fend off its erasure with talismans of nostalgia for the childhood of a place. A place whose crying transformation is a guilty testimony to the attempts made to erase the very roots of what was once beautiful.

Buckle up and trust these 'no holds barred' recollections . Let's go.

We'll enter Muscat through its western gateway, after skirting the Muttrah corniche, which has replaced the narrow path winding around the foot of the mountain. Yes, right there, on your right. Look at that path, slumbering in the shadows, hidden behind the palms and greenery. Yes, right there: this was the path of my childhood. It's how I got out to Muttrah and beyond, after descending the Reyam obstacle - which we'll soon be climbing. We'll ignore, however, the winding road we're supposed to take, this false entrance fashioned by the flattery of history and the inability to innovate.

We'll climb Aqabat Reyam through the old quarter, once occupied by sailors and slaves, now transformed into the eastern exit of this park on your left. You know it, of course, because of that ugly incense burner erected on the hill - the reason for which nobody really understands.

We're going up now. If you're afraid of the dark, if you're haunted by stories of witches on broomsticks, roasting children on iron skewers in hidden swamps and deep valleys, or if you fear places inhabited by the moans of the absent, then never look down. Look ahead. My car will manage the hill. We'll climb slowly, but surely. I know this path as I know the meanderings of a soul bruised by over-adaptation to a modernity that changes too fast.

We'll climb, yes, put on some music, I don't mind at all; a little music in the stillness of the night won't hurt us, and let's think of it as a celebration of the scene we're about to see.
Yes, this is Muscat, curled up in its nocturnal silence, alone and content with the dim lights that indicate the emptiness that has settled behind its deserted walls. To be more precise: it's not completely abandoned, but it's on the way to becoming so. Look over there, to the far east - no, not where darkness stretches over the mountains, but a little to the right, where sporadic lights shine on the black horizon. These lights, my friend, are those of the cranes building the new palaces that will soon occupy Muscat, so that the safe city becomes safer and more distant from the memory of the being who was born here, who settled here, and then left it in the distant extension of time and space.
Now let's go down the steps and lose ourselves for a while in the alleys of Muscat's sleepy, uneventful neighbourhoods. I'll take you to our little neighbourhood that lies between the banyan fields and the small valley, where I knew the pleasure of running barefoot on the dusty roads, and where I made my first friendship with the sheep on the rocky slope just to the north, whose rocks I've marked on my legs, hands and soul.

These mountains don't change; you may not see them clearly in the dark now, but I see them very clearly, I know the twists and fractures of their rocks, I know the gaps where I used to stick my little feet, groping carefully to find the way up. I know the places in the caves that were enough to arouse a child's imagination, and I can tell - even in this darkness - where I hid the riyal I received one Eid from my uncle Mubarak, which was eaten by the shayahs, indifferent to the grief their action caused me, and which prevented me from going to play with them for many days afterwards.

Do you see these buildings? Yes, that one on my right; it was my maternal grandfather's house, a big house when it was taken away, a big, beautiful house that housed many small steps and animals at one time, and was later sold at a price sufficient to buy a house far away, in a place where we had no neighbours.

"Bagh" means garden or farm in the Indian language and is pronounced "bighisha", but we always 'borrowed' some of our words from Indians or other people, then distort them and give them our own pronunciation, until gradually, with familiarisation, they become part of our everyday vocabulary.

Yes, this is where my grandfather worked and I stole the fruit of his labour. The lamba tree, on which I climbed to steal its green, acid fruits, shook me and threw me to the ground to be picked up by the dirt and blood of my wound, which has become a scar I feel every time I'm embarrassed by a mistake I've made. We're now going to leave my neighbourhood, but before we do, look to the left of the bend we're taking, yes, that's the Zadjal neighbourhood. I used to play here, in its narrow alleys, hiding in the brightly coloured Baluchi dresses, decorated with little twisted branches, flying roses at the tips of the leaves and edges, and the rectangle that ends in a pointed triangle at the top where the Baluchi used to hide sweets, money and other things.

After leaving this bend, Ma Salama's house hangs between the mountainside and the path, raised on stone pedestals; with its blue door, the simple house has nothing to distinguish it but the room of the house owner, decorated with every conceivable shade, fabric and piece of furniture. "Ma Salama", whose tales we heard relayed by the women shyly at first, then, as we grew older, we heard them clearly.

These tales tell of the owner of the house being the lover of a genie who dresses for him and etches henna on his palms and feet so that he can enter and marry her for forty days.

The neighbourhood where I was born and, as a young child, filled with my footsteps, and to which I returned with shorter steps after leaving it and starting to look for new sidewalks on which to distribute memories and absences, didn't embrace me for long, but soon threw me out, into a strange place, separated from my own and other neighbourhoods by a high wall with several gates, and at its gates stood guards with old rifles they used to shake at people sometimes and scare them.

It was inside this wall that the first alienation began, or perhaps it was the first alienation that took me away from my hometown and myself. Inside these walls, I met new people whom I no longer call by family names; Marzouk is not Uncle Marzouk, and Naima is not Aunt Naima; they are Marzouk and Naima, and I don't know : does the lack of kinship come from the lack of colour similarity between us or from the spatial remoteness of the neighbourhood, which is full of aunts, uncles and grandparents, whether close to or far from the grandfather's seventh root?
Within this wall was contained a strange mix of people: banyan merchants, foreigners and women from the southernmost part of the map, who wore long-tailed dresses sweeping the floors of their red-carpeted houses and decorating their faces with a white dye reminiscent of the noura with which Muscat's houses are dyed to protect them from the sun's glare. It also included strange houses that varied in height, proximity to each other and position in relation to the palace.

Within this wall - which separated Muscat from itself and brought it closer to the sea, keeping the beaches under the sway of the Mirani and Jalali, forbidden to children and fishermen who found their daily food and fish for lunch on beaches a little further away -within this wall, the nightmares began to haunt the child, and so she began her first attempts to escape, an escape that led her to discover the backstreets of old Muscat and its neighborhoods that reshaped her nightmares between the barking of stray dogs and the ghosts of women belching smoke from their long grandfatherly canes, strange men and children throwing stones at her.

I won't take you tonight to my other hometown, I'll spare you and myself this miserable memory; I'll get you out of here quickly and we'll come back to continue the story another night.

Now, I ask your forgiveness because I'm going to enter into silence; Muscat, this place I visit every night, with this memory laden with images and fantasies, I can only leave in silence.