The Morning Run

4:40 a.m. comes early in Oman. We are surrounded by mosques in our neighborhood and the five-times daily drone of the call to prayer first comes at 4:40 a.m. I am up early enough to hear the shuffle of sandals and flip flops of the men making their ways to the mosques for the morning ritual--cleanse, pray, chat, and then shuffle home to begin the day.

If I really hustle and get my running clothes on, I can be at the door early enough to surreptitiously watch the prayers inside the walls of the open-air prayer platforms and mosques. However, now that I have adjusted to the noises of Oman, I usually sleep right through the moan of "Allaaaaaaaaah akbaaaaaaaaar..." and I stumble outside just as the sky is lightening--right around 5:45 every morning.

This morning the smells are overpowering. The odor of rotten eggs lingers in swirling dust clouds and as I walk I imagined myself enshrouded by a cloak of stench. But three steps later a cool breeze whips in off of the ocean, whisking away the reek and replacing it with a chill. Three steps later the chill has been beaten by the heat of the rising sun. It is a daily battle between the heat and the hint of a chill.

The sun here does not rise lazily like it does in Virginia. Instead it jumps off the horizon and rises impossibly quickly. As I turn to the east, I watch it rise behind the dome of the green-topped mosque. The sun looks friendly, like a giant orange eclipsed by a jaden ball, but it is a nasty orange--the temperature is already heading toward steamy.

The migrant labor population, mostly Indians, is up early, too, squatting in the ubiquitous pebble strewn lots, brushing teeth and hawking to spit into piles of broken bricks, scuffing at the dust with calloused feet and cracked shower shoes. They stare openly at my passing, not like the Omani men who nonchalantly avert their gaze, reminding me of falsely modest Baptist boys under the scrutiny of God and their elders.

As the sun rises higher over the mosque, the school children trickle into the street. The boys all wear the starched white dishdasha--a robe that extends from neck to ankle--and qimb--an embroidered cap. The girls wear tight white cotton pants and a white shirt overlain with a blue tunic. They also sport white head scarves that cover their necks and hair but leave all of their faces open to the world. They glance quickly as I run by but do not waiver in their intent bus waiting ritual. The hired help sits with the children, there to make sure that their charges make it onto the bus.

Now sun has risen enough that the workers have covered their heads with towels to keep off the sun. I start to hustle home, sticking to the shady spots cast by the date palms scattered about the neighborhood and the high walls that ring every house here. In just 45 minutes the heat has gathered enough strength to make me sweat through a t-shirt. The wind that delivered the ocean breeze is perceptible only in the shade so I linger for a minute in the covered walkway to our house, knocking the dust from my shoes.

Tomorrow I will follow a different route, trying to beat the sun's climb.