On Friday morning, we all piled into the car to meet the Hash Daddy, Ahmad. As we tootled along behind a Toyota Hilax (what is it with this place and large livestock in the back of a teeny tiny truck?), watching the pair of cattle periodically drop paddies, I considered the momentous nature of this occasion, our First Hash Lay. Maybe the pair of crapping cattle was a sign of...what? Maybe we were taking on too much responsibility too early in our Hashing Career and we would fail miserably and crap out. Maybe we were bound to encounter all sorts of uncomfortableness during the Hash Lay.
Our Hash Daddy, Ahmad, found us waiting for him at the airport round about, listening to a podcast on parasitic infections. Tony hit the eject button on the CD player, in the middle of a sentence about hook worms and MS sufferers, as Ahmad bounced from his car, which was stamped brightly with the Oman Air logo. "Ah, I did not see you! I was on the other side of the round about! How are you? Children? How are you?" He jammed his meaty hand through the back window and shook hands with the closest kid he could grab. "All right," he announced, smoothing his black dress pants and giving a tug at his crisp white shirt. "We will head that way. Follow me!"
He led us down a dusty road, parked at the crest of a rocky hill, and then leapt from his car once again to help unload the 25 pound bag of flour in our trunk. "Yes, this is a great place for a Hash. Yes, perfect. And...no, no, no, let me carry a bucket of flour. My pants? No, no, they are old. I have to go to my mother's this afternoon for lunch. No, no, it will be fine. Please, let me take a bucket." And with that he shoved a ladel into the grey, flour filled bucket, and strode off toward a downward slope.
Okay, so I am sensing that some of you have no clue what this Hash stuff is all about seeing as you have assumed that this would be either about A.) some sort of illicit drug trade operation out of the Middle East, or B.) a meat and potato dish served with eggs. In fact this is about a running event that happens on a weekly basis all over the world. The tradition began in Malaysia many a year ago and was originally called a Paper Chase. One person would go out and lay a trail of crumpled papers on the ground; others would follow later in the day and try to find the Lay-er based on the trail formed by the little slips of paper.
These days, a Hash begins the day before the great event, when "hares" (that's us) go out and dump little piles of flour periodically to create a trail. Every now and then the hares create a false trail off of the true trail, or drop the trail entirely for a distance. The hares can also split the trail so that those who are running (keenies) can continue on a longer route and those who are walking the trail (weenies) can head back to the party at the end.
We followed Ahmad through the scrub and rock that form the Omani landscape around Muscat. Every ten feet or so the kids dumped a ladelful of flour on the ground. At the end of two hours we had finished marking a circuit in the desert, with a number of false trails leading people off toward empty corridors. As we walked and dumped, Ahmad had filled us in on the multiple countries he had lived in since his childhood in Muscat, his job working for Oman Air as an engineer, his children who were nearly all grown and living all over the world, and his love of Hashing.
When we arrived at the actual Hash the next day, Ahmad was already there, wearing his trademark skimpy shorts and Hash Shirt. He walked from group to group, kissing each person on each cheek once and then once on the lips. He joked and shook hands and promised "the Second Best Hash ever." ("Why the second best?" he posited. "Well, the best is not so possible...but the second best? You can always argue for the second best no matter what you do.") We six who had laid the trail the day before were "smocked" with red bibs sporting the word, "Hare" and were promised a post-run beer. Then suddenly someone called "On-On" and we were off, wrapped in an enormous group of individuals from all over the world who had come to run through the desert following our flour trail.
The bugler rallied everyone by bugling every 5 minutes and crying, "On on!" The runners yelped, "On on!" everytime a new flour pile was discovered. The front runners yelled, "Are you?" every time they lost the trail, and then slowed their gaits to a walk, searching for the next flour pile. They chirped, "On on!" once they found the trail again. A well-laid Hash will find the keenies and weenies finishing at the same time because, in theory, the keenies will lose the trail and spend all their time and energy finding it again while the weenies will catch up to them just in time to continue onward upon the recently discovered trail.
An hour after we had started the Hash, we all finished back at the car park, dripping sweat. In the west, the sun was setting, shrouding the mountains around Muscat in a red glow. The Gulf of Oman to the north looked as flat and calm as a swimming pool. The Hashers all gathered round us in the rapidly falling darkness and sang the Hash Song while we guzzled a beer and poured a bit on our heads to show the true Hash Spirit.
One of the regular Hashers was getting ready to leave Oman after more than ten years in the country so had hired a catering truck to drive out into the middle of the desert and set up a meal for all of us. After we had drunk our beers, we huddled around the bonfire clutching our catered suppers, enjoying shots of liquer and plastic glasses of wine. The Little Hashers ran around trying to slip ice down one anothers' backs. There was talk of development within Oman, goats and the challenges of laying a Hash without the goats eating the flour, Afghanistan and its human rights issues, accents as they differ across the UK, and how to best obtain a liquor license in Muscat.
The Hash is the one day a week when we swim in incongruities. We, both Omanis and non-Omanis, are in a Muslim country drinking in a public place. The women wear wraps to the Hash and then, in the impromptu car park, strip them off to reveal bare legs underneath. Beer and wine sit out in the open. And although we are less than a kilometer from main roads, no one bothers us, questions us, or even looks our way. We spend an evening sweating, teasing, drinking, and chatting.
That is the Hash.
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