Hiking With the ROP

"Hello. Are you busy today?" At 8:40 a.m. the phone had rung, which is bizarre since nearly everyone I know texts instead of calls. Calls are pricey but texts are practically free. In the name of looking like I am not a lazy bum I was trying my best to make it sound like I had been wide awake when the call came through.

"A little." Not really but the lazy bum thing once again...I have an image to maintain.

"All right, well the police are here and they want to go out and find that grenade. I cannot remember the way exactly to find it. So you need to come. I will see you in 20 minutes." **click**

I have such nice friends here, and when we go out walking together we tend to find things like shell fragments and hand grenades. The finding is not such a problem, but when my friend reports those explosives to the police and the police want to go out and recover the explosives early on the days that I am on school holidays, well, that sucks.

Joy was still around when this all went down and she is organized enough to dump the pictures from her camera's disc every night. Her camera with plentiful memory instantly qualified her as the trip photographer. Srey met the two of us at the university's administrative building and guided us into the perfumed depths of the vice-something-or-other's wing where we were greeted by three very wise-looking, portly Omani administrators dressed in immaculate white dishdashas, and two policemen wearing tan jumpsuits, black woolen berets, and shoes with absolutely no tread on them.

Greetings were exchanged all around, hands were tentatively offered (Joy, Srey, and I ARE women after all--*danger*danger*) for limp-wristed shaking, and the police indicated that they were ready to go after that grenade. I couldn't help it...I had to do it...Honestly, how many times in your life can you look at a man and say, "Those are some beautiful shoes. But can you walk in them well enough?" The police were dismissive, as if they wandered into mountains everyday in suede camel boots with no tread.

We arrived at the trailhead, marked by a monolith, a washed-out dirt road, and a fossilized oyster bed. The police hopped from their tan Land Rover. "Okay, where is the grenade?" they asked, and looked a bit disappointed when we three women responded with, "That way. Up." Immediately one of the coppers volunteered to stay with the car lest a group of marauding camels come through and try to eat the mirrors, while the other cop started up the trail behind us.

He huffed and puffed, chugged and snorted up the first rise, smiled when we reached the top and asked, "Where is the grenade?" He asked twice more as we walked and then resigned himself to a long hike through the hills of greater Muscat. He chatted about his family, his bomb squad trainings abroad, his travels overseas, and the universality of the middle finger. He sweated through his tan jumper and declared that this was a very fast walk.

After 30 minutes we came to the valley of the grenade at which point he phoned his partner and explained that he was taking so long because this bomb was a LOOOOOONG way from the cars, like 5 or 6 kilometers! (As if) And then the moment we had been awaiting all morning--we spotted the grenade. It was lime green and laying on its side surrounded by dirt and stones; on its side "Grenade" and "CCC" had been clearly stenciled.

Being the local bomb expert he strode right over to the thing, nudged it with his toe, and picked it up. Then he started shaking it. Srey threw her arms up and we three women backed away (actually I think Joy snapped photos while Srey and I backed away). When a former Cambodian refugee throws her arms up and backs away from an explosive, one tends to follow suit.

Instead of exploding and throwing bits everywhere, the bottom of the canister dropped its plug of stone and dust poured out its bottom end. "Yes! It's dead this one! Yes. It is just an old grenade. See?" As Joy busily snapped photos, he explained the mechanism of the pin you pull and how you arch your arm to throw it. He showed where the smoke pours out and how the smoke's color is different according to the canister's color, and...

"Hold the phone. This is not an exploding grenade?"

Our expert laughed. "No, no, this is a signaling grenade, like for the army if they want their friends to come find them after an exercise and pick them up."

And with that our expert started out of the valley with the grenade in hand, tan jumpsuit sticking to his back, smooth suede shoes carrying him smoothly down the goat trails and up and over the rocky cliffs back to his car. So it wasn't an exploding grenade, but it was worth getting up for--how often do you get to hike with a bomb-laden Omani man in smooth-bottomed camel suede shoes?