Renting in Muscat - Part 2 Curtains and Crazies

Curtains.... never before did I ever place importance on curtains and blinds like I have here in Muscat. It's more important then it was back home simply because the sun is hotter, so good curtains and blinds help keep your home cool and dark. Man I feel like I really didn't need to spell that out but there you go :)

So Cush and I went to Ghubra roundabout where there are a few places on the North East side just by the hardware store.

We walked into the first place and the man working there said nothing, just looked at us, so we walked out and went to the next place which is bigger and we had used it before for our last place. We were greeted and told them what we wanted. Then a man came with us to our new place to measure the windows and get an idea of what we wanted.

No problems except on our way out a man who lives in the building next to us came out and started making bizarre gestures at us including drawing a finger across his throat, which was scary, to be honest.

We took the curtain man back to his shop and pondered how strange our new neighbour is and if he was an actual threat or just a looney.

A couple of weeks later and a friend of our helped us move some of our less used household items to our new place and both Cush and our friend nearly had 2 car accidents with the bizarre neighbour, at 2 seperate times.

In both cases the man was driving down the wrong side of the road and refused to get out of both Cush and our friends way. He kept gesturing for them to go around him. Since Cush was driving the Hardcore 4x4, a vehicle that is not much younger then I am, he just sat there and refused to move. Our friend did the same.

Back to the curtains, since Ramadan was just beginning we were told that it would be after Eid before we got our curtains, which is just stupid, really. After all we were only having 4 sets of curtains made, 1 horizontal blind for the kitchen and some curtains from our old house hemmed up and rehung.

We ended up saying that was fine so long as the curtains for our new bedroom were done first, as they are obviously top priority.

The curtians did end up getting done but I'll tell you I'm never using that curtain shop again.

The man who first did the measuring seems to have stopped working there halfway through Ramadan and so no one had any idea what we wanted.

The curtain in Cush's man cave/home office was particularly difficult for some reason. He has a bay window and so wanted the curtain to go inside the window so that he could put a tv on the window ledge and have the curtains closed at the same time.

Turns out this is impossible. Even though the guy who did the measurments said it was no problem. Of course he said it was no problem, right? Nothing in Muscat is ever a problem until it's a problem!

When we came to a solution, the curtain was then 3 inches too short.

Then for the grand finale, the miserable curtain man who I despised, it was mutual by the way, came to install the last curtains in our living room. Cush had gone out and just after he left the curtain man got down from his ladder and said, "money?" I said, yeah I'll pay you when you're done. He said, "boss money" and pointed at the door.

I said, yeah I have the money, just finish and I'll pay you. He grunted at me and went back to work.

He told me he was finished and I gave him the 50 OR that was remaining from our payment (300 OR in total) and he started trying to tell me that we owed him 15 OR more. I said no. He took a few steps towards me and said, "boss money. 15 Rials."

I knew we didn't owe him anymore so I said no and just stared at him until he left. I was probably eye balling him for a good 30 seconds. It was one of the most charged experiences of the year for me. Right up there with when I got into that fight with a man at Rock Bottom.

Just really wierd.

Anyway, Cush isn't allowed to go out and leave me with labourers anymore. It never ends well.

So back to the bizarre neighbour, one day as I was coming into our new house, I got out and opened the gate which we didn't have on the clicker yet because of all the people coming and going, I noticed the man who had given us the creepies coming up to his driveway.

He drove very slowly past me and started pointing and gesturing at me and so I said, "what are you pointing at me for?"

I just figured that it was possible that Cush or I had actually done something to make this man angry with us, like maybe we blocked his car somehow or turned in front of him in the neighbourhood and didn't notice and I wanted to know what it was and apologise if necessary just to move past it all.

He stopped his car and got in my face and said, "you speak to me?" and I said, "yeah why are you pointing at me?"

He said, "you leave here now!" and got in his car and drove to his parking space. Like oh fucking great, we just moved in, in fact we didn't even live there yet! When he told me to leave though, I got the feeling he meant Oman, not just the house. I bet he's one of those arseholes on Oman Forum who bitch about the expats.

I was completely shocked and a little shaken since I wasn't expecting such a high amount of aggression and hostility.

Luckily a nice man who was lost in the neighbourhood saw what happened and came over to me. He said I should call the police because what happened was completely bizarre and uncalled for.

I could barely dial my phone because my hands were shaking, but at least I didn't cry. The man gently took my phone from me and spoke to the police in Arabic.

Just then another man came from the building and asked me what was happening, I told him and he said please go to the police and that he was terrified for his wife and children to the point where he felt that he could not travel for work and leave them alone in the building for fear that the "crazy" man would do something.

The nice, lost man in his car said to me that I had to go to the police station. He gave me his phone number and told me to call him so that he could tell the police what he saw.

So off I went and I called Cush and he came too.

The whole ordeal of being in the police station was quite interesting. We recounted the events from the beginning when the man pulled his finger across his throat and pointed at us. The police laughed. LAUGHED. That pissed me off. I told them that this was serious. The man is obviously seriously demented. We told them about him driving on the wrong side of the road and the last event which had just happned to me alone at the house.

The police ran the mans license plate and then spoke to the other officer in Arabic. The only words I could understand were "Al Said". "Al Said?" I asked. The officer nodded and said but do not worry.

Cush said something like, "oh great, wasta" but the officer said no, royal or not it's not allowed for this man to treat us this way.

Just then a plastic bag full of needles and drugs got dumped on the desk in front of me along with 2 ID cards, in plain site of me by the way, and the officer with his bare hands started going through the bag.

Cush was horrified and asked me to offer the officer hand sanitizer which I always keep in my purse. He turned the offer down. Shocking.

About an hour and a half or so after we got there we went to the house with the police so they could speak to him.

As we pulled into the parking lot with the police, people kept coming out of the building and telling the police horrible things the man had done to them. He grabbed one man by the neck and told him to leave, he threatened to kill the man who looks after the building, he slams his doors at all hours of the day and night, he kicks over things that are left in the hallway, and on and on and on. In the end there were maybe 15 people who had come out with something to say about the man.

It was shocking. They all said that they thought the man was a drunk. I said I think he's just seriously mentally ill because he doesn't stumble when he walks or slur his words, but I suppose we'll never know.

I did point out though that if he is drunk, he's drunk driving all the time, because he's never home and when he is home he's always in this terrifying state.

Anyway he wasn't home so the police could do nothing. So they left. I even said to them that if he is a drunk, then he's driving his car drunk right now, because he's ALWAYS drunk (which is why I think he's just crazy) but they didn't send out an APB for his car or anything. They just left.

They didn't take anymore statements or written complaints, in fact no one took notes or anything.

It was such an anti-climax.

But we did find out that if you have a compaint against someone and they aren't home when the police come, they just issue a notice to summons which basically is a letter asking to the person to go to the police station.

If the person does not show up within 2 weeks, they get another notice to summons. Again if they don't show up in 2 weeks they get another notice. If again they don't show up it probably gets forgotten about to be honest and is probably up to the victim to chase it up.

In our case, the situation was re-directed to the Royal Office, because the man was a royal family member who appear to have dealt with it.

Everyone has these problems right????