People in Sohar are Soooooo Nice!

People in Sohar are soooooooooooo nice!

Okay, maybe not those folks who burnt down the Lulu and set a gas truck on fire.

But everyone else I've ever met from Sohar are, like, weirdly, otherworldly nice.

They would remind me of that creepy kidnapper who lures a kid to the car with free candy, only, they'd be that man with the candy and you'd follow him to his car and... and they'd just give you the candy and drive away.

Or, more likely, if they were from Sohar, they'd invite you to their house for a meal.

And you'd eat that meal.

And no one would drug and murder you.

Usually I go to Sohar for the Homesense store. They actually have good customer service there. They don't tell me they don't have it in stock so I should check the other Homesense store when, modern entity that they are, they have phones!

THEY ACTUALLY PHONE AND CHECK FOR ME.

But that's not it.

Without me even asking.

Indrawn breath. I know, I know Muscat people, you are shocked.

All you can envision is the smoke from the Lulu as it is being looted, and the hollaring of young men at the Globe Roundabout.

People, do you know how rare that is in Oman? And thinking I am a Sohar resident, they ask me if I want their delivery truck system to bring it to the Sohar location so I don't even have to go to the trouble of going down to Muscat to get it?

I know, I know, it is far out of Muscat to go for what we already have, but it is worth it for the customer service. Plus when the Sohar delivery truck guys are delivering our furniture, oddly enough, no one steals our car out of the driveway or breaks into our house, unlike another oddly suspicious delivery from another Homesense location I shall not name because I do believe they dealth with that issue but....

In fact, evertime I go to the Sohar Homesense a family of local Sohar women approach me. They say they know I am not from Sohar and thus a traveller so they insist I go to their home and eat dinner with them and after that, that we exchange phone numbers, and even though I am horrible at staying in touch with friends by text, they never miss an Eid or event in my life without congratulating and asking if I need anything.

Totally weird, and oh so nice.

Three families! Three different trips, each time another family.

I thought Sohar is big? Why does it seem that everyone knows everyone well enough to know that one isn't from around there then?

One random Dr. from Sohar offered to deliver my baby free of charge at a private institution if I couldn't go to a government hospital when it was made known I was in a bit of a fix. I knew her, what, only 40 minutes when she decided to make an offer that might risk her job position to help me out.

Another time I had been heading up to UAE to renew my visa, and it was Ramadan, so my husband and I stopped to break our fast on the side of the road just past Sohar. This Sohar man stopped in his car and insisted my husband follow him to his house for a meal that consisted of a dozen courses, I swear.

My first experience with Omanis from Sohar though was when I'd been in a bit of an incident and someone had accused me of beating a girl up who had been my roomate {the boyfriend of the girl was the one accusing me and HE'D ACTUALLY been the one to beat the girl and I'd just been arguing with her that she should leave him for that and she wanted to kick me out of our flat for that WITHOUT giving me the ADVANCE RENT I HAD PAID} and so we'd all ended up in the police station. I hadn't had much luck with telling my personal troubles to Omani men in the past as they usually use that information to take advantage of one and to try to get into her pants, even ROP guys in the station, but the 2 guys handling our case were from Sohar.

When they heard both sides of the story, and realized how thick the finger mark bruising was on my ex-roomie's body they realized I was telling truth (my fingers couldn't make marks like those) they said I could stay as long as I wanted in the flat, and neither she or her boyfriend were allowed to speak to me anymore, but if I didn't want to live there, they could get me another place to live.

2 days later one of their sisters rang me up. She'd found me an inexpensive flat in a family villa and a better paying job so I could move out and move on with my life.

The two guys from the police station never phoned me again after that, or texted me, trying to make any kind of relationship.

In Muscat, I can't even phone the Bank Muscat help line to get my messed up wire transfers fixed without the dude 'helping me' texting me at midnight asking me stupid personal questions, and same with his other friend who works at Oman International Bank who he gave my number to.

People from Sohar, at least in my experience, are really, really, really, really nice. And the niceness seems genuine, and not tied to anything else.