The Raven of Ruwi: How Hamoud Saud turns Oman into a living character

In The Raven of Ruwi and Other Stories from Oman, Hamoud Saud weaves a tapestry of lyrical short stories that pulse with memory, identity, and cultural resilience. 

Blurring the line between poetic prose and sharp social critique, Saud doesn't just write about Muscat — he brings the city to life.

Through the eyes of unlikely narrators, be it a wise raven, wandering songbirds, streetwise dogs, and the city's forgotten madmen, Muscat itself becomes a character, full of history, secrets, and soul.

He captures the spirit of Oman through its nature, including the falaj, the sidra trees, the tumultuous sea, and wayfaring animals.

But not only this, he gives life to its concrete walls, which are slowly creeping into its history and people.

In prose so emotive and penetrating, he reveals that what makes a country and a city is its inhabitants. These humans occupy their space with myriad languages, races, motivations, and religions.

In this collection, Saud intricately navigates the 'third space,' where identities blur, and hybridity serves as a lens to examine the tension between modernisation and tradition.

Some characters strip the land of its spirit, avaricious intruders who intend to pillage and desecrate nature's sanctity. There are their victims, living in abject poverty on the margins.

Others endow it with character and give it a soul, living in harmony with the land. Then there are the silent witnesses who recognise the subtle complexities of human nature and history, narrating to outsiders like us, the readers.

The narrators encapsulate this cultural hybridity, living in a 'third space' where disparate identities intermingle. Each vignette is both a love letter and a lament for his beloved country, whose culture endures despite rapid modernisation and illimitable colonisers on its shores.

It is a work of nostalgia and yearning.

Translator Zia Ahmed tells us in his introduction that Saud's storytelling weaves geography, history, and memory into a cohesive narrative fabric.

He emphasises Saud's poetic and spiritual approach: "Hamoud Saud is a teller of short stories, in Arabic, of short stories. Geography, history, and memory link the narrative texts that you hold in your hands." 

Through 13 interwoven stories, Saud's prose transforms the reader into a phantasmagoric being floating through each tale. He invites curiosity and a sense of wonder about Oman's rich tapestry.

In the first tale, a raven invites us to journey through the streets and roundabouts of the city of Ruwi, primarily populated by Indian expats.

The spices of India waft through the air as the raven leads us through its quarters filled with signs of industrialisation behind magnificent mountain ranges. Ghaf trees shade contemplative men, and the Raven bears witness to their lives and histories.

In the story Marginalising the Narrative, Narrating the Marginal, an enigmatic narrator bemoans the ugliness of modernisation and its artificial presence.

The modern city is juxtaposed against the Al Tayeen mountains; buildings are "concrete cages" imprisoning troubled human souls.

A ghost and a sad donkey born on the margins tell tales of Muscat's hunger, homelessness, and dispossession. Letters from Kafka and Dostoevsky haunt a postman. Stone statues rise and declare that the oil of Oman has brought interlopers and downfall throughout its history.

From tourists, policemen, postmen, cafe goers, mothers, and parishioners, Saud paints Oman's landscape and the minutiae of its people and history.

He does so with all the colours of their nuances, beauty, and tragedies. 

Oman has a rich history, from once being a proud maritime empire to eventually falling under British rule. During their control, the British dominated Omani ports, which were vital to the region's trade routes, thereby asserting their power over Oman's economic lifeline.

Saud does not shy away from threading this past into his writing. He mentions the colonisers as invaders who "latch on to the country's jugular and drink its blood."

Every part of Oman is interrogated; no corner, tangible or illusory, remains static. Its dynamic people, trees, and audience are exposed.

While the land is the focal point of each story, Saud is primarily concerned with the inner lives and turmoil of its inhabitants. The ravens and donkeys who narrate the goings-on see beyond the facades most people put on. 

A nameless narrator writes: "I think about the ability of human memory to store images, events, details, and smells, and about the exact moment in which we recall an idea. I see the scents and sounds of childhood in the dancing shadow. I see women going to their dreams. I see them alone in the mud houses, and I hear their songs. In the dancing shadow, I also see the anxiety, boredom, and things left unfinished."

Each story reminds us that even the most seemingly mundane of lives harbour mental ailments and sorrows. Saud shows us how generational trauma wreaks havoc within us.

Perhaps what is most striking about this collection is the depth of its writing and the way Saud juxtaposes the exquisite beauty of Muscat with its humiliating ugliness.

He reveals the human soul for what it is: cryptic, neurotic, and divine. Oman's landscape comprises mountainous terrain and seashores, rich in oil, and riddled with a history of plunder.

Its beauty is poisoned by its past, but memory keeps it alive. Saud constantly references the oil that has brought colonisers and modernity to its shores. Images that make palpable the coldness of concrete permeate this collection. Our relationship with the land is inextricably linked to us.

A narrator remembers what once stood in place of the austere buildings and "signs of modernity": "A roundabout once stood here, lofty and lone, home to flocks of pigeons. Then the government removed the roundabout and built a bridge in the place of birds and grass. A bridge that didn't connect memory to place, but rather severed the arteries of the place's memory. Ten years ago, in this iron cemetery, my father told me: In the seventies, this place was a complete wilderness without a single building."

One of the concluding stories is an ode to the trees of Muscat and the lessons they offer. They are silent and lofty, their spirits in every part of our lives, from our pens, tables, to our weapons. 

Although Saud's main complaint about modernity is the infrastructure built by authorities to serve power and capitalism in sacrilege of our land, it echoes throughout lives in silent but insidious ways.

Technology severs human connection, consumerism usurps traditions, and our souls become vacuous. Every insight and reflection in this collection is not simply a commentary, but rather, a call to spiritual awakening, to wake up and detach from the ephemeral.

He reminds us why he writes: "Writing is action, not reaction. It's a wound, not blood. It springs from human light, never ugly or hateful desire. At its deepest, writing is resistance to marginalisation, not a search for light."

It is these collections of short stories that highlight the magnificence of Omani literature and the breadth of humankind. 

Noshin Bokth has over six years of experience as a freelance writer. She has covered a wide range of topics and issues, including the implications of the Trump administration on Muslims, the Black Lives Matter movement, travel reviews, book reviews, and op-eds. She is the former Editor in Chief of Ramadan Legacy and the former North American Regional Editor of the Muslim Vibe