An Omani Wedding

Yesterday, I attended an Omani wedding and it was a great experience. Most people dress up when going to a wedding by wearing a dishdasha with a khanjar (basically a decorative dagger). Some people don't wear the khanjar, but rather carry a walking stick that kind of looks like a cane. A few people bring decorative swords, and I even saw one guy wearing a gun. I wore my dishdasha and borrowed a stick from one of our friends from the university. The first thing we did was go to the mosque where most of the people prayed and I think there may have been some signing of a contract between the groom and the father of the bride. I am not 100% sure of what happened inside the mosque because we did not go inside, but my friends said they sign a contract and pray. After that, everyone who had come to the mosque (all men except for two women who were carrying burning Frankinsence on their heads) gathered in the street along with the groom and his brother, and we started on a procession from the mosque to the place where the party was taking place. We walked right down the middle of the street, stopping all traffic, and walked probably about a mile or so. The entire way, we were singing and everyone was holding their canes in the air and dancing. Every 5 minutes or so, we would stop, while one person gathered the group in the front of the procession and taught them a few lines to chant, and then taught the second group another few lines, and then we would sing or chant those lines as we walked down the street. It is kind of difficult to explain, but hopefully the video will give a pretty good idea of what it was like.

Once we got to the end, the dancing continued for a while and then they formed a little area where two people would dance at a time, holding unsheathed khanjars, and people would throw money up in the air around them while they danced. We left before things ended, but talking to one of my friends he said that they would continue doing that for a while, then take a break, then people would come back later in the evening and they would continue the dancing and celebrating until late into the night.

Another interesting point is that the party today was for the men. There were a few women sitting around and the place we ended up at, but they weren't participating in the dancing at all, and we never saw the bride at all. On Thursday, there will be a party for just the women, and they get a closed tent or someplace that is closed off from everyone else, and have a party for the girls.

So, the wedding was pretty interesting and a lot of fun. Otherwise, things are pretty calm around here. I spend most of my time at school, and the rest of the time playing basketball with some Omani friends we met here at the sports club, doing homework, or sitting down on the beach with some of my Omani friends.