“Azaiba Mosque”
12 x 9 cm
HERE'S THE STORY
I loved this little mosque which was near the first place we lived in Muscat. I was enchanted with the blue and gold dome of this little building. Unfortunately for the photographer, the location couldn’t have been more urban with electric lines, utility poles, traffic lights, cars, buildings…. I showed the photo to my first watercolor teacher in Oman, Abdel Wahab Nour, a Sudanese man living as a painter in Muscat. Lamenting about the location, he looked at me and said, “Yes. But you, me artists. We put it in Nizwa.” Nizwa is a smaller city in the interior that still as rural areas around it. It was also the capital of Oman at one time and is still the religious center of the Sultanate. So the mosque is Azaiba but the houses, palms, goats and people are from Nizwa. And those darn goats, they get into everything!
