On that note, the first attack came from yet another wife on the compound. This woman would prove to be as vindictive and nasty a person as I have ever met. At first friendship seemed in the offing, so I invited her for coffee at the house that I was still in the process of making a home having arrived in country only a couple of weeks before. She asked how I was finding Oman and I told her I loved it, but was finding the stares difficult to get used to. As I’ve mentioned, I’m disabled and so I use a wheelchair most of the time, otherwise crutches. Oman isn’t known for its wheelchair access and consequently there are very few wheelchair users seen out and about, hence the stares. This wife took it upon herself to think I was boasting about my looks and told me ‘Oh we’re all stared at, you’re nothing special’. She didn’t even have the courtesy to apologise after I pointed out her mistake. It also goes to show how little sensitivity she must have thinking I'm going to think I'm attractive when I'm severely disabled.
But that wasn’t the end of this woman's attempts to put me down. My husband and I had invited the whole compound to a fancy dress party we were going to hold and she told me I was brave for doing so because I didn’t know anyone. Surely that was the point? A little later, when I expressed my concern about another wife, an ex-personal fitness instructor who had offered to help me with my physio, ‘working me hard’, as I am physically very vulnerable, she became angry with me to the point of raising her voice, telling me I was ridiculous to find it worrying, and so it went on. And I still went to her house for coffee at a later date in an attempt to smooth our path.
But she wasn't the only person on the compound with a problem. A major bone of contention here are the shared areas, or rather the people using them. These areas consist of a swimming pool, a gym and a club house, all in one place behind a gated wall. Because these areas are not staffed, there is a rule, put in place by the Senior British Loan Service Officer, a General, that no one under the age of 16 can use these areas without being accompanied by an adult.
Many of the families on the compound, including two of the most senior officers, had decided that rule shouldn’t apply to their children coming home from boarding school, and were happy for them to use the areas unaccompanied. This is not only in complete disregard for an order given by a senior officer, but also with complete disregard for any other adult being forced into a position of responsibility for other people’s underage children when using the pool at the same time as them.
This situation blew up when my husband and I witnessed some very underage children, friends of one of the boarding school boys, climbing on the gate to open the deliberately high latch, which resulted in the gate becoming loose and impossible to open and close properly, and having to be repaired, which took time and money. At the time we saw this happening, we asked the children to leave the swimming pool as we were doing some diving training and couldn’t supervise them, and when they decided to play in the gym instead, another officer who was using it at the time, asked them to leave (despite being happy for his own underage children to use that facility unsupervised). This apparently offended the mother of the boy who was hosting the children and she wasted no time in talking about my husband and I in the worst of terms. Not once did she come and talk to us to get an explanation.
In an attempt to prevent the gate being broken again and avoid a similar situation, my husband put a sign on it asking people not to climb on it. We thought that was it, until we found the sign ripped down and stuck to the bonnet of one of our cars, our doorbell rang late at night with nobody there when the door was answered, and balls repeatedly kicked into our garden, damaging the plants and frightening our cats. We did find out who had rung the doorbell, but neither the children responsible, nor their parents apologised.
I had been harangued by a wife over the sign and was told, when reminding her that there was a supervision requirement, 'well it was never enforced until you two came along', and then later, when reassuring her that I was fully aware her children hadn't broken the gate in the first place, 'I know my children, I'm a mother, you're not'. Which was not only completely irrelevant, but made me lose all motivation to be understanding and conciliatory and at this point I asked her to stop being such a fucking cow. I didn't bother apologising.
In an attempt to prevent the gate being broken again and avoid a similar situation, my husband put a sign on it asking people not to climb on it. We thought that was it, until we found the sign ripped down and stuck to the bonnet of one of our cars, our doorbell rang late at night with nobody there when the door was answered, and balls repeatedly kicked into our garden, damaging the plants and frightening our cats. We did find out who had rung the doorbell, but neither the children responsible, nor their parents apologised.
I had been harangued by a wife over the sign and was told, when reminding her that there was a supervision requirement, 'well it was never enforced until you two came along', and then later, when reassuring her that I was fully aware her children hadn't broken the gate in the first place, 'I know my children, I'm a mother, you're not'. Which was not only completely irrelevant, but made me lose all motivation to be understanding and conciliatory and at this point I asked her to stop being such a fucking cow. I didn't bother apologising.
Despite my surge of courage when last talking to this woman, I felt targeted, shunned and very, very sad, I was too frightened to use the pool on my own, too intimidated to leave the house for more than essential shopping and my marriage suffered far too much. It was a horrible, horrible time.
