Knock knock ...

There's something about entrances and doorways -sometimes it feels like they're inviting you in, but you're cautious at the same time when you don't know what's behind them ... hidden treasures, or someone's junk? a buzzing household or an empty ruin? are they keeping people out or hiding them away? It all brings out the curious streak in me. Oman has hundreds of beautiful doors and gateways, is famous for them even, and there are so many different types - old and new, simple and ornate, huge and tiny, plain and extraordinary, and all seem to want to tell a story ....

Imagine this as the entrance to an Alladin's cave,

for those that have followed the quest

and found the golden key ...

Perhaps the crooked doors to the beach-side shack

of a rugged old fisherman and his daughter ...

Keeping the hoi polloi locked out ...

or the beautiful people locked in?

Door to the fish market in Nizwa

- or was it Narnia?

The tiny door to the traditional 'House of the Lock',

with it's huge wooden key -

if this door could talk,

what stories could it tell from through the ages?

Door to Oman's last indigo dyer -

we never did get to see inside ...

but I do hope he's there,cooking and pounding

to make beautiful cloth for the hidden ladies of Bahla