The bag

The Bag in Persian language means orchard, and it is used in Muscat to refer to a walled farm with a house in the middle. This novel's title and its metaphors come from that, Omani in its finest details. It takes its reader back in time to experience events and transformations in modern Omani history, depicting internal conflicts and civil wars that Oman suffered during the twentieth century. A novel that tells about the Omani person with their resilience, love, and fragility. It longs for the past but sees it from a broad perspective and explores all possibilities. Through two characters, Riya and Rashid, who emerge from the oppression of a village to what seems to be a single destiny that binds them with a rope to cross the muddy stage. No one can predict what might happen to them! We close our eyes for a moment and find ourselves in a place we did not choose, we close them again and find ourselves in a time we do not know, or in a role we were avoiding. What we are today might be the opposite of what we will be tomorrow. The wheel keeps turning without us finding the chance to ask about our choices and our destinies. Riya cannot find an answer to her confusion, which she faces with her brother Rashid at the moment they leave their beds: "Injustice everywhere, first and foremost," so why then did they leave? In the harsh, fast, and sudden cycle of time, Riya will learn how life arranges our roles and how it makes us different from what we are. How we accept today what we rejected yesterday. How we are tested in what we cherish most and in our dearest loved ones. Bagh is a novel from Oman, depicting a full life of love, transformations, and confusion, filled with questions from different times. But it is also the story of every place, where Bushra Khalfan Boushaala spins the compass of possibilities and dares to reach a difficult answer about the act of time—how it transforms and changes us without us noticing, perhaps into the opposite of what we rejected yesterday.