The Cinderellas of Muscat

During the modernisation of Muscat, people’s spirits seemed to harden and dry up, and one day the female jinn just disappeared. Where did they go to? Have they all died, are they in hiding after losing out to electricity and cement, to air conditioners and televisions? Has life lost its playfulness and joy without the transformational powers of the jinn? Are life’s sweet moments of pleasure and sensual delight no more, now the inhabitants are weighed down with daily chores, boring work, and all the routines apparently necessary for modern life? It seemed so, until a group of enterprising women, all mothers and wives overburdened with one thing after another, decided they had to somehow recover the powers of the lost female jinn. Omani author Huda Hamed recounts the vivid stories Zubayda and her seven friends tell each other, revealing secrets until then suppressed, as on one special night they transform into Cinderellas. Though not searching for a prince, they meet together in Chef Ramon’s restaurant on the beach front of Muscat for a few hours of precious independence before midnight comes.