Duqm

Duqm was, until recently, a fishing settlement on one of the emptiest coasts in Arabia. The Jiddat al Harasis behind it is a stony desert grazed by the Harasis people, whose own South Arabian language, Harsusi, is still spoken, and the shore supported small groups of fishermen who worked the Arabian Sea and traded inland by camel. Nothing about the place suggested a city: there was no river, no oasis, no old port and almost no rainfall.

What changed matters was geography. Duqm lies on the open Arabian Sea, outside the Strait of Hormuz, on a bay deep enough for large ships and with unlimited flat land behind it. In 2011 the Omani government set out to build there: a deep-water commercial port with a dry dock and ship-repair yard, a fishing harbour, an airport, roads and housing, and a special economic zone covering a very large area, intended to attract refining, petrochemicals, logistics and manufacturing. Foreign investment, much of it from Asia and the Gulf, followed, and Duqm became the centre of Oman's plan to build an economy less dependent on oil revenue and less exposed to the strait.

The town grew accordingly, from a village to a planned settlement of wide avenues, hotels, schools and industrial estates. Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic in late February 2026, Duqm and Salalah, which lie outside it, have handled much of the shipping diverted from the strait. Since March 2026, during the war in the region, drones have been launched at both ports; at Duqm one struck a workers' housing unit and injured a worker, and a fuel tank at the port was hit two days later.

Duqm has no old quarter, no fort and no long civic tradition, and its culture is that of a new town: Omani in its manners and its institutions, and made up in practice of people from somewhere else. Omanis from Al Wusta, the Sharqiyah and the north work in the port, the government offices and the services, while a large share of the workforce comes from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines, which shows in the shops, the food and the languages heard on the street.

The older culture of the area belongs to the desert behind it. The Harasis and other Bedouin groups keep camels and goats on the Jiddat al Harasis, and their knowledge of the plateau made possible the conservation programme that returned Arabian oryx to the wild there. Camel racing and camel keeping remain part of local life, and families from the interior come into Duqm to shop and to use its clinics and schools.

Omani custom holds all the same. Guests are given kahwa and dates before anything is discussed, greetings are long, the dishdasha and the kummah or turban are ordinary daily dress, and the working rhythm pauses for prayer. The weekend belongs to families, who drive out to the beaches and the rock formations with mats, thermoses and grills. It is a town where almost everyone has arrived within the last twenty years, and conversation turns quickly to where people are from and what brought them.

Duqm's resident population is small for the space it occupies — around twelve thousand at the 2017 count, besides the workforce in the economic zone — and the town is built to grow. Wide roads with roundabouts connect blocks of housing, shops, schools, a hospital and government offices, with large gaps still waiting to be filled.

Work is dominated by the port and the zone: container and bulk handling, the dry dock and ship repair, refining and petrochemicals, logistics, construction and the fisheries complex that processes the catch landed on this coast. Fishing itself continues on a small scale as it always has, and government service, the airport and the hotels provide much of the remaining employment. Oman's plans for green hydrogen and renewable power place a good deal of weight on this coast.

Life is practical rather than picturesque. Shifts and office hours set the day, the middle of it is spent indoors out of the heat, and the evening brings people to the supermarkets, cafés and beach. Everything except fish has to be trucked in across hundreds of kilometres of desert, water is desalinated, and a strong summer wind coats the town in salt and dust. Many workers live here without their families and remit most of what they earn, and for Omani households the question is whether the promised city will eventually arrive.

Duqm's food is that of the sea and of the workforce that has come to build the town. Boats land kingfish, tuna, emperor, sardines and lobster, and the best eating is the simplest: whole fish grilled over charcoal and served with rice, a spiced tomato sauce and flat khubz bread. Mashuai, a spit-roasted kingfish on lemon rice, is the Omani coast's dish for guests, and dried sardines are still a feature of this shore.

Most restaurants in the town are South Asian, and their menus are the everyday food of the place: chicken and mutton biryani, fish curry, dal, parotta and freshly baked bread, eaten quickly and cheaply. Arabic grills serve shawarma, mixed grills and mandi — rice and meat cooked together in a pit oven — and the supermarkets stock dates, halwa and the packaged goods trucked down from Muscat.

The Omani table appears for occasions. Majboos, rice spiced and cooked with goat, camel or fish, is the festive standard, and shuwa, meat rubbed with spices and cooked for a day in a covered pit, belongs to Eid. Camel meat and camel milk come in from the desert. Kahwa with cardamom, poured in small cups and served with dates and halwa, is offered to every visitor, and karak-style milky tea and fresh juices are the usual drinks in the cafés.