This seaside city has long been renowned as one of West Asia’s prettiest, with a gorgeous mountain backdrop, a smattering of hilltop castles overlooking a sparkling sea, and a proud leader who tends who rigorously tends to his capital city.But on Thursday, Muscat came unglued. Cyclone Gonu romped through the tidy Omani capital before heading north across the Gulf of Oman and hitting Iran.The picture-perfect mountains that are the city’s pride became its pain. Torrential rains poured onto the bone-dry peaks and then flowed into canyons and dry riverbeds that channelled the raging water directly into the city.Bridges collapsed. Buses were piled in the wadis—the normally dry riverbeds that course through the city.Muscat’s lush palm and eucalyptus groves were blown over along with telephone and power lines. Even the normally sparkling blue sea, just off the crescent-shaped Muttrah Corniche, perhaps the Arab world’s prettiest, looked like foamy chocolate milk.Out in the sea, Gonu was later downgraded to a tropical depression, rapidly losing energy as it moved toward the Iranian coast. At least 35 people were reported dead, including three in Iran, and 30 more were reported missing.In Muscat, residents spoke of a night of horror as turgid floodwaters ripped into their homes, carried off refrigerators and cars, and left their streets gouged by sinkholes and caked in shoals of mud.Nidhal al-Masharafi (31), stayed all night on his rooftop with his wife and six children, with just the cell phone he gripped in his hand.“The water broke through the walls and swept everything out,” al-Mashrafi said, limping as he wandered the bank of a flooded wadi.“I woke up today and my car was gone. I can’t find it anywhere,” said Humaid al-Harthi (25), another resident.“I’ve never seen anything like this,” al-Mashrafi said. “ But this is life, anything can happen.” Muscat is Oman’s showcase capital—the Geneva of West Asia—where the fastidious Sultan Qaboos has decreed that highways be swept daily and laws require homeowners to cover air conditioners with decorative boxes and wash their cars every two weeks.
