“The person who just called you for a room availability is me”, I said to the receptionist, the time I arrived at the hotel. “Yes, Mr. Al Balushi? It is available and I recommend the sweet room, and I am sure you won’t regret staying there”, he replied. He was very confident about it, and I liked the way he said that. 

“My name is Irshad and I am from India, Lucknow,” he replied when I asked about his name. “So, you are from Mirza Ghalib’s city?”, In fact, he was surprised and asked me how I knew Mirza Ghalib since I am Omani.

Of course, Mirza Ghalib, whose actual name is Abdullah Baig Abdullah, is well known and famous in the field of poetry and literature, along with William Shakespeare, Allama Iqbal, Ahmed Shoqi and Jibran Khalil Jibran.

In the room, I was amazed by the furniture and layout, and since I am a book lover, it was the first hotel in my life where some books were on shelves, about six books.

It is these types of facilities that keep tourists and visitors returning again and again, and it was nice to pick up some books and turn the pages to think a bit about writing.

I didn’t know to do what, first? Do I need to start reading or writing? 

I didn’t do both. Just standing up on the window, I was able to observe the city of Ruwi and the past, the world of imagination and future after seeing the chamber of commerce and the banking areas, the CBD.

Ruwi is one of the most beautiful cities in Oman, and from the window of the Sheraton Hotel, I could see the OKI center and the four traffic lights starting at the roundabout.

Moreover, I saw a mosque near a hospital called Badr Al Sama hospital called Ruwi Jamaa Mosque, which was the first jamaa to be established in the 1970s.

It was in Ruwi that I started my college life and my career in banking, and I still remember one of my college mates saying, while we were driving, “Ruwi is the heart of Oman, and these traffic lights are its hearts”.

A room didn’t just take me back in time, but it gave me the idea of writing a novel as well. The process of writing a novel isn’t easy, but it takes a lot of efforts and time, but the name of the novel has already been decided if I decide to start writing. ‘The Death of a Writer’ will be the title.