In sleepy town on Strait of Hormuz, war rages just over horizon

Khasab, Oman: On a quiet stretch of coastline at a tip of the Arabian Peninsula, two boys were skipping stones at sunset, vying to see who could put the farthest ripple into the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

The strait has the world on edge, making headlines on an hourly basis as oil tankers avoid its waters for fear of Iranian attacks.

But on a recent afternoon, as the holy month of Ramadan drew to a close, the public beach of Bassa in Khasab, Oman, offered the illusion of tranquility. Three cousins, Ali, Ahmed and Rashed al-Shehhi, all in their early 20s, were meeting up there with friends from a city across the border, in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, for a potluck picnic.

"It's quite peaceful here during the last 10 days of Ramadan when we break our fast," Ahmed al-Shehhi said.

Still, as people feasted with friends, everyone on the beach knew that just over the horizon a regional war raged.

And as the American-Israeli assault on Iran approaches the one-month mark, Khasab, a sleepy fishing town, has had a front-row seat to the accompanying drama. The strait, a narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world's oil flows, has been choked off by Iran during the war.

Khasab, the capital of Musandam province in Oman, sits within an exclave severed from the rest of the sultanate by a jagged patch of the Emirates. Sometimes nicknamed the Norway of Arabia for its rocky fjords, the province is defined by a peculiar duality: rugged isolation and a sometimes dangerous proximity to global trade. At Musandam's narrowest, only 21 miles of water separate its cliffs from Iran.

That proximity has shaped Khasab's history for centuries. Long before it became a modern vantage point for watching oil tankers and military destroyers, it was a vital supply point for Portuguese colonizers, who built forts in the 17th century to control the maritime trade route.

The journey to reach Khasab from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, feels like a slow retreat from modernity. Travelers drive 2 1/2 hours north to reach the border, where, on a recent weekend, only 1 of 4 immigration windows was open, processing a trickle of Omanis heading home.

Past the border, the route transforms into a 35-minute scenic cliffside drive, with the Persian Gulf sprawling to the left and imposing cliffs rising sharply to the right. Far out in the deep water, massive vessels idle in the coastal haze.

For Khasab's residents, life has always required navigating the precarious balance between the serene seclusion of their lives and the global cross hairs by their shores.

Inside a local supermarket, there's little hint of the war. A few hours before the sunset prayers that will mark the break of their fast, Omani families and South Asian expatriates mill around the aisles, the air buzzing with a linguistic symphony of Arabic, Hindi and Kumzari, an Indigenous language spoken by the Kumzari tribe with elements from many other languages.

Outside the supermarket, a lone police officer keeps watch from his parked car. Inside, an Indian vendor operates a small stall selling hot corn and coffee. With customers still fasting, he spends the afternoon glued to his phone, watching a live Indian newscast of the war just miles away.

While Khasab has been largely spared from Iranian attacks -- one drone was shot down above the town this month -- it feels repercussions of the conflict.

Musandam's economy relies heavily on winter and spring tourism, drawing visitors eager for dhow cruises, dolphin watching and mountain trekking. But the docks have been quiet this month.

At two tour operators in town, the desks sat empty. Weekend business has been virtually nonexistent, mainly because it depends on foreign tourists who spend a day from neighboring Dubai.

Muhannad al-Kumzari, a Khasab native, said it was much quieter than usual.

"There's no activities going on at all because of what's happening across the sea," he said. "If that didn't happen, Khasab at this time would be thriving."

Back at Bassa Beach, the friends were finishing their iftar and packing up for evening prayers.

Across town, an Omani family and its neighbors gathered at the modest al-Mahlab bin Abi Safra Mosque in Khasab Garden. Inside, older men stood for the nighttime Taraweeh prayers, while outside in the courtyard, children organized a spirited soccer game.

Afterward, the men settled into a makeshift majlis -- traditional seating areas -- at the mosque's entrance. Younger men moved through the crowd, pouring small cups of cardamom-spiced Arabic coffee and sweet tea.

Initially, the conversation was indistinguishable from any other neighborhood chitchat in the Gulf, with good-natured gossip.

But in Khasab, the outside world always intrudes. Eventually, the chatter shifted to the nearby military strikes.

For the older men, the tension was a familiar memory. Abdullah Alflaiti, a 65-year-old retired civil servant, reminisced about the "tanker wars" of the 1980s, a devastating chapter of the Iran-Iraq War when the strait's waters became a shooting gallery for commercial shipping, prompting U.S. naval intervention.

"This, too, shall pass," Alflaiti said. "May God protect us all."