Happy and rich in an Omani toytown

NOT so very long ago, Oman's borders were sealed to the outside world and Muscat's gates clanged shut at sunset. Everything began to change in 1970, when Sultan Qaboos, then aged 30, overthrew his medieval-minded father, unlocked the gates and ushered in a brave new world. Using money from oil, which started to flow only in 1967, he built roads, schools and hospitals. He gave boats to fishermen, houses to nearly everyone, and introduced some of the strictest environmental laws in the world. Nowadays, it is as if a giant hand had opened a box of Lego, pulling out toy houses and forts, park benches and squares of grass, and telephone booths and bus shelters built like mini-castles.

The sultan is even moving his country, very gradually, towards a slightly more democratic system. On September 14th Omanis will, for the fourth time, be electing their main consultative council, a body that was set up in 1991 to advise the ruler. Women can both vote and stand for election. It would be foolish, says the sultan, to waste half the country's talents.

More traditionally, the sultan takes pride in his annual meet-the-people sessions, when he sets up camps in the countryside for a month or so to listen to people's grievances. “Respect [for the sultan] is a duty, and his command must be obeyed,” says Article 41 of the basic law.

People complain of the increasingly high cost of living—the difficulty, for instance, of affording four wives—but annual income per Omani is more than $10,000. There is no income tax, and private business is heavily subsidised by a government that wants to diversify away from oil. Health and education are free. Life is considerably less comfortable, naturally, for the immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, on whom the Omanis depend. In line with other Gulf states, Oman's stated policy is to replace its expatriate workers—estimated at 400,000 in a population of 2m—with its own citizens. And, indeed, Omanis can now be found working in hotels, though not sweeping the streets.

Oman overturns some of the clichéd images of an oil-rich desert country. It produces only about 900,000 barrels a day—one-third of Britain's production—though the wealth of Omani merchants is legendary. Its past empires, which took in bits of Africa and India, have given the country a racially mixed population. Its mountain ranges and monsoon climate in the south make it look and feel different. Britain's influence remains strong, in the visible shape of road cones and parking tickets, and less visibly in weapons and advisers. Westerners have to be peeled away by their fingertips at the end of their contracts.

Omanis seem to have a genuine affection for their short, fatherly ruler, who in his dress and appearance looks much like all those ancestors who have been running the country since 1749. He went to Sandhurst, a military academy in Britain, and also studied local government there. He is held in particularly high esteem by Oman's women, who can now be found working in most professions and at most levels. One Omani woman, paying him the highest compliment she could, suggested that he understood women because “he's half a woman himself.”

His distaste for married life means he has no heir. He has, however, laid down a law for finding a successor after his death. The male members of the royal family have three days to meet and agree on the next sultan, who must be a male descendant of the ruling family. If they fail, the defence ministry will open an envelope in which Qaboos has written his choice—which must, of course, be accepted.