“Salma’s Notebook”: A Novel Chronicling the Meaning of Struggle and Giving

Muscat: The novel "Salma's Notebook" by author Sharifa Salim Al Rahbi delves into the social fabric of certain girls' lives in the 1970s within the Omani milieu, tracing the reasons for their deprivation of education and how they defied hardships to ultimately achieve their goals in life. According to Oman News Agency, the novel was released in its first edition for 2026, within the National Programme for Supporting the Book, implemented by the Cultural Club, from which a number of male and female writers have benefited, having excelled in enriching the Omani library with a diverse intellectual output. The novel spans 237 pages distributed across 19 chapters, with its events revolving around a girl named "Salma" who lives a childhood unlike that of other girls, her story beginning in an isolated house far from the village and friends, where she finds solace in inventing an imaginary friend with whom she roams a world of imagination and beauty, visiting her from time to time at home, at the aflaj 'ancient ir rigation system' and at school. The novel traverses Salma's life from the outset of her stolen childhood within her home, between love and cruelty, and between a fatherhood both present and absent at once. The protagonist Salma becomes attached to knowledge and school from the moment schools first opened, yet the dream quickly fades, and the events of the story grow and escalate, oscillating between past and present, to reveal the reasons behind that isolation. The novel also sheds light on an important facet of the social transformations in the Omani milieu, such as the opening of schools for boys and then for girls, in addition to the arrival of electricity. The events highlight Salma's profound attachment to books and her love of school, even though life and family circumstances prevented her from continuing her education. The events escalate chronologically after Salma's marriage at an early age, like the other girls of her era, as she embarks upon experiences and events beyond her years, and begins to record her memories and the events of her life in "Salma's Notebook." Salma recounts her memories in the falaj 'water channel for irrigation' and her unforgettable name, "Daughter of the Jinn," followed by the contours of the place she traverses back and forth to school and her daily slumber on the bus. The events grow more fraught after she is forced out of the school benches and into married life and early motherhood. The author leaves us "Salma's Notebook" to carry us back to some of the memories of our own childhood, between the channel of the falaj, the bustle of the village and the hardship of life in times past. It is, as it were, a gift to the reader of the seventies and eighties as they recall some of what remains lodged in memory from a childhood folded away by time, closing the pages of the notebook as though they had lived the very events themselves.