This compelling historical ethnography explores how people in Bahla, an oasis town in the interior of Oman, experienced dramatic transformation in their lives following the discovery of oil in the late 1960s, and now grapple with the prospect of this resource's future depletion.

In the dreamtime of oil : wealth and development in an anomalous time -- Now, the police only drive : remembering rule and disorder in Bahla -- In the eye of the neighbor, there is fire : hazards and histories of sociality -- Circles of knowledge : religious learning, pious pasts, and alternative sociality -- Senses of water : nostalgia, private ownership, and bodily privacy -- Becoming Bahlawi : race, genealogy, and the politics of Arabness -- Perhaps he has a son : succession, depletion, and the uncertain future.