A photograph of an Omani lady in her traditional colorful garb washing the dishes on the banks of a “Falaj” or channel. Before the arrival of diesel-fueled engines villagers had to walk to the channels for such purposes. “Aflaj” – the Arabic plural for “Falaj” are a manmade channel network that are thousands of years old and have been the foundation for life in the arid North of Oman. The water in those channels was used for drinking, bathing, washing dishes, laundry and irrigating farm land.