It's 12:36pm on Saturday. As I write this blog entry, the call to prayer is being broadcast across the neighbourhood. It's as if even the wind paused for a moment to let the call to prayer though. It has been windy all morning. All day yesterday for that matter, too. Being in the middle of the Arabian Desert here, the wind is full of sand. It's not sand like you'd find at the beach back home; it's much finer and more like flour or dust in consistency. In Al Ain, the desert sand is orangey brown. It's actually a very nice colour, and it looks beautiful in the desert... but I don't like to see it in my house, on my car, in my hair, on my face, and in the malls... etc.
Yes, it's a windy sandy day here in Al Ain. Actually, in the time it's taken me to write these few sentences, the call to prayer has stopped and the wind has started back up again. It blows in through the crack under the doors. Today and yesterday I have swept the floors around the doors four times to clear up the sand. We put brush-guard things on the bottom of our external doors here when we first moved in, and I'm sure it makes a huge difference, but it still doesn't block 100% of the sand.
Yesterday we went shopping in the middle of the "sand storm". It wasn't a serious full blown sand storm, just a windy day with lots of sand in the air. It was like driving in fog, only it was yellowy-orange sand dust in the air. After a coulple of hours in the mall, we came back out to find our car covered in a fine layer of sand dust. You can't really see it in the picture below, but you can see the sand accumulating at the base of the windscreen.
The car in front of us had been there for a bit longer than us, and its windscreen had significantly more sand...
We also went to our local supermarket afterwards for some more supplies, and found the carpark there quite sandy:
looking to the right of the parked car. You can see the snake-like lines of sand blowing towards me.
looking to the left of the parked car, you can see more sand blowing around and piles of settled sand in the car park
Liz (just out of the shot) making the mad dash through the dusty/sandy wind from the car to the shop. It's a shame you can't see the dust blowing round in the air, but note the piles of sand around the parking lot. Like snow drifts, but sand... hahaI tell you what, it's a real experience living in the desert. We had our challenges and thrills in Japan, and now we have different ones here. I suppose this is where one could be somewhat poetic and talk about how we all could be likened to grains of sand, part of the bigger picture, being blown in one direction or another by the winds of time... but luckily for you I won't go there today. Instead I'll go get the broom and sweep up the fresh lot of sand that has settled under our doorway again.
