When i woke up this morning i found my mom staring outside my bedroom window. There was a flash of light, followed by a deep, rolling sound; like an avalanche of rock that stopped just above the clouds.
It took me a while to recognize the noise as thunder. Living in the desert makes you forget the whole concept of storms. While putting on my school uniform for the first day of my last term, i heard a soft "pluck" on my window, followed by a series of tiny thuds. I tried to look outside, but water on the window's glass smeared my vision. Rain!
For the past three days, the weather here in the UAE has been... odd. Friday and yesterday were my first experiences with sand storms. We were going to Dubai with some family friends for dinner at Applebee's. The wind had been blowing all day, raising with it the Emirati sand. While in the car, i didn't realize sand was what fogged up my vision. I assumed it was, well, fog. My misguided assumptions were immediately corrected though, when i stepped out of the car. Fog doesn't attack you with sticky little grains of "stuff" every time the wind blows.
The sand stuck on my face got me thinking. There i was, on Sheikh Zayed Road, between high rise buildings, in the middle of a desert. A generation ago, the pavement i was standing on didn't exist. There was just sand. Dunes and dunes of it. Bedouins walked here, with their camels, customs, and folded up tents. Maybe they unfolded them, set up camp here to hide from sand storms similar to the one i was in.
Wow, Outlandish wasn't wrong. Life really is a loom.
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