Sand Storm

Ninety-nine per cent of the time, the weather in Rabigh is the same: hot and humid. Perhaps that's not accurate: ninety-five per cent of the time the weather here is either hot, or ridiculously hot. Another four and three quarters per cent of the time, it is comfortably warm. But occasionally, it does rain, although it's not the kind of rain that I am used to.

As I remember back to January, driving into Rabigh from the airport in Jeddah, I remember seeing a sign on the highway warning that it was a sandstorm area. In my mind, I imagined vicious two-hundred kilometers per hour winds, full of sand, that would shred the skin off one's face like an industrial grinder.

Well, my experience of a sandstorm in Rabigh was a much different affair. I was going out for dinner with my neighbor and colleague, Rowa. It was about a seven minute walk to the restaurant from our apartment building. It was a night like any other, except it was a bit cooler (in the tolerably hot category).

We weren't in the restaurant long, perhaps thirty minutes at the most, but it was remarkably cooler and a brisk wind was picking up, and it was drizzling. The streets were deserted (although this may have been in on account of prayer time). The wind was getting stronger and stronger, then inexplicably it began to rain...mud.

Now, it's wasn't exactly pouring, and there weren't big globs of the stuff coming down, but the water in the air has mixed with the ever-present sandy particulate, the result was everything getting coated in this brown, watery mixture. I was a little bit afraid that the wind would get so intense that a more liquidy version or my initial vision would come to pass. But it was not to be so.

All in all the experience was bizarre and intriguing, though it posed very little danger!