Rain and snow

The day after I arrived, it rained here for the first time in over a year. Then it kept on raining for three days. The locals seem only slightly less astonished than if the sky had opened up and rained frogs for three days. Personally, I would be grateful to see a storm if my town had gone a year without rain, but these folks shake their heads in wonder, then seem annoyed.

You’ve got to give them credit, though: Even in this freak rainstorm, people seem calmer than the hysterical Washingtonians who run around flapping their hands and wailing every time in snows. And it snows in Washington every winter. Ras al-Khaimah, one of the northern Emirates in the mountains, got snow yesterday for the first time in at least 40 years. Keep in mind: That doesn’t mean it snowed 40 years ago – it means that nobody can remember back any further than that. This may be the first snow in Emirati history, for all anyone knows. And you didn’t see them getting their knickers all in a twist.

On the topic of weather: Thunder sounds different here. You would think that thunder is one of those things which is exactly the same no matter where you go in the world, like the moon, or Burger King. But thunder here – or at least last night’s thunder – lacks the percussive thump of good American thunder. A feisty storm of American thunder is like a Hell’s Angel yelling and pounding his meaty fist on a table. It thuds. It can be scary. The china rattles. Middle Eastern thunder is like a nervous guy clearing his throat. I saw strokes of lightning that flashed brightly even underneath my bed covers with my eyes closed, and even these monster strokes produced thunder that seemed oddly tentative and polite, like it didn’t want to bother anybody.

I was awfully pleased with myself when, after puzzling for a couple days over the question of how to dry my washed clothes, I realized that my little window has hooks underneath it on the outside, and that everybody here just hangs their clothes out the window to dry. It was very satisfying to hang my first load of clothes out the window; I felt like a part of the scene. Then, after the intermittent drizzle of the last two days turned into a real downpour overnight, I woke up this morning to shirts that were even wetter than the washing machine managed to get them.

Everybody else in my little courtyard evidently was able to anticipate that clothes hanging in a downpour will not dry, and had removed their clothes in the night. I’m obviously not ready to be part of the scene yet.