Rainy Days

I've been here in the Middle-East for two glorious winters, so I can now pronounce that I am an expert on UAE climate, don't you think? Despite the horrid 120 degree summers, which do begin before teaching ends and we all go away for the worst of it, the UAE winters are gorgeous, cool, dry, sunny stretches of pleasant eat-outdoors weather. My husband Billy has been taking every opportunity to fire up the grill, not only for the perfectly grilled mini-chicken pieces (harder to find hormone-grown plump birds here), but for the actual warmth provided by the grill on the chilly desert-winter nights. We actually refuse to dine in restaurants without al fresco seating right now, and routinely have our moring coffee outside. Life is good.

But last week, for the second time this winter, the rain came. It was as it is in novels, people smelling the rain, watching the sky for the rain, and predicting the rain for a few long unusually cloudy days, until the storm finally came and dumped several inches onto us and the sand, literally at once. They say it comes down harder and in greater quantities than in the past, and even more often. Though it hardly seems possible, since for two years now, there has been a sum total of two rainy spells each winter. When the downpour started, I have to say I was confused because we live in the Dubai Airport flight pattern, and the rain came down with such force that at first I thought it was a low-flying plane. But when it didn't stop after a minute and a half, I got out of bed, looked out onto the pool where I could hardly see its outline. It was a downpour, a fierce, heavy, steady opening of the sky. It went on like this for around an hour, after which I gently settled back into sleep, with the satisfaction of the unusual smell of rain in the air. How absolutely lovely I thought. The smell of rain.

The next morning's reality though, was anything but lovely. Roads were clogged and closed and blocked and cars were upto the runnung boards in water, plodding through to work and school, where everyone was late and nothing got done. The roads here are built to some strange desert standards, which means they simply do not drain, until the sun comes out to dry it up, or the big orange sucker trucks come to drain the low-lying roads and cart the water out to the gulf. So after an evening of rain-smell bliss, we suffered through two days of awful traffic, cancelled classes, required meetings and near-miss collisions with clueless people in the pond-strewn roads. There you have it. True Emirati Living.