Rain in the desert reminds me of childhood

The weather is constantly on the minds of people in the Arab nations.

“A promise is a cloud; fulfilment is rain,” says an Arabic proverb.

Rain has always had a special spot in the hearts of the Arabs, with many poems dedicated to these lovely droplets and their powers of revival.

When you live most of the year at the mercy of a harsh and hot desert climate, you appreciate the break in weather that dark clouds, winds and rain bring, even if sometimes it is followed by disasters and floods.

Despite official warnings about hitting the roads and going to wadis and areas prone to flash floods, everyone goes outside to “enjoy” the weather and bask in the wetness.

Often you see people chatting away and having a sort of a picnic on mats along muddy mountainous terrains or inside their cars with their windows rolled down. There is nothing better than drinking a hot cup of Karak tea in this kind of weather.

It is also the best time to catch up with neighbours who end up on balconies or outside their homes. One should never underestimate the impact of the weather on mood and productivity.

I am always reminded of a conversation I had with an old Emirati weatherman from the desert, who once told me: “We Arabs are harsh and our blood boils fast as we live in a harsh land. We need the rain to cool off our boiling blood and to make us smile.”

I then asked him what about those living in the mountains and in farms, what about those Arabs, “shouldn’t they always be pleasant and in a better mood since they live in a cooler spot?”

“No,” he insisted. “These are spoiled, they want even more rain than us. So they are moodier.”

Different winds have different stories, and even the types of rain have different categories and names given to them by different tribes that many today have forgotten. When he talked about a particular group of clouds that gathered at a corner of the sky, he compared them to a group of “gossiping women”.

They didn’t look anything like women to me, but alas, there is poetry even in the skies.

But the dangers are real as we were reminded by the drowning of an Emirati man in Ras Al Khaimah earlier this week after his car was swept into a wadi by surging flood water after torrential rain. His friends dove in to save him but were unable to.

One also has to look at the Philippines and how devastated it is because of Typhoon Haiyan, the storm that cut a path across eastern and central Philippines this month, left thousands of people dead or missing and displaced an estimated four million residents.

I remember as a child – as, I imagine, would anyone who grew up here or in another Arab country – that when it rained, we all hoped the schools would close.

When it rains heavily in Jeddah, it is a given that there will be flooding due to the lack of a proper drainage system on its streets. Sometimes it gets really bad and people are killed, properties are destroyed and there is no electricity or open roads for days.

One bad winter, when I was about 10, it rained so heavily that at our all-girl school, our classrooms were leaking and some lights blew up. It got so bad that classes were cancelled and our families were called to pick us up. Some took the buses and left. The rest of us waited for our drivers, who had a hard time reaching us. Since most of the teachers have left on buses, we were mostly unsupervised, so we took what we wanted from the canteen after we broke in, and we snuck on the roof of one of the buildings. We saw cars and roads buried in water, and what looked like a man in a uniform paddling about a rubber boat across a flooded major road. There were women and men screaming for help from the top of their cars, others dared to swim in the dirty brown water. For a child, this was an adventure.

Years later, the same sights of drowned cars, muddy clogged roads, and drenched clothes and floors, return annually, and every time we are fascinated by this as if it never happened before. Whatever the case, enjoy the weather.

Twitter:@Arabianmau