12-13-10

            Today I saw the most amazing thing, well had an amazing experience really. As I stood in front of my hotel failing miserably to hail a cab, I looked up at Kingdome tower a large 180 meter sky scraper about 5 km south of my hotel on AL Aruba st. Now I’d seen this building every day for the last ten but today was different, I looked up because a hurricane force wind slammed into me drawing the breath out of my chest and almost knocking me over. As I rubbed my eyes, my vision cleared just at the moment a wall of sand and wind engulfed the tower and a city of 6 million people. Cars came to a halt or drove faster attempting to out run the sand, people ducked into doorways and closed windows. I turned around to find my hotel door and was unable to see it 8 feet away from me. Truly I was engulfed in a blanket of abrasive wind and a bright yellow glare that no longer came from the sun high in the sky but seemingly from all directions.

            For the first time in this foreign Kingdome I actually felt true fear. I was quickly loosing my bearings and wondering that if I began walking towards my hotel room door would I make it or had I been turned around shielding my eyes from an ocean of flying sand, and id be walking out into the 9 lane highway in front of my hotel.

            The seemingly endless period of time I spent in mental negotiations on what to do in my current situation was broken buy something that some western people of non Muslim background may associate negative connotations of terrorism with or local non Muslims begin to hate after spending much time in country. But for me at that moment was the most beautiful sound to drown out the wind tunnel currently abusing my ears.

            In Saudi Arabia they pray five times a day, and the start of each prayer time is signaled by a man singing a traditional Arabic prayer from a mosque. Each of the hundreds of mosques in Riyadh has a tower in which these prayers are played over massive loud speakers. As I am told there is a place at city center that you can hear around ten at the same time singing wonderful elegant prayers from every direction. But this day this prayer one normally not heard loud enough to disturb a conversation saved me from the paroles of traffic I knew the location of the mosque in relation to the hotel and if I walked towards the prayer I would avoid the highway.  All I could here was the prayers, not understanding what they said or truly what they mean they showed me the way home. I don’t think one has to be Muslim or Christian or Buddhist to understand the feeling of faith in a moment of sheer terror.

            This terrifying and enlightening experience was my first with a Saudi sand storm.