past the scream of F-16s

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,/ When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,/ When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,/ and measure them,/ When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with/ much applause in the lecture-room,/ How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,/ Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,/ In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,/ Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learned Astronomer

It is 21 degrees up in the Jebel Qara at midday, with fog so thick you can barely see 10m ahead. Barely an hour later, down the other side, past the scream of F-16s over Thumrayt and into the desert, the temperature is in the mid-40s. We’ve left the highway behind, turned towards one of the largest deserts in the world and switched off the air conditioning to conserve fuel.

We tuck in our massars around our faces and dab a bit of perfume on the pattern of checks. There is nothing else here: just two men, a four-wheel drive, the scent of oudh attar mixing with the escaped fumes from the jerry cans of petrol and a little whirlwind that twists its way across the flatness of the Ramlat Hashman. Ahmed Suhail Wasit al Kathiri might have been squinting, but you couldn’t make out through the sunglasses that peek out over headcloth. “If the aesar comes, it means there could be rain. Hot winds come from the north and cold winds from the south, and the whirlwind is created where they meet. This is the way it has always been.”

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