ceiling

down to the graphite signature of her shoes. / “Sorry I’m late,” she panted, though / she wasn’t, sliding into the chair, her cape
T S Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

The largest chamber in the cave is as large as the Al Bustan Palace Hotel, and the entire gallery is dripping stalactites and awash with stalagmites. Everything from the ceiling down the walls and across the floor is softened into the curves of the flow of water. And there is a lot of water. While the mountain slopes above are bone dry, pieced together with the shrivelled roots of shrubs, it is estimated that the underground lake in the cave can hold more than 30,000 cubic metres of water. The main lake in the cave is around 800m long and about ten metres in width, with a maximum depth of 15m. When it rains above, surface water accumulates in the wadi to the north and floods through the cave at up to 550 cubic metres per second.

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