phase one

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)/ Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,/ And saw, within the moonlight in his room,/ Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,/ An Angel writing in a book of gold:
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

This depth of interest makes good roads too – and the new one promises to be excellent. Although following the coast, Phase One is a triumph of sorts, making its way through treacherous salt flats, shifting sand dunes and, occasionally, rocky outcrops that need to be blasted and cut through. Of course, when people drive over this new road, they tend to take it for granted – driving over a smooth surface at 100kmph with ocean on your left and desert on your right is immensely pleasurable, far away from thoughts of back breaking work. The Bedouin like it too, evident from the furious circles of burnt rubber that hint at joyrides – marks that have already appeared before the paint has dried.

“There was nothing when we first came here,” says Matthew. “Just desert and sea.” Every part of building a road through the desert is difficult, of course, and some parts are more difficult than others. A road over sand is built layer upon layer, from softer to progressively harder. More difficult are the patches of sabkha – salt flats that look deceptively hard, right until the moment your vehicle gets stuck. To support the road, modern materials called a geo-fabrics would be layed under – a sort of synthetic sheet that acts as a barrier between the loose particles of road base and the soft, porous surface of the desert. Underneath might come a geo-textile and then, between bottom layers, a geo-grid, its mesh large enough to allow water to filter through, while small enough to keep the base material from disappearing into the soft sabkha and sand. Such intricate systems dramatically increase the cost of these patches of road, and this overall increase in time and expenditure is further added to by other engineering methods.

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