“Let me tell you about wind”
Every time the winds take control and I can hear their howls — on days like today — I hear Ralph Fiennes’ soliloquy from “The English Patient” (one of my favorite movies). Taking shelter from a desert sand storm, Fiennes’ voice describes wind as a force against nature.
The words are actually those of Michael Ondaatje, the writer of “The English Patient.” I’m in awe of someone who can write so much and so poetically about wind. His words go something like this (abridged for Instagram length) …
“There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. … The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.
There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise.
There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition.
The haboob—a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand meters high and is followed by rain. … Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. …
There is also the —, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. … Other, private winds.
The harmattan blows across the Sahara filled with red dust, dust as fire, as flour, entering and coagulating in the locks of rifles. Mariners called this red wind the ‘sea of darkness.’ Red sand fogs out of the Sahara were deposited as far north as Cornwall and Devon, producing showers of mud so great this was also mistaken for blood. …
Herodotus records the death of various armies engulfed in the simoom who were never seen again. One nation was ‘so enraged by this evil wind that they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.’” — Michael Ondaatje