Low Pressure Systems and the Five Year Old Brain

It often takes a natural disaster to show people's true colors and the media tells us that when our mettle is tested, our American character shines through. I am confident enough now to state that I truly know my children and I can blame it on the rain.

Rumors began to circulate at the beginning of the work week. "Rain is coming...It's going to rain on Monday..." and with each retelling the fabled storm grew bigger and stronger. "I heard it will stay for three days and dump a foot of rain!" until it had evolved into a storm to rival the legendary Gonu of a few years back. Gonu wiped out villages, killed hundreds (by unofficial reports), and turned the town upside down. This storm does not even have a name, but it still holds the power to make folks trippy, as rain will in a country where so little of it is ever seen.

So we all sat on our hands and waited nervously for the enormous storm to hit. For many days it lurked off the coast, spinning in the Indian Ocean, while those of us in this parched land continued to speculate as to whether or not it would hit and we would actually get to see rain. And then it happened--the rain began.

One moment we could see the mountains out the school room, beige, dusty, and comforting in their arid regularity, and the next they were gone, buried in deep purple clouds with wispy bottoms. Having been coerced by my triathlon team, The Turkey Basters, I ventured out in the evening for a run in the rain. Tian, Silas, and Tehva ran like lunatics through the drizzle that dampened the dust trapped in the air, and Tony went for a swim. The rain was soft and happy and everyone smiled.

This morning dawned with blue skies, but by 3 p.m. the rain had begun, this time with a flash of lightning from the clouds that were now brown and black. The rain fell in an enormous torrent and within an hour the wadis were so full that driving on any road in our area became an amphibious experience. By my count, three out of every five vehicles on the road either hit a curb, skidded off the road, dinged another auto, or skidded in the slick of oil-tinged rain water. Driving the ten kilometers to the university to pick up Tony took 30 minutes, and the return 45 minutes.

And when we returned?

Tian and Tehva, whom I had irresponsibly left at home, greeted us at the door, wading through standing water in the foyer. "Oh my gosh! Where were you? I thought you had been in a car wreck!" Tian's had very attractively rolled her pants nearly to her thighs and she wrung her hands like the mother of a teenager. "You have been gone for like THREE HOURS!"

I didn't have a chance to point out that we had been gone less than two hours as she plowed right along with her story. "I was upstairs with Tehva and came downstairs because I thought I heard something and THERE WAS WATER EVERYWHERE!" True enough, the grit, dust, and dirt with which we live in its dry form had been carried by rain water into the house and now, in the form of a silty mud, coated the entire first floor.

"The landlord told me to unplug the drains in the floors, so I did, and then the water all flowed away. Well. mostly. But I ran around the neighborhood and asked lots of people to use their phones so I could call you, but the phones were down." I must have been looking concerned, imagining Tian skipping through flood waters in the dark. She added, almost as an after thought, "Oh, but don't worry, I left Tehva here alone. She was fine."

I look over at Tehva and she is uncharacteristically quiet, flipping through a book. "You stayed by yourself, Tehva?" (Wait til the Royal Omani Police hear about this one). She nods and turns the page without making eye contact.

The cat, who is in a panic to get up off of the wet floor, climbs onto my head and perches as far away from the standing sludge as possible. Or maybe she endeavors to escape the girls, who are positively creeping me out.

"Tehva was really freaked about you guys because she thought you had died and was concerned that we wouldn't have any money to live on. But then I told her not to worry and that I know the PIN number at the bank. Then she told me she hoped you wouldn't come back because then we could have all your money and buy whatever we want."

Ah-hah.

After the clean up I hid the bank cards. Then we walked over to the mall to pick up some take away for dinner, only to find that rumors of a crippling power outage there were false. Consumerism was proceeding at its usual frantic pace and nary a dishdasha was besmirched by rain or mud.

The rain has been forcast to continue through the weekend.

If reports filter through of a five year old who has offed her parents and absconded with the bank cards, please check on us.

Between the way our house is situated off the road and the pounding of the rain, no one would ever hear us scream.