Tag: Arabic

The point in the sky directly above you. Your zenith is yours alone — no two people standing in different places share the same one. The opposite is nadir.

A valley or streambed in the desert that is dry except during rainy periods — the Arabic equivalent of the Spanish arroyo. Wadis are the drainage channels of arid landscapes across North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Middle East, carved by flash floods that may come only a few times a year or a few times a decade. Between floods, wadis serve as travel corridors, gathering places, and sites of settlement — the trees, the wells, and the shade are found in the wadi bed, where the last water sank into the sand.

 A hot, dry, dust-laden wind that originates in the Sahara and blows northward across the Mediterranean into southern Europe. By the time it reaches Italy, Sicily, or the Balkans it may have picked up moisture from the sea, arriving as a humid, oppressive, sand-tinged gale. Different names follow it across the region — ghibli in Libya, khamsin in Egypt, leveche in Spain.

 A strong, hot, dry wind that blows across the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, carrying sand and capable of raising air temperatures above 130°F. The word implies danger — exposure can be fatal.

A flat, pebble-strewn desert plain in the Sahara — similar to reg but often with slightly larger stones and a harder, more wind-polished surface. Serir landscapes are monotonous and immense, stretching to the horizon without feature.

A long, narrow, sharp-crested sand dune aligned parallel to the prevailing wind direction — a sand ridge that can run unbroken for miles. Seif dunes form in areas of consistent wind direction with abundant sand, and they dominate the great ergs of the Sahara and the Arabian Peninsula. Seen from the air, a field of seif dunes looks like a plowed field at continental scale.

Arabic: a walk or wander that leads to some kind of revelation or spiritual renovation. Not aimless — purposefully open. You go out walking and come back changed.

A flat, salt-encrusted coastal or inland plain in an arid region, formed where a shallow water table lies close enough to the surface for groundwater to evaporate and deposit its dissolved minerals as a crust. Sabkhas are treacherous — the surface appears firm but may collapse into soft, saline mush beneath. Coastal sabkhas are common along the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea; inland sabkhas form in closed basins throughout the Sahara and the Arabian Peninsula.

A flat, stony desert surface — a plain of gravel and pebbles from which the finer sand and dust have been removed by wind, leaving behind a lag deposit of coarse material. Reg is the most common desert surface type worldwide, though it is less famous than the erg. It is the desert stripped to its bones — nothing soft, nothing loose, nothing growing. Walking on reg is walking on an infinite gravel parking lot.

 A seasonal reversal of prevailing winds, most dramatically in South and Southeast Asia, where the summer monsoon brings months of heavy rain from the Indian Ocean and the winter monsoon brings dry air from the continent. The word has come to mean the rains themselves, but it is properly a wind — a wind that changes its mind twice a year.