The Sahara drops in

Last Saturday it rained in Izmir. Big deal, you might say, except there wasn't any rain last winter and western Anatolia is experiencing a drought. So the rain was very welcome, especially since we were just starting to recover from our exhausting travel and were happy to have an excuse to stay home and veg. But when Ron went out in the late afternoon to forage for some sustenance he noticed that everything was covered with mud, and the kids playing football in the street were actually playing something closer to ice hockey, slipping and sliding all over the place.

Nothing unusual, we thought. It's been so dry here that the air is full of dust and the rain is washing it out.

But the next morning when I went out to hang up the laundry I discovered the shoes I'd left on the terrace were full of mud, and everything was covered with reddish clay. So were the cars parked on the street. By the time we went to church the men were out scrubbing off their cars and the women were sloshing off their balconies with pails of water and brooms.

At church we learned that we'd experienced the south wind that blows in straight from the Sahara loaded with fine sand and silt. It happens regularly and is one reason Izmir's streets are so dusty. The only comparable experience we'd ever had was when we lived in Kincardine on Lake Huron's east shore, and the wind blew the topsoil from eastern Michigan onto us.

It's supposed to rain today, too, and if it does I'll be out with our super-sized squeegee trying to get the muck off the terraces. But I suspect that the sun has baked it on and we may have to learn to like the nice new reddish colour.