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Arabia to Australia
... impressions ...
… eating freshly-barbied sweetcorn doused in crushed salt and lime juice at the side of the hot, desert road then sucking the sweet, exhilirating flesh of ripe juicy oranges... exploring an Arab camel market, the camels ignoring us with such beastly disdain and hauteur, such a sharp contrast to the interest, attention and detail requested by their owners, all potential guides until it was clear there was no baksheesh to be given...
… the peaceful rich deep baritones of the muezzin mellifluously calling the faithful to prayer...
… the watery burblings of the sheesha pipe and the instant hit of cooling peppermint in a Moorish restaurant decorated with arabic detail and strangely incongruent flashing snowmen hanging from the ceiling, doffing their hats every ten seconds as sheesha pipes were smoked on every table by women and men alike... the tart cooling refreshment of lemon and mint juice that set every tastebud zinging, so refreshing after the hot dry air...
… the 'wrong world' feeling that the smell of early morning frying bacon evoked, on Friday the Holy day, as we breakfasted before our wadi expedition... camels in the desert, a desert fox, the tracks of a lizard through henna-red dunes...
… vibrant magenta bougainvillea flowers, a deep pale blue bird screeching, the fumes from the abra as we crossed Dubai creek watching sailors on dhows making chapatis, saris mingling with black burkahs, with bold African dress prints and babies wrapped in slings on backs, the western shorts and vests of tourists seeming strangely out of place...
… the strange antiseptic manufactured film sets that are instant town centres or palace approaches in Dubai, which made me think it's how London must have seemed with Regency expansion, all those clean planned lines next to medieval shabbiness... the disney effect of new Dubai with its 'authentic' souk and western restaurants and shops... brash building relentlessly transforming the skyline and coastline... dancing salsa in a Cuban bar overlooking the sea...
… running along the crest of a sand dune, barefoot, in the dry wind and seeing my footprints disappear in the wind... Arabic music inviting limbs to curl and twist in an in-car drive to belly dance or hand jive, irrestible, impossible to be still... paradaisical smells of frangipani tree flowers, heady and sweet and intense...
… and here we are in Sydney, where the dawn chorus is not lyrical warbling but a raw alive screech into daylight, a parrot-driven cacophony of cookaburras and parrakeets raucously, excitedly, unabashedly announcing it's day again, get up, get out, get going.
… and the evening symphony so different, constant cicada hum with a backbeat of frogs and toads, and a kind of reverse-screech theme. lushness, colour - bright blues of plumbago and agapanthus, yellow wattle tree flowers, red red red, bronze, burnt-umber, flaky-grey bark of eucalyptus, peeling back and showing yet more colour and texture. the ocean booming surf on blonde beaches...
… an urban landscape of arching iron harbour bridge and the flickering white eyelids of the Sydney Opera House...
… and never mind what's going on in my head! the thoughts, and ideas and words and happiness - alive alive oh! anything and everything is possible…
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