The sky slowly sickens into a weird yellow-brown. There's no breeze. They call it hamsin. They say the hamsin can drive men mad. When the hamsin finally breaks, the winds can turn suddenly violent.
Trees can fall, and power lines.
This Spring, it seems, we've had a hamsin each week. Today the weather is brilliant, a perfect spring day. Yesterday on the Sabbath, it was the same clear blue sky with a light breeze and the smell of flowers and grain. War could not have seemed further away. This morning, a bomb scare on my block.