Sandy Skies

It’s not supposed to rain dirt.

Waking up Sunday morning, the first thing I saw, emerging from the apartment were the cars on the street. An Opel huddled miserably on the curb, palpably covered in dirtdrops. The mirror image of raindrops, but dirty, not just dusty, concentric circles filmed the windshield and coated the car. His aging neighbor, a worn Peugot leaning two his wheels on the cracked sidewalk, wore the same pattern. Glancing down the street, every single other car, apparently, had gone to the same car wash. As my gaze wandered up to the horizon, I suddenly became aware of another startling fact: it was quite light outside. Seemingly unremarkable until you catch my meaning; it was the light when a room is well lit by the golden glow of incandescent lamps. Kolonaki’s climbing streets stood caught in jaundiced glow. Turning to the sky, I found the usual spectrum of blues and grays replaced by a deepening fog of dust, an impossible filthy yellow. The pall rested uneasily over the entire city, the distant mountains hidden in its menacing obscurity. Just then, as I’d caught the completeness of being surrounded, a sudden, vicious wind tore the sickly moist stillness apart. A distant storm, concealed in dust, coughed out this wicked gust and he gleefully raced through the narrow lanes, catching the limp canopies on the rooftop balconies and loose window shutters. I’d been standing in silence, but the wind galloped by with all the clatter of regiment of cavalry. Jolted awake, I hurried down the street, but before I’d gone five steps, the pall had closed behind the disappearing wind and I was enveloped in the dusty mute. Thoroughly baffled I paced deliberately to the intersection, wondering why the sidewalks remained empty at mid-morning. Turning the corner, the scene grew even more incongruous. From far down the steep street, I watched amazed as the older brother of the first mischievous gust sprint up towards me. Even as I stood in complete stillness, block by block, a veritable gale drew nearer, whipping budding branches violently, spinning an elderly man (the first I’d seen) around as he attempted to keep hold of his overcoat. Though I could feel the moisture in the air, barrels of dust, a more insubstantial tumbleweed, rolled and crested in front of the wind’s advance. The teapot tempest swept up and over me, crusting my glasses and tossing me from side, then abruptly departing. The entire process took no more than a second or two. I waded farther on into the murk, as the Acropolis, in the distance, slowly disappeared.