A Glimpse of Fall

The other day, for the first time since coming to Iraq in mid-June, I saw a few wimpy clouds right around daybreak, but they quickly burned off once the sun rose. However, the humidity stayed up and as a result it's been feeling a lot more like a hotter south Louisiana in the summer than the dry desert climate we've experienced up to now. On one of our movements the other day, the soil was wet and sticky, but it had not rained. It was explained that the salt in the soil (salinization is a very serious problem in agriculture here) attracts the moisture from the atmosphere when the air is humid, wetting the soil. Yesterday, around lunchtime, I heard the rumble of thunder and saw lightning strikes over near the airfield. A few drops started to fall, creating small impact craters in the powdered dust. One of my teamates called it "a two-inch rain" because there was two inches between each drop. Last night the wind shifted direction and began to blow strongly from the southeast, whipping the dust into drifts. The wind has now begun to change from the summertime shamal wind, blowing steady out of the northwest, to the autumnal sharqi, from the south and southeast.
Of course, other changes indicate the coming fall, most notably the ripening of dates. There are now huge clusters of blonde and brown sweetness hanging from the date palms. The several I had yesterday were like caramel or butterscotch. Delicious! Farmers are also busy planting wheat in anticipation of winter rains.
We had a really good movement today, visiting a lovely farm in a small rural village. The highlight for me was a beautiful orchard with date palms in the overstory, a midstory with various citrus, including the local sweet lemon, apricots, pomegranates, figs, apples, and pears, and an understory with licorice and grass that is cut and hauled out for sheep. It sure felt like the Garden of Eden.
We've been on a very hectic schedule, with barely enough time to post to this blog, answer emails or type up field notes. This morning, for example, I got up a 4:30 am, met our convoy at 5:15, visited our first site at 7:00 and were back at the FOB for lunch just before the DFAC closed at 2:00 pm. By 9:00 pm I'm wrung out from all the heat and sweating and am ready for bed. And we'll do it all over again tomorrow. We are doing this for a couple of reasons. First, the intense heat is a strain on the team and the army guys who guard us, so we want to move and be out in the coolest part of the day. Second, it is Ramadan and many of the Iraqis we are meeting are fasting during the day, so we want to meet with them in the morning when their energy level is higher. During our helicopter tour earlier in the week, we were accompanied by the DGs for agriculture and for water in the province and they did not drink a thing the entire flight. I was completely drained, even after drinking plenty of water and Gatorade. I have to believe that they were really hurting when it was over, even though they were clearly exhilirated by the opportunity to see their province from the air and to accompany our team.
The work goes on, fall is coming!