Brr!

It gets cold here! It was around 48F when I took the dogs out at 430am this morning. The sky is perfectly clear, the air is dry, and a stiff, cold wind is blowing from the northwest. I wish I could say the air is clear too but if the wind is blowing at all, there is a more or less permanent haze caused by blowing dust. It is rare for us to be able to see the Arabian Gulf from high points around camp most days--and it is just a few kilometers to the east.

I know, I know, it isn't the snowstorm of the century. But it is as close to winter as it gets here!

The cold weather produces some very interesting winter variations on the generic thobe, the long white robe that many Saudi men wear. I still can't help thinking that most of them look totally ridiculous in a thobe but there is no doubt that the thobe is often worn by Saudis in a deliberate attempt to distance themselves from westerners. As I've mentioned before, the Saudis also appear to believe the thobe is a dashing representation of their Bedouin "heritage" despite the fact that almost none of them are descended from Bedouins in the first place.

Anyway, for winter wear, thobes are constructed of darker, heavier cloth--think suit cloth made into a robe instead of a suit. Around the Arabian Gulf area, it is common to see Arabian men from other countries wearing thobes of all sorts of sedate colors (blue, brown, grey, even khaki) all year round--it's only the Saudis that wear the white ones.

In addition to shifting to the dark thobes, the men may put on a jacket when the weather gets a bit chilly. Believe me, a Burberry trench coat or a western suit jacket does not improve the overall silliness of the thobe.

But best of all, even though a Saudi man may don his pin-striped winter thobe, he will still wear the cheap, grotty sandals (glorified leather flip flops for the most part) that he wears in the summer.