Enya

Cover of Enya's Shepherd Moons album

There is one CD album that captures more or less my best memories in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s. Enya’s Shepherd Moon was on heavy rotation in my CD player at that time especially when I seek shelter from the desert heat. A break from the newsroom means turning on the portable player and rifling through a rack of plastic in search for the right tonal escape.

Enya’s cool melodies would waft through the curtains into my sun-drenched room, putting at bay the above-40s Celsius-grade temperatures outside. In the Mid-East there is a compulsory midday pause from around 12 pm to 4 in the afternoon when stores are shuttered up, the streets nearly empty and only the mosques stir with life as it call worshipers to prayer. For the rest, the long afternoon siesta begins with only the monotone hum of overworked ACs breaking the silence.

In these hours when the heat is at its fiercest, I discovered that the best way to cool down is not only to jack up the AC’s high-cool levers but to play the most soothing music. So I would push the repeat button for Enya’s Shepherd Moon, learning by heart the crystalline notes and wall of echoing Celtic melodies that bring me to an imagined place greener and more refreshing than the clammy heat descending on Al Khobar.

A coastal city, Al Khobar’s heat by day’s end is the sticky sort that makes you feel as if you’ve just exited from the most unregulated of sauna cabins. By sundown the humidity, fortunately, would be compensated by balmy sea breezes and the Corniche or seaside boulevards would fill up with passersby, families, children and young boys battling in a ragged game of football.

Sunset at Al Kobar Corniche, Saudi Arabia

On weekends I would join friends in unplanned trips to the desert, a ride to the dunes or to the public beach for a quick dip or a carefree swim when sea temperatures have sufficiently cooled down. In some days, the hobby fishermen among my colleagues and friends would also dragged me to their hook-line-and-sinker expeditions. I was content then to play the outsider’s role of applauding their day’s catch.

But the best of these leisurely days (mostly on Fridays and Saturdays) are those when I return back to my room, “oven warm” in temperature, which prompt me to go through the intricate rituals of turning the CD player on, placing that silvery sliver of music for the redemption of music. Ebudae, Lothlorien, After Ventus, Carribean Blue, Marble Halls… somehow Enya’s Celtic rhythms would segue well and perfectly complement the rhythms of the Arabian desert.

With eyes closed, the polyester curtains doing a slow dance of breathing in and out, I would unroll in my mind Al Khobar’s Gulf shore and the gentle pull of tides heated by the sun. And as the minarets outside my window would again ring out with the reverberating calls for prayer, my mind’s eye would only see my bare hands, white in the watery depths of the Gulf. The mind is released, afloat against the greenest of drifting seaweeds, and for a moment- a fleeting single moment– I knew I have finally escaped the clutches of the year’s most unbearable heat.