The sun used to be evil. Now it’s just unfriendly.
A “season,” according to Wikipedia, is “a division of the year, marked by changes in weather, ecology, and hours of daylight” that results from “the yearly revolution of the Earth.” What Wikipedia doesn’t say is that seasons, despite occurring yearly with little variation, are miraculous. There’s a quote by someone I can’t remember that goes something like this, “The winter is cold, and the summer is hot. Every year this news hits the people of Britain like a thunderbolt.”
I’ve never heard anything more true. While growing up corn-fed in Oklahoma, I was accustomed to knowing what season we were in from the headlines on the front page of The Daily Oklahoman: “It’s Cold Outside” for the winter or “It Sure is Hot Out There” for the summer,” and I used to mock this bizarre culture of weather fascination. Couldn’t they see it was always the same? But after traveling 1/3 of the way across the world, I have become one of the shell-shocked masses. Something has happened that I didn’t dare to believe would come to pass: the weather here is cooling down.
This change in weather is a subject of daily wonder for me. It’s as if I’ve never experienced the changing of the seasons before or undergone a full rotation on this earth. Maybe I’m undergoing a radical paradigm shift from viewing Cairo as a place that is always hot and unbearable to a place that is somewhat cool and semi-bearable.
Whatever the reason, I can’t stop talking about it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this weather is awesome. Right now it’s 75 degrees, I’m wearing a long sleeve shirt, sweatpants, a scarf, and loving life. I even have goosebumps right now, and they’re not because of extreme dehydration, heat stroke, or a food-poisoning induced fever.
If I’ve seen you within the last three weeks, odds are I’ve exclaimed something mundane like, “This weather is soooo nice!” or “This weather is soooo beautiful!” or “I love this weather!” I may have even said all of them. And I’ve seen you more than once, I’ve probably said the same thing to you again without shame, even remembering perfectly well that we had talked exclusively about the weather the last time we spoke.
The reality is that I will continue to talk about the weather as if it were an interesting subject, even though I know it is not. But the fact I no longer want to throw myself under the nearest moving vehicle when I’m in the sun is a miracle, pure and simple. Last week, I lounged in full reach of the sun’s rays and napped. Had I tried doing that a month ago, all that would have been left of me after fifteen minutes would be a puddle of pinkish goo and a Pilot Precise V5 pen. The times are a changing and it’s wonderful! Let the news ring from every building top, balcony, minaret and steeple: AUTUMN IS HERE! AND I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT!
Snotting black 