Wrath or blessing?

It seems like this town has been punished by the Almighty and Allmerciful. Day after day it is stricken by thunderstorms like I haven't seen any in many years.
It usually happens early afternoon. The sky darkens to a dirty blueish-gray, the branches of the tree in the garden start fluttering in the blowing wind, which picks up speed and makes the curtains perform a fast and frightening dance in front of the open windows, which are opening and closing, loudly dashing against the frames. The air appears to become heavier by the minute, pressing down on your shoulders. Grim, black clouds are looming over the city, announcing the imminent catastrophe. People start running in the street, to get home before the sky falls on their heads. You can already smell the rain, as the light slowly fades, dimming down the colours. And then - it suddenly returns - in thousandfold brightness, connecting earth and sky for a split second like Zeus' angry, glistening sword. A roaring thunder explodes above and seems to break the sky into pieces, releasing an unequalled downpour of rain, which within minutes turns every dry patch of land into a murky puddle.
It all ends as quickly as it began. The rain that was coming down in sheets suddenly stops, as if someone just turned the celestial taps off, but the streets and courtyards remain flooded and the trousers soaked for a few hours, until the waters have drained off. That in itself is not such an easy process, as the town has no drainage system, so the draining only takes place on the surface, turning all the roads that are even slightly sloped into rapid streams, creating a network of rivers, almost as if the town had been lifted up and dropped into the Mediterranean, next to Venice.
Only last night, it kept on raining - not quite like the almost tropical rainfalls in the afternoon (more like British rain), but the whole night through. This morning, many cars were stood at the side of streets, abandoned during the night, because their engines had filled with water, as they toiled, making their way through the water masses.
But what made me shudder, hide inside and curse the day, made the Yemenis say: "al-Hamdu lillah" - thanks be to God. Water is a very scarce resource in the Yemen and these heavy summer rains are maybe the last for another 2 or 3 months. The legend goes that the Yemen was in fact the first place of human civilisation on the Arab peninsula, because its inhabitants were skilled in the art of dam building and thus turned a harsh and hardly inhabitable land into something considered a paradise and mentioned as such in the Holy Qur'an. But their arrogance grew as their wealth did and they soon thought themselves greater than their creator. Thus one day the great dam in Ma'rib broke, causing a massive flood and destroying what was once a thriving civilisation. The population dwindled, people moved out of their former paradise and began settling in other parts of the Arabian peninsula, thus laying the groundworks for such great civilisations as followed in Mesopotamia and the fertile Crescent.

There is so much I still want to say in this blog, so many experiences I haven't managed to put into words, stories I haven't told etc, but I have but a few days left and will be travelling. In shah allah, I will find some time inbetween.