What storms may come

‘Zombified’ is the operative word of the day
although, frankly speaking, ‘operative’ is a
complete misnomer!

No sleep.

No electricity.

No phone.

The storm of the decade arrived yesterday afternoon: one minute the sky was a calm dove grey, not a breath of wind to ruffle the surface of the pond. The dogs were quiet — too quiet, which should have warned me, but my mind was on other things. Things like: “Should I sow pink poppies or red ones in the old blue basin that has been living in the shade of an apple tree ever since I extracted it from the bathroom last year” and “Should I be thrifty and fill the blue basin with extra pungent Greek oregano” and “Will Mrs Joe ever hatch her one remaining egg” when, quite inexplicably, the air vanished.

One minute everything was normal, and the next, the big man in the sky breathed it all in, leaving an unnerving vacuum of ominous nothing it its place and then, having sucked his fill, sent it raging back in a terrifying whistling shriek laden with menace. Rain, then humungous hailstones ricocheted off the tin roof to mind-numbing effect. Alternatively sucking then blowing, the man definitely wanted to remind us mere mortals exactly who rules planet earth and, having got bored toying with floods and cyclones in Australia and messing with temperatures in northern Mexico, he had obviously decided to vent his anger on the Murree Hills and, believe you me, he meant business!

Orchestrating his wind quartet way beyond the realms of possibility, this was only the beginning of the fiendish symphony.  A flick of the conductor’s baton to the right and the symphony rose in a back beat of mind-shattering thunder; a flick of the left wrist and triumphant jags of lightening flickered through the score; a circular motion of the baton and the hail reversed to slashing rain.

Everyone on the mountainside has been praying for water but this was far more than we bargained for!

The electric power disappeared with the first staccato volley of hail, the phone shortly afterwards and by 4 pm it was necessary to light candles for comfort. With the wind achieving unbelievable strength the night ahead stretched out to infinity.

Cowering, under a heavy duvet (I admit to this even though it does go against the grain) I vainly attempted to reassure four terrified dogs who, quite naturally, didn’t believe a word I uttered as they knew that I was frightened out of my wits too. We collectively quaked with every determined banshee howl of wind. Tree branches clattered across the moaning, groaning roof which, I was sure, would be torn off any second. In pathetic readiness for total exposure to the thrashing elements, I had not only crawled into bed fully dressed but had kept my sheepskin boots on for good measure.

The first dark-time casualty — metal buckets and a whole host of other miscellaneous objects having flown into oblivion hours before — was the ornamental strip of metal decorating the eaves of Olive Oil’s house right next door and adjacent to my own bedroom roof on which it snapped to attention every two or three minutes all night long; then part of the ancient peach tree behind the house hit the roof with a reverberating thud and I rushed, torch in hand, to the back room to check for damage. Next, as the wind fed on a power surge from Mars, the solid wood back door, securely shut at the top with a heavy metal bolt, began to buckle inwards from the bottom half as I watched in horrified fascination, expecting it to splinter and break. The force of the wind opened up a two inch gap that revealed the black maw of the storm.It was by sheer force of will that I pushed the door close with the help of a washing machine which, I belatedly realised, was on wheels. The washing machine was barricaded in place with a gas cylinder and then the gas stove for good measure. This feat accomplished, I was trying, in panicked desperation, to drag the dining table to the front door when a great wrenching crash, followed by a series of smaller but no less ominous ones, informed me that the massive wood shed was on the move and there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it other than pray it didn’t hit the house. Still, the conductor whipped up the storm until I almost screamed in exhausted fear. By 7 am, the wind gusting rather than relentless, and the churned up ground transformed to white, I was a frizzled wreck. Too tired to sleep and too cold to care, I stocked up the wood burning stove, dismantled the barricades and coaxed the dogs into joining me on damage patrol.

One entire side of the wood shed was gone, the corrugated iron panels scattered hither and thither. An aluminum step ladder had been blown right out of the shed and deposited half way down the garden!

Empty sacks, plastic seed trays, a red watering-can and other gardening accoutrements had been transported to the most unexpected places: a blue watering-can was spotted on the bathroom roof, a roll of netting had hopped, skipped and jumped onto a distant compost bin and the under-construction chicken house, smashed to smithereens, hung, in bits and pieces, in the scarred and broken branches of a pomegranate tree.

As I surveyed my wounded domain, the echoing thud of hammers informed me that some of my neighbours, particularly those nestled in to the mountainside below my eyrie, had fared far worse in the roof department whilst I still had one, albeit in need of nailing down here and there, to shelter beneath.

Coffee, real coffee not decaf, was definitely in order!

Now, it is evening once again and I just took a break from writing this column by hand in candlelight in front of the fire to give the dogs a quick run in the front garden.

The ground is white and a few snowflakes are drifting, rather half-heartedly, out of drifting banks of sluggish mist.

Over the garden wall is more mist: black patches spotting its frayed and shifting edges.

There are no lights — not even a distant twinkle.

No stars.

There is no sound.

My dogs and I are alone in the fragmentary drift of a storm-shocked universe where we will hibernate in hermetically sealed isolation until equilibrium arrives.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 20^th, 2011.