Shamal

In the spring and summer the northern sky would suddenly turn dark brown, or burnt orange, signaling the onslaught of a shamal, a fierce sandstorm that blew in hot northwesterly winds with stinging sand for two or three days at a time. ❋ Kai Bird (2010)

Sandstorms are common in Iraq in the spring, when the northwesterly shamal wind, funneled into the Mesopotamian plateau by the mountains of Turkey, drags through Iraq and Kuwait enormous quantities of sand it picks up in Syria and Lebanon. ❋ Anna Badkhen (2010)

The shamal blew when Bassam and his friend were about halfway to Baghdad. ❋ Anna Badkhen (2010)

By then, the shamal had moved on, taking its veil of dust to Kuwait. ❋ Anna Badkhen (2010)

The shamal comes in quickly and silently, like an ocher paint roller, and can blow for several days straight, subsiding slightly at night when the air is cooler. ❋ Anna Badkhen (2010)

We start to cough, our throats parched and dry to the bone from breathing razor-sharp particles of sand blown across the desert by a summer wind, a northwesterly they call the shamal. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Frank unlike you arm chair general's (sorry if I'm wrong) I have dealt first hand with fallout of terrorism two of my friends were blown to pieces in a bar in shamal shiekh & my father was nearly killed by an IRA bomb in pub in Longacre. ❋ Unknown (2007)

The “shamal” blows from the northwest over Khuzestan and coastal regions of the Persian Gulf from February to October, most intensely in summer. ❋ Unknown (2006)

He peeked inside the sheet -- I'd had to keep you practically smothered to get you back to the house through the shamal -- and you opened your eyes wide and looked as if you were smiling at him. ❋ Brien, Nell (1999)

Not that she would awaken Jim; he could sleep through anything, even a shamal. ❋ Brien, Nell (1999)

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 1958 1 he wind was picking up, another shamal on its way. ❋ Brien, Nell (1999)

The silence of the sleeping vessel was a relief after the howl of the shamal. ❋ Brien, Nell (1999)

And a deadly climate, the city either blanketed by the unnerving moisture of the Red Sea, causing heat rashes in inconvenient places, or buffeted by the shamal, a dry and crackling wind that swept in from the desert, bringing sand into every corner, every fold of cloth. ❋ Brien, Nell (1999)

They emerged into a large square filled with camels, couched with their backs to the wind -- a caravan waiting to leave as soon as the shamal ended, the drivers, heads wrapped in untidy turbans, huddled against their animals for protection from the stinging sand. ❋ Brien, Nell (1999)