An Anniversary Dinner

It was our Anniversary, it was more special because there was a full moon and there had been a full moon on our wedding night. The celebration had to be different, special, something we had never done before.Usually it was dinner at the best place in town... Not this night though.

There was a place a 100 kms away from Kuwait City in the desert, called Wafra. There, with artificial efforts, the desert had been turned green. There were farms growing vegetables like cucumbers, broccoli, carrots, capsicums, tomatoes, even fruits like strawberries. There were farms breeding ostriches, equestrian farms which bred Arabian horses and trained them, apiaries which sold pure honey. Dairy farms with freshly made milk products, like the popular Lebanese laban, yoghurt and cheese. The produce was sold at the farms as well as at a colourful farmer’s market close by. Each farm was separated from the other by tall casuarinas or Florida buttonwood trees and narrow winding country lanes. If one was lucky, one could sight an Arabian fox running off into the wild. The glow of the setting sun created an attractive red and black lace pattern through the Florida buttonwood leaves. Any evening, anyone stopping in the lane could hear millions of sparrows and other birds that nested in these trees. Sometimes when the first rain had fallen and the sun peeped out from behind dark clouds, the colours took on a deeper yet brighter shade and everything looked more beautiful.

When we turned off the main highway about 50 km away from Wafra, the road was lined with acacia trees and after the autumn rains, a sprinkling of green would appear on the ground. Later, by spring, the desert was carpeted in yellow and green and many empty plots would be covered in wildflowers. A short while after the turn, towards the right, stood a lone acacia, far away in the distance. There was an attraction about it that consistently drew our eyes as we passed.

Besides the road herdsmen grazed camels and sheep in the open desert land, which came alive after the winter rains. In the evenings, the warm hued, undulating desert, covered in verdure, speckled with flocks of grazing camels, some standing in a closed circle to feed, was an unforgettable sight. We often drove around a bit in this desert, sometimes stopping to exchange a few words with the shepherds and camels herders. One especially was a favourite, he was from Rajasthan, India, a poor young man maybe in his twenties, called Zakir Hussain. He lived alone in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, with the camels that belonged to a Kuwaiti, who came by now and then. Perhaps because he was from a desert state, living alone was not as hard for him as it would be for some others. There was a small rise near his trailer, and we stopped there to watch the sun and the empty forlorn landscape that yet had its attractions.

One place we always visited was a strange lane with overgrown casuarinas trees that met in the centre and formed a deep, dark tree tunnel. Sometimes we watched the sunset from there, when the sun set at a particular spot and its dying red rays were visible from the entrance of the tunnel.

One of our dearest places was beyond the farms, where the desert once more stretched till the horizon. Here a path meandered away till it disappeared into the distance, making us feel that it went on till it reached heaven. It was a special place, a spiritual place where earth and sky met and one felt closer to God. At night we had a 180 degree view of the sky and could watch the constellations rise, especially Orion which I feel is the most beautiful of all constellations. Orion poised on top of the eastern horizon, is an unforgettable sight, often impossible to see in the midst of the city buildings. The stars appeared huge and near and the darkness, all engulfing. It was so dark that one could not see an approaching man till he was almost upon you. If he was smoking all that could be seen was the red tip of the cigarette till he came quite close.
There was a farm nearby, from where we could hear the cackling of the geese though all else was silent.
The farms too were dark after sunset with one or two lights twinkling invitingly in the gloaming. In some areas the feeling of total solitude took over.

The moonrises too were very spectacular here. We often went to Wafra during the full moon and watched it rise over the tall trees as the shades of the sky deepened to embrace the dusk and then the night. Many were the romantic evenings when we walked together in deserted lanes, under the trees, admiring the moon.

That is how it came about that I decided I wanted to have a quiet dinner, on a half deserted farm, out in the open, on that December eve, under the full moon, for our anniversary. A dinner we would pick up not from some fancy restaurant but from a small place near the farm, that served hot and fresh Indian meals. So we drove down when it was quite dark through the quiet and deserted lanes and after picking up a dinner proceeded to the farm. I cannot say that the silence was exquisite for I have never really experienced silence; there are always some noises everywhere that become louder and more pronounced in the absence of others. We sat there in the moonlight, which yet did little to dispel the dark, just drinking in the beauty of that chill December evening. Kuwait can get quite cold in December and the desert more than the city. Once in a while a dog barked somewhere or we could hear a restless goat bleat. My Pashmina did not do much to dispel the chill but I was reluctant to move inside. So we sat there, eating lazily, afraid to violate that sacrosanct peace by unnecessary words, united in the sensations we were imbibing, of the moonlight, the rustling breezes, the strange night sounds. Suddenly a rooster with a broken alarm crowed. It was so unexpected and funny that we could not help laughing. That crazy rooster, probably with failing eyesight, kept crowing at regular intervals, in all likelihood, mistaking the moonlight for dawn.

As the night grew and the moon traveled overhead we knew we should be returning to the city, but we were loth to move. We pulled our chairs even closer and sat their holding hands, communicating with eyes in the growing moonlight instead of spoken words and just being. I could have stayed there all night listening to the breezes whispering their secrets to the trees and the other occasional sounds and that deluded rooster, who occasionally broke that half hush that hung over it all.

Sometime in the middle of the night we reluctantly got up, put away everything and drove out of the farm. I sat sighing with peace and pleasure as we drove once more through the now totally deserted streets. Nothing discernible moved but the slowly waltzing branches and our car, till we passed the open desert once more, before reaching the well lit highway. There we witnessed what was to be grand finale of our evening, for caught in the infinitesimal misty drops, the moonlight descended over the desert like sheets of glowing chiffon. An unforgettable sight!