Posted in April 2022

The wind, music, and roaring engine overtook our laughter from inside the red Jeep racing up and down the sand dunes on a hot Friday afternoon.

“I can’t see,” I said as I peered out the window and tried to look over the edge of the sand dune.

Then we can’t go that way, my friend said, laughing as he accelerated to search for a safer place to drive down the dune.

We’d journeyed from Doha to Messaid to meet friends at Sealine Beach.

The ocean lay just beyond the dunes, and I tagged along for the adrenaline rush.

He looked out his rearview mirror and then put his Jeep in park.

“Does this happen often—someone getting stuck?” I asked.

When we go in a group, yes, he said.

We’d been traveling in a convoy—his Jeep at the front, followed by two trucks and two more Jeeps.

The sand all but swallowed the tires of the bluish-gray Jeep stuck on the side of a dune.

Our other friend, who was driving, revved up the engine. The Jeep didn’t budge.

The guys eventually took out the straps and pulled out the Jeep; they completed the task quickly as though it were part of an everyday routine.

By the time we reached the beach, the sun was setting, but the warmth in the breeze lingered.

We set up a table, brought out a cooler, and lit a pile of coals to grill chicken wings.

Over the next three hours, we waded in the clear water, listened to music, and ate potato chips and chocolate. The laughter-filled conversations were light and easy.

Even when darkness settled over the desert, the day didn’t end.

We all headed back into the water and let the music play on.

“I could live out here,” I thought. “Right here.”

For a few hours, I forgot about work and to-do lists as I collected seashells and let my hair run wild.

When the time came to leave, we navigated the dunes with no lights but the headlights until we saw the street lights of the main roads leading to food trucks crowded with night owls celebrating Ramadan.

We joined the crowds and stopped at Tea Time, one of my favorites in Qatar, for karak tea and a wrap.

After returning to the city, I pulled my tangled hair into a ponytail before walking to my car in my sandy sandals.

The next day, as I prepared for the work week, my writer’s mind replayed the details of Friday.

I sat down at the keyboard to type them up.

But as with any story, there are details off the record—those details that become shared memories among a group of friends on a summerlike April day in Qatar.