I was scanning old pictures when my 7-year-old daughter paused behind me, peeked at the monitor with her chin at my right shoulder, and asked, “Ano’yan daddy; dagat?” (What is that, Daddy? The sea?) and there is not a drop of seawater in the picture.
I was shocked; it baffles me to this day…
The Assir region is Saudi Arabia’s highest peak, and wherever you drive, you can’t help but be awed by the beauty of this corner of the Arabian
Peninsula. It is more than 3,000 feet above sea level with a weather system
that is almost heavenly if you consider the searing heat of the desert. It is
not hard to tell if you travel through the breathtaking panorama of mountains
and valleys that these valleys and rocks were once at the bottom of the sea.
The shoreline markings (Google map photo) that divide the
underwater rocks and the mountain peaks that were above water are unmistakable, but how a ‘7-year-old’ tells from a 30-year-old photo is mindboggling. My
other children grew up in this region, and although we frequently travelled through these mountains, none of them ever mentioned being in what used to be a sea, and here comes one who has never been there, peeked at a worn-out photo, and said, “What is that, daddy, the sea?”
NLK
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