Apparently, this wasn’t anything special. A sort of everyday, run-of-the-mill sandstorm. But it still is creepy and unpleasant and unhealthy … and very Abu Dhabi.

It began back on Wednesday. The wind picked up when we were out deep in the desert. I noticed that whenever the camel herds took a half-lap at the stadium that the dust they kicked up turned into a gritty cloud that blew back into the stands.

The wind got stronger as the night went on. And by morning?

We woke to a sort of grimy dawn. Was it cloudy?

Well, in a way it was. But that was just floating particles of The Empty Quarter up in the air, suspended by wind and obscuring the sun — though not cooling anything.

This was a wind off our own desert (rather like a Santa Ana, in SoCal), blowing from the south. By Thursday morning, the grit was everywhere … including on our tiny patio, which looked like a shallow sandbox. And the clothes that had been hung out to dry now had impressive coats of dust on them.

Breathing air with this much dirt in it is not a good idea. Asthmatics have a particularly rough time of it, and should stay inside and try to breathe filtered air.

Everything the wind could reach was coated with dirt. Cars became filthy overnight. A whole nation of “wash me” candidates written with a finger on a window.

This town, this region, are prone to far nastier sandstorms, it seems. In the hot season, after the whole region is bone-dry, winds come up at the other, northwest, end of the Gulf and pick up tons of sand over Iraq that used to be topsoil. (Desertification is moving fast, in Iraq.) And then the strong winds bring it down the Gulf and dump it all over this country.

(A video game about to come out … or perhaps it already did … is set in the city of Dubai, up the coast, post-apocalypse … after the mother of all dust storms has buried the city to a depth of 50 feet or so. I mean, could happen.)

I am not looking forward to those dust storms. Days and days of staying inside, trying not to breathe hard.

We caught a break, this time. We had a chance of rain almost all weekend, and at about 4 a.m. Friday morning I heard rain fall.

Wonderful. All I wanted was a little precipitation to carry the dirt out of the air and bring it back where it belongs, on the ground. And it rained just enough to do that. Now, cars and houses looked like complete messes, and now the patio was a mudbath, but by dawn on Friday the sky was far clearer. And it was possible to breathe without compromising your health.

Note to self: Buy some surgical masks … change the filters on the AC machines … look into oxygen tank … wait for far uglier sandstorms.