Summer is always very hot in Pakistan. The month of June and July are very difficult to pass. Last year it was the month of July. I was in my village spending the summer vacation. The day had been not and sultry not a leaf had stirred during the long and unending length of its everlasting hours and with the coming of the evening the heat and sultriness did not abate. Except that the sun was withdrawn.
The trees were painted against the background of sky like to many masses hewn out of rocks immovable and fixed. The whole day animals had been lying helpless. Tounges out panting n the shade of trees and walls their eyes bulging. Children had been unconscious and men and women had not a wink of sleep in the day. Everyone was disturbed and upset. People were looking to the sky.
It was already well on into the season when rains are expected in our part of the Punjab. But no rains had come this year and the land was parched and hard all round. The ponds were dried up and there was no solace for man or beast on any side. The evening came and as usual no body could sleep. After a square meal for no one felt very hungry in the oppressive heat people got on roofs and into the open to sleep but all in vain.
It was suffocation in the air. The body was sweating profusely and there was not a breath to dry it away. People were tired of moving their arms holding the fans. The air that war stirred was as hot as a blast from a furnace. The cattle that were tied were lowing piteously in the heat and thirst. Dogs were howling and children were screaming. People could not keep lying in their beds in this state and a person would now and then be seen to get up and walk about adjectedly for some time and in this way to seek some change and comfort and comfort from a bed that had grown painful to the feel.
There was a stir in the air at about midnight and people were glad to hope that at long last the stifled fury breaking and giving way before the wind. But the breath that blew was hot. Its speed increased and in a few minutes hot choking dust was flying all over us with great speed and fury.
Dust was on every side. Our eyes ears mouths and noses were stuffed with the dust. It got into our clothes and could be left unpleasantly along our sweat covered bodies. It got into the very fibre of our bed clothes and struc into the pores of our skins. There was such a terrible noise of the trees of the cattle of the screaming children and the howling dogs. That one thought doomsday. On which the earth would shake and all living creatures die had come.
Things started to fly in the air. From the roofs cots flew down clothes were carried one knew not where. Thatches of huts were blown miles away. This sandstorm blew for more than an hour. Then its fury somewhat abated and gradually it became a gust and then a wind and a breeze. Hot and unpleasantly dusty we tried to get a wink of sleep towards the close of the night.