Sometimes one comes across meteorological erudition in a very unexpected place. The English Patient, for example, the novel by Michael Ondaatje which is now, as they say, a major motion picture, contains a lyrical description of many of the lesser known local winds of the world - those winds with particular characteristics that are such familiar visitors to certain places that they have been given their own special names.
Setting the scene, the eponymous Englishman describes in his notebook how "there is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days, burying villages."
This last phenomenon is more commonly known in meteorological circles by its full sonorous title of bad-i-sad-o- bistroz - literally, according to my sources, the "wind of 120 days"; it is a violent northwesterly down-slope wind which affects Afghanistan and adjacent areas each year from May to September, and as its name suggests, it is known for its consistency over a long period.
But then the English patient goes on to quote others I have never heard of. Nafhat - a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen - a violent and cold south-westerly known to Berbers as "that which plucks the fowls". The beskabar, a black and dry north-easterly out of the Caucasus, the "black wind".
The English patient is at his most evocative, however, when describing the local winds of Africa. Most of these, as one might expect, are very hot and dry and dusty, and are known in general by the name sirocco, a term which comes from the Arabic for "east wind" - although not all siroccos blow from the east.
"There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic. The khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for `fifty', blooming for fifty days - the ninth plague of Egypt."
"The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance. And there is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it." And of the dust-laden simoom, he tells us that "one nation was so enraged by this evil wind that they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred."