Sh@ybah

Everytime you ask my mom about flying to M@kkah, she will surely mention about flying over a vast area that looked like fish scales from the air.

She had asked me several times whether I knew what it was.

Not having seen it myself, I could just imagine what it looked like and I thought it was either a salt plant (where they dig crescent shaped ponds and scrape off the crystalized salt). My brother in law guessed that maybe it was some sorta of a huge electrical experiment, where they use salt water to generate electricity or something.



Last night Taufik came home and mentioned to me about an oil field in the middle of mounds of red sand. The red sand stretches for miles and it sits in small (relatively) mounds, surrounding patches of flat land. Rigs can only be put on the flat lands, and not on the red sands. To built the airport, they had to choose two flat lands adjacent to each other then carve the red sand/rock in between them to fit the runaway.

We went to G00gle earth and found the Sh@ybah airport.

When I looked at the terrain, I knew instantly that it was what my mom had been describing before.



I googled some more and found these amazing aerial photographs by Brian McMorrow.



Dolly, please show mama these pictures and see if this is what she's been talking about.



All I can say is Masya-Allah (Amazing God), and I wish we could go there for a visit one day.