Winds of time
The story of soil in the United Arab Emirates is also the story of the wind. Restless and invisible, the wind has no master and no borders. It moves with shifts in pressure and the pull of the atmosphere, shaping the desert in ways both subtle and profound.
Over centuries, the wind has acted as a sculptor, carrying grains of sand across open landscapes and depositing them far from where they began. In doing so, it erases boundaries drawn by people and replaces them with its own language of movement and change.
The soils transported by the wind always carry with them the memory of their origin:
- From the coastal lands, the wind lifts fine white calcareous sands, scattering them inland, where they settle as bright white soils.
- From iron-rich regions, the wind gathers red sands and deposits them as soils of a deep, striking hue.
- From ancient igneous rocks such as gabbro, the wind grinds down grey sands, which are carried and left behind as grey soils.
- From the sea itself, dredged material rich in seashells and lime is transformed into cream-colored calcareous soils, soft reminders of the ocean floor.
In this way, the UAE’s landscapes are painted in shifting shades of white, red, grey, and cream. No single color belongs to a single emirate, for the wind does not recognize the borders of the seven emirates, nor the limits of the nation itself. Instead, it mixes, blends, and redistributes, creating a living mosaic of multi-colored sands in constant motion.
The winds of time tell us that soil is never fixed, never still. It is always part of a larger journey, carried across deserts and coastlines, reshaped by nature, and woven into the shared heritage of the land and its people