Saturday is fast fading. The minarets still shine like Saturn rockets while out at sea the tankers chart a course along the edge of the known world. The winter sun will corkscrew down behind the mountains in around three hours from now and the purpose for the bronze cast of the crescent moon – al hilal – that juts from the top of the minaret will become clear as faith in the night sky.

How the sun does its parabola, is that the trajectory of love? It comes for a day: warms the dumbstruck in the morning with its pastel harmonies, dazzles at noon when the heat of passion ramps up, sustains itself throughout the afternoon, and then starts playing reddened tricks on the landscape, fading in power and intensity as dusk falls.

Here where the sky is flawless 350 days of the year the clouds do not arrive to obscure its path. The Arabian sun sets the human agenda with its moves, the quickness of its ascent, its peak power, followed by a slower, sometimes more dignified descent. Only when it disappears did we know it was there. Only when it burned us did we know that it was colour and not paleness we always needed. Only when its glare overwhelmed us with its everything did we realise that in its absence all we felt was underwhelmed. But best of all, even when at day’s end and it sinks behind the jagged mountains, our grin catches the moonlight knowing that while one sun comes to an end a new love will enter our skies, if not when it rises but whenever it chooses to shine.

Light is a rare thing when everything around is illuminated. If you don’t venture out into it you’ll never know if it had right kind of waves to truly penetrate.