SANDS OF TIME

One-time Saudi Arabia resident Tharik Hussain returns to explore formerly off-limits ruins from the ancient world-and finds a land embracing change

- Tharik Hussain

The sun's rays slowly flood the two millennia-old red sandstone steps as they make their way towards the heavens. One by one, each tier of the façade begins to change colour with the rising desert sun and gradually the features of the Tomb of Lihyan Son of Kuza reveal themselves. Three cavetto cornices cascade down the front, meeting the pin-straight pilasters crowned with Nabatean horned capitals-inspiration for countless Corinthian capitals across the Greco-Roman world. Sitting at the apex of its Hellenic pediment above the entrance, wings spread ready to take flight, is the now headless eagle and protective symbol of the Nabatean god Dushara.

"If you look beneath the eagle you will see a rough line where the work stopped," explains my tour guide, Abdur Razzak, almost 30 years old and wearing a white thobe that is so pristine that I can't find a single crease. "We don't know why, but we know Lihyan is mentioned in the Nabatean inscriptions as a general in the army, and maybe in the year 106AD when the Romans invaded, Lihyan participated in the war and was killed. Maybe this is one of the reasons he never finished his own tomb."

The façade becomes visibly rough beneath this, as each feature begins to fade. But this takes nothing away from the formidable majesty of the tomb the locals call Qasr al-Farid, or the Lonely Castle, for the way it stands alone in the barren, harsh desert of Al Ula. I can't quite believe I am finally here, after a wait of almost two decades.