It is strange to look up at the giant, deep-red rock formations and see everything yet nothing. They rise up like flames during the day, and at a distance, an uneven pattern reveals itself, stitching the sky and the land together. That is all I could see till far and beyond until a fellow traveller, who had visited AlUla a bunch of times before, broke the silence and stretched out her hand to point at something closer. “You see that?” she asks. I try to follow her gaze, squinting and desperately trying to save myself from any chances of embarrassment. I take too long. “Look closer and focus, you will see.” I do as she says and the grand Maraya Theatre comes out of hiding just as the sunlight shifts a little, finally falling in my vision.
There’s disbelief at first. How does a structure so grand hide in plain sight? Then comes awe, which never really fades away. In fact, a realisation quickly follows: this is what AlUla is. A mirage that is so real. It is at once a proof of what the future holds and a reflection of how the past always moulds it.