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The sudden cloud of sand that curtained yesterday evening in Bahrain was quite something. The silky sand the wind carried in its robe must have come from some neighboring country’s desert. For I am very familiar with this type of sand: You don’t realize that your world is being buried in it until half the sky, buildings, streets, cars, trees and people (including yourself) are erased out of sight under its cloak.

I must have forgotten about the nature of these clouds of sand that creep into Bahrain every once in a while during my time away all these years. They bring with them a physical change in the weather, some darkness and a spell of drowsiness that no one could clearly explain. These clouds of sand have no roots in the earth; they are nomadic winds that travel around searching for green pastures on which they could feed turning wherever they touch down into deserts that borne more nomads. As far as I know, nomadic culture is not innate to the islands of Bahrain.

I began to feel a little worried when I noticed that the skies were covered in sand (although I first thought that it was some kind of mist). I jumped into my car and braved the streets of Manama, trying to strike some fear into the heart of the cloud of sand, only to find that the cloud of sand somehow managed to invade me in my car. I felt cold, too.

I ran into a shopping mall in search of refuge and I thought that I was safe at first. I was wrong. The cloud of sand followed me into the shopping mall. It got into my hair and clothes. It got into the cup of coffee I bought to warm myself up. I thought that since a big part of the cold cloud of sand was inside the giant shopping mall, there would be less of it outside. I was wrong. The cloud of sand seemed infinite.

With my head down, I drove back home where I was to make my last stand. My head was down for two reasons: I was disappointed that I could not fend off the cloud, and I didn’t want it to recognize me as I drove back home.

But the cloud followed me back home. I actually expected this to happen.

I just walked into the house, and the cloud seemed to have made its way into the house, too. The cloud of sand in its entirety was standing at the entrance of our house. It had its gaze fixed blankly at the wall behind me, as if it knew exactly what it was going to do inside my home.

The wall behind me carries a carpet my father had bought from Kashmir many years ago. The carpet has a beautiful picture that depicts Omar Khayyam drunk with the wine of love that is being poured by a mysterious woman, with some of his poetry filling in the borders. Behind the figures of the mysterious woman and Khayyam at her feet is a deep forest that does not belong to this world.

I knew that this mysterious forest of another world behind the Khayyam of my home is where the cloud of sand wanted to invade next.

In a bid to make a run for it, I shut the lights of the house and ran upstairs as quickly as my feet would carry me. As I ran, I asked Khayyam to forgive me for being so selfish. He kept on smiling, as if he was not worried at all by a silly cloud of infinite grains of sand. The drowsiness and cold that came in with the cloud of sand eventually took over the house and I fell asleep.

***

This morning, I was awoken by a few warm rays of sunlight that seeped into my room through the windows. This made me feel happy: I knew that the cloud of sand was gone. I suddenly remembered Khayyam hanging on the wall in his forest with his love and wine and ran down to see what had become of that beautiful scene.

The carpet was still hanging there, untouched, but a pile of sand that amounts to nothing more than a fist-full bowed down to Khayyam, utterly broken.