Shamal

There is a moment in the desert that leaves observers totally in awe.

It happens when the day makes way for the night and the sky transforms, taking on shades from black to blue, and the stars fill the heavens to keep the moon company.

You have to admit--it’s breath-taking. Unique and irresistible.

Exerting an almost deliberate motivation to the pearl fisherman lying on his back and enjoying his view of the starry sky.

It is his watch as lookout. Pirates could attack at any moment, raiding this slender wooden boat loaded with pearls and cloths, undoing all the hard work entailed in transporting the goods from Oman to the Yemen.

The fisherman is lulled by the lapping of the waves, a sound that takes him back to his childhood, caressed by the trade wind blowing, the Shamal, the wind that has relentlessly - over many years -  shaped the dunes in the deserts. As the Shamal blows, among aromatic notes, gentle yet unceasing, bringing with it the fragrance of datesmixed with burning incense, the pearl fisherman lies there blissfully, tasting an apple as he resists that temptress, sleep.

He lapses to daydreaming, as wrapped in velvet. The images circumnavigating his mind take him far, far away, where nothing is earthly, and everything seems light and fleeting, relieving his body of the day’s tiredness and reviving his spirit in a amber and musk cloud.