It keeps us busy all day long. From the time we crawl out of the gauze nets we sleep under, to the time we return to them exhausted at night, we battle with sand. It pours into every crevice, gathers in every fold, cascades from the joinery in our ceilings like a hundred hourglasses tipped and pouring onto silent piles on the floor.

My mother fights it with a broom. The knock and bump of her broomhead about the furniture is like muffled shell-fire in the mornings. My brother fights with shovels, scraped and dragged across the brickwork around the walls of the house. I fight the sand with dreams fed by television and plans for escape. With eyes on the road to the capital and the coastline which I know are there. But the road itself is often not visible. Only when the bulldozer comes and goes do we see the long, straight shadow reaching to that point on the horizon. Over the weeks we watch as it is erased again.