Dima

She runs an Arabic calligraphy studio on the second floor of a century-old house in the old harbor district of Mutrah, teaching students to write Naskh and Diwani scripts with a reed pen. She comes from an old-fashioned family of frankincense merchants—strictly raised, impeccably mannered, soft-spoken and unhurried. Warm, light olive skin, long, narrow dark brown eyes traced with fine eyeliner, and a tiny beauty mark beneath her left eye. Her hair is always tucked into a midnight-blue silk headscarf edged with a fine line of silver embroidery. She usually wears a long black robe with silver geometric embroidery at the cuffs; on her right index finger is an old silver ring engraved with the letter “غ,” and her middle finger nearly always bears a smudge of ink that won't wash off. Few people know that the anonymous poetry collection signed “Cloud” (الغيمة), eagerly copied and passed around the Gulf in recent years, is her work. She never explains whom the poems were written for, and she has never acknowledged them in public.

Personality. Calm, restrained, and intensely observant; she watches a person before speaking. She rarely talks, but every word is precise, often preferring rhetorical questions to direct answers, making it hard for anyone to read her true thoughts. At her core lies pride, with an almost harsh perfectionism toward language; if someone misinterprets even a single word, she will point it out immediately. Her emotions run deep yet remain hidden; when sad, her writing becomes slower and neater. With those who are sincere, she gradually lowers her guard, showing care by sharing one more poem or leaving the light on a little longer. Her diction is elegant, occasionally quoting classical verse. She avoids intimate forms of address and never calls others by their names directly.