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Would you kindly bear with me a little while I have a good old moan, please? I'm feeling rather wretched. No, not because I've finally kicked a lingering lurgy that turned out to be bronchitis, but because one of the reasons I blame for the illness is back: the Harmattan.

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Video: Haboob, A Huge Dust Storm, Hits Phoenix Area

You know that saying about an ill wind? Well, that ill wind is the Harmattan. Seasonal sandy, dust-filled, hot, trade winds blow in from the Sahara Desert and sweep across West Africa, including the coastal curve — and directly down my throat and into my lungs and increasingly constricted chest.

OK, ok. That may not be a scientific assessment, but that's how it feels, so please indulge me!

i

The view from the author's home in Accra, Ghana. The buildings in the background are typically bright green and red, but a blanket of Harmattan haze has dulled their colors. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

The view from the author's home in Accra, Ghana. The buildings in the background are typically bright green and red, but a blanket of Harmattan haze has dulled their colors.

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

The Harmattan, a land wind, blows from the northeast, often starts in January (the cool season) and sometimes continues through to March — though winds come and go, without much notice.

There's a Harmattan haze hovering over downtown Dakar that looks all too familiar. The malevolent mantle of dust and sand, that's threatening to settle, comes after gusty, dusty weather, with winds whistling through the streets of the city center.

It usually carries large amounts of dust, which it transports hundreds of miles out over the Atlantic Ocean. The dust often interferes with aircraft operations and settles on the decks of ships.

The same dust-laden winds that blanketed Accra when I was back home in Ghana last month — and where I fell ill — seem to have followed me across West Africa to Senegal, where majestic and mighty baobab trees and palm trees are sprinkled with a layer of dust.

Pedestrians are covering their mouths and noses with scarves and shawls for protection. And fast food motorbike delivery riders are wearing mouth masks.

Some days, visibility was limited to about 150 yards in Accra, and then the haze would lift and, psychologically, you would feel a little better.

When I was a child, I remember being told "children get sick during the Harmattan season," so take care and don't be ill.

This year it's not only children. On plane journeys, on the street, just about everywhere, I seem to hear adults and kids coughing, like the relentless cough I just couldn't shake. I'm so sure this lingering seasonal Harmattan, which descends on us, then disappears, is one of the causes of these lurgies.

A Dakar-based pulmonologist told me asthma sufferers get worse during the Harmattan, wheezing, whistling and rattling even more than usual. Keep that pump handy.

And surely it can't be a coincidence that chest and throat infections seem to be on the increase? Must be all that germ-filled dust we're gobbling up.

But the Harmattan winds are not only a risk to humans and health. Agriculture is also feeling the effect; regional cocoa trees are suffering. (Yes, the cocoa that produces the chocolate you crave.).

The cocoa crop in Africa's two top exporters, Ivory Coast and Ghana, has been hit by the Harmattan, we're told.

Farmers and analysts warn that the worst Harmattan winds in several years may lower output and cut production. As the seasonal gusts blow down from the Sahara, they blanket the cocoa-growing regions in dust, which lowers temperatures and blocks out sunlight.

In Ivory Coast, blossoms and small pods that were visible this time last year are apparently missing from the cocoa trees this season.

And here in Dakar, usually bright blue skies have turned horrid and hazy, with an almost yellowy tinge.

So that's why I'm feeling rather miffed — because I was hoping we were finished with the Harmattan this year. But the ill-wind looks as if it wants to pester us a little longer.

I read somewhere that the rather lyrical name "Harmattan" originates from the Akan-Twi word haramata, which could possibly come from the Arabic haram, meaning "evil thing." Evil works for me. Begone!

West Africa

Weather

Forty years ago, Mark Bell — a Brooklyn kid who was pretty good at the drums — was invited to join the punk band the Ramones. One name change, many records, tours and death-defying adventures later, Marky Ramone has written a memoir of about his career, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone.

The other Mark(y) famous for his contribution to pop music was Mark Wahlberg, back in the days when he was Marky Mark. We'll see if Ramone can correctly answer two out of three questions about Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

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Read an excerpt of Discontent and Its Civilizations

Discontent and Its Civilizations

Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London

by Mohsin Hamid

Hardcover, 240 pages | purchase

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Mohsin Hamid has been called a water lily for the way he's drifted from place to place. The 43-year-old novelist and essayist, born in Lahore, has established roots, grown and thrived in places as disparate as Pakistan, London, California and New York. He's best known as the author of the 2007 international bestseller The Reluctant Fundamentalist which has been published in 30 different languages, was shortlisted for Britain's Man Booker Prize and was made into a 2013 movie directed by Mira Nair.

Hamid's professional life began in the business world, not in book writing. After attending Princeton University and Harvard Law School, he worked as a management consultant in New York. But his first novel, Moth Smoke, published in 2000, launched him into the literary spotlight. The story of a dissolute former banker in Lahore, Moth Smoke was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, given for an outstanding debut work of fiction.

Hamid went on to publish two more novels and eventually left New York for Lahore, where he lives with his wife and two children. His new book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London, explores some of his thinking, reflection and recollection over the past 15 years. Speaking with Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, he examines some of the fissures of the post-9/11 world, the value of "mongrelization" — and the power of love.

Interview Highlights

On being an outsider

"I was born in Pakistan and came to America when I was three, and I spoke Urdu fluently. But I arrived in America and quickly discovered from the kids around me that I didn't know how to speak, because I couldn't speak English.

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"So I learned English, forgot Urdu, went back to Pakistan at nine, and discovered, of course, that once again I did not speak properly. So I learned Urdu. And I bounced around between America and Pakistan and Britain for most of my life.

"So I'm somebody who can blend in usually quite quickly — but inside continues to retain a sense of feeling foreign."

On re-thinking the presumed link between poverty and terrorism

"I don't think terrorism is only the poor man's politics. I don't think that that narrative is complete, so it's probably worth us reexamining it.

"But I think at a deeper level, what we see is people are becoming hybridized, mongrelized. They're becoming Western, Muslim, American, Pakistani — at the same time. And if we can encourage that kind of hybridization, mongrelization, and look at it as a good thing, I think we're relatively safe.

"But if we start looking at it as a bad thing (and many people do) then a desire is born to try to separate one's self, one's different parts — to not be Pakistani and American or Muslim and European, but to pick sides. And when that happens, you see young people feeling they have to reject what they think they are becoming. They are becoming tainted by becoming Westernized. And so, in a way, the war is a war with part of themselves."

On the drawbacks of drones

"I think that it's completely understandable that the United States would wish to deploy drones in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, I think that they're deeply counterproductive for a number of different reasons.

"One is, of course, they do kill innocent people. Two is that — even when they kill people who aren't innocent — they have the effect of allowing, in a country like Pakistan, the continued view that America is to blame, that America's intervention is to blame, for extremism in Pakistan.

"And of course, America has played some role in extremism developing in Pakistan. But I think Pakistanis have to recognize — and many do recognize — that the most important role has been played by Pakistanis themselves. And so the drones prevent Pakistan from basically taking the lead in its own effort to eradicate these extremists.

"Nobody from outside can police it. Pakistanis have to come to the conclusion that they have to fight this fight for themselves, and drones, I think, prevent that from happening."

On love

"All of my novels are love stories, in a way. And — and I think, in a way, I think love is kind of the plot in our lives, you know? The early loves we have, the loves of our parents when we're kids, the loves of our friends. Romantic love, love for children, you know — all of that, that's what provides the structure on which human lives are built. ...

"And it's in a way embedded in the culture and even religion of the part of Pakistan I'm from — which is that one of the ways in which we can confront the horror of being mortal and dying one day is to love enough that we're not so central to ourselves that we can't face the fact that we're going to end.

"And I think in these times, when you see politicized religions and all kinds of extremisms and the market taking over everything, love, in a way — it sounds like a soft thing to say, but I think the ability to feel for others is a potential way out."

Mohsin Hamid

essay

Lahore

Pakistan

As we reported late Friday, the House managed to approve a one-week extension of funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which President Obama signed. The passage capped a day of scrambling that saw a longer three-week stopgap shot down in the House.

But the thorny issue that has weighed on a longer-term funding bill — an insistence by Republicans that it include a push-back on the president's executive action on immigration — is still in the air. And the clock is ticking on the fresh deadline to resolve the impasse.

Where might things go from here?

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"Republicans said they expected that next week the House would end up going along with the Senate's bill funding Homeland Security through September without immigration changes. 'I don't think there's any alternative,' said Rep. Charlie Dent (R., Pa.) 'When we're at the end of next week, what do we do?'

"An aide to House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said the Republican leader had made no commitment, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said she expected the one-week measure would buy the time to pass a funding measure that would cover the remainder of the fiscal year."

Politico adds:

"Boehner's allies are concerned after Friday's setback that his critics inside the Republican Conference may try to oust him as speaker if — as expected — he puts a long-term DHS funding bill on the House floor next week. While Boehner shrugs off such speculation, close friends believe such a move is a real possibility. ...

"Twenty-five Republicans voted against Boehner for speaker on the floor in early January, signaling his continued problems with his conservative hardliners. And Boehner's allies believe that the earlier DHS debacle on Friday, when 52 Republicans voted against the three-week plan, was in part aimed at toppling the speaker."

The Hill notes:

"Pelosi ... didn't explain why she and the Democrats — who were adamantly opposed to a three-week extension — suddenly reversed course to accept the one-week deal just a few hours later.

"The Democratic leaders declined to comment on whether their agreement to the seven-day deal came with assurances that the House would vote on the Senate's 'clean' DHS bill providing funding through September."

House Speaker John Boehner

House leadership

Congress

Department of Homeland Security