Nadia Afifi

Although Nadia Afifi currently lives in Denver, Colorado, she is from the Middle East and grew up in Bahrain, the island on which this story is set. As a journalism major, her feature articles appeared in local Missouri publications. When she is not writing or reading, she enjoys travel, running and exploring the beautiful state of Colorado.

The Hidden Ones

I first encountered the hidden world on a muggy summer night in Bahrain, near the still waters of the Arabian Gulf (or Persian Gulf, depending on who you wanted to avoid an argument with). Multiple witnesses denied what they saw after the fact, blaming alcohol, of which there was admittedly plenty, or tricks of light and shadow. The religiously-inclined claimed we saw one of the jinn, a being from the spirit world, which was more plausible than an excess of overpriced beer. No one ever hallucinated from Heineken.