The transmorph mutant Sooraya Qadir is an adolescent Muslim girl that can turn herself into sand. Separated from her mother and sold into slavery, she saves herself with her powers. She is then taken in by the X-Men and studies at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning where she becomes Dust, a valued member of many of their merry mutant squads.
Turaab
Born in Western Afghanistan, Sooraya Qadir is raised by her mother without knowing her father; as a result, her mother is regarded unfavorably by men of Afghanistan’s Taliban. Sooraya is later kidnapped and sold into slavery by a group of mutant slave traders. When one of her slavers tries to remove her burka, Sooraya lashes out in fear, flaying the flesh from their bones with her sand before passing out. Rescued by Charlie-Cluster 7, AKA Fantomex, and Logan/James Howlett, AKA Wolverine, and once awake, her only spoken word is “Turaab” which is Arabic for “Dust.” She joins them at Xavier’s Institute and takes the code name Dust.
Traumatized by her slavery, Sooraya is placed in a special class where Kuan-Yin Xorn, AKA Xorn, has an affinity toward children like Sooraya. Xorn tries to recruit Dust into his subversive Brotherhood, but she refuses, so he makes it seem like she attacks Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X. Xorn is later exposed as a mad Magneto imitator, and Dust helps the X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants defeat him.
Living Sandstorm
Dust can convert all or part of her body into a living sandstorm composed of sand-like silicon particles. Her brain has attained subliminal awareness of all granulated particles of her body, and through conscious effort, she can affect the degree of molecular cohesion between the numerous adjoining surfaces of her particles and thus cause locomotion of discrete volumes, down to the individual grains.
She can extend her powers to affect the clothing she is wearing, usually her traditional burka. Consequently, Dust can disperse her body so that she becomes invulnerable to physical attacks. She can project her sand particles outward at high speeds allowing her to flay flesh or propel her dispersed form through the air, creating high-velocity dust storms. Dust reverts to human form upon loss of consciousness. Each particle of her dust form can extract air, allowing her to remain in this state for some time, but she cannot survive indefinitely without food or water in this state. She is hard to perceive telepathically in this form, and even the most powerful telepaths require Cerebro’s help to detect her. Temperatures over 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit can fuse her highly impure silicate composition body into glass, and her dust form can be dispersed by water, wind or telekinetic attacks.
X-Allies
Sooraya grows up raised by her mother, Mirah Qadir, but does not know her father. Slave traders kidnap Sooraya, and it isn’t until the X-Men’s Fantomex and Wolverine come upon her unconscious body surrounded by flayed traders that she is liberated. In their care, she goes missing, but it’s Jean Grey, AKA Phoenix, who finds her using Cerebra. Jean reminds Sooraya that she is safe and invites her to join them in her human form.
Dust joins the Hellions, a top squad at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, that rise above their peers in academics and mutant powers. The team is mostly made up of troublemakers, not unlike their leader, Emma Frost–a reformed villain whose smug demeanor rubs off on her charges. Though Dust has a difficult time adjusting to Emma’s team leader, Julian Keller, AKA Hellion, she often questions his authority, which leads to a tense relationship with Dust’s roommate Noriko Ashida, AKA Surge. Sooraya makes friends with Joshua Guthrie, AKA Icarus, until his perishes.
Sooraya joins other such X-teams such as the New X-Men and Young X-Men, and later the Champions.
Flayed Foes
After Sooraya is kidnapped and sold into slavery, her slave traders attempt to remove her burka. But her mutant powers take over, and with her ability to transform her body into sand, she flays the flesh off their bones. The slave traders do not survive.
Xorn, a Magneto impersonator, tries to recruit Dust into his Brotherhood but fails. Xorn makes it seem like Dust attacks Xavier, but eventually, the truth comes out, and Dust helps the X-Men and the Brotherhood defeat Xorn.
William Stryker, a reverend leading the Church of Human Potential and a crusade against Xavier’s Institute, targets Dust because she’s a Muslim. Dust’s friend Icarus is tricked into joining Stryker’s church and killed by Nimrod who had a vision of Dust killing all Stryker’s Purifiers, his followers. Though it was a ruse and who he thought was Dust was X-23 in disguise. Dust defeats Stryker’s followers and seriously injures his follower Matthew Risman in the process–who later fixates on revenge against her for his disfiguration. Later, Dust defeats Nimrod.
The Sands of Time
When Xavier’s students were separated into groups, Dust was placed on Emma Frost’s Hellions squad. When the Hellions met corrupt power broker the Kingmaker, he briefly reunited Sooraya with her refugee mother as a demonstration of his abilities; however, when the squad ultimately rejected and defeated Kingmaker, he transferred Sooraya's mother to an unknown location.
With the student body dwindling due to “M-Day” depowering the majority of the mutant community, the Hellions merged with other squads to form the New X-Men. Shortly afterward, anti-mutant zealot Reverend William Stryker targeted the Xavier Institute, using future-spawned Sentinel Nimrod’s technology to attack the students. Dust defeated Stryker’s Purifiers, severely injuring his follower Matthew Risman, and the battle raged until Dust’s teammate Joshua “Josh” Foley, AKA Elixir, finally killed Stryker.
Later, mutant conqueror En Sabah Nur, AKA Apocalypse, and his new Horsemen offered salvation to mutantkind, but the students helped the X-Men defeat him. When the Nimrod unit tried to force mutant inventor Forge to repair it, the New X-Men saved Forge by sending Nimrod into the past. Before his death, Stryker had contacted the Facility (the creators of Laura Kinney, AKA X-23) to genetically engineer an ultimate anti-mutant weapon dubbed Predator X. However, Dust, her fellow New X-Men, and the senior X-Men ended the Facility’s plans and destroyed all but one of the Predator X creatures.
Shortly afterward, the New X-Men and the entire Institute were pulled into limbo by Belasco, in the middle of Dust praying to Allah. Afraid to fight Belasco who she thought was a demon, she at first refused X-23’s encouragement to fight. After X-23 is seemingly killed, Dust attacked Belasco. Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik, also helped the X-Men and New X-Men defeat him.
Returning to Earth, the New X-Men helped defend Xavier from a rampaging Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk. When a mutant believed to be the salvation of mutantkind was born, who would become Hope Summers, the X-Men, X-Factor, Nathan Summers, AKA Cable, and the New X-Men saved the baby from a host of villains. Predator X, Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister, as well as the Reavers, the Acolytes, the Purifiers, and X-Men traitor Lucas Bishop, AKA Bishop, whom all sought to kill or exploit the child for various reasons. When Bishop seemingly killed Xavier, the Institute closed. Seeking her mother, Dust returned to Afghanistan, where she was recruited into the X-Men-In-Training sub-team for a special mission.
When Matthew Risman, surviving Dust’s attack but scarred, trained Predator X to seek out and kill her though Predator X instead sought out its original target, and Risman’s Purifiers followed.
Dust later joined the Young X-Men formed by Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, alongside Ruth Aldine, AKA Blindfold, Alisa Tager, AKA Cipher, Jonas Graymalkin, AKA Graymalkin, Eric Gitter, AKA Ink, Santo Caccarro, AKA Rockslide, and Nicolas Gleason, AKA Wolf Cub. But the team disbanded after they discovered Cyclops was the mutant-hating cyborg Donald Pierce posing as the X-Man. During this time, Dust battled Magma and was turned to glass when Magma used his heat powers on her. Though Magma used his heat again to reform the broken glass and turned Sooraya back to sand, allowing her to come back to her human form. Though her cells undergo chemical compositional changes to the point of degradation. When she tried to seek a cure out of Pierce, the X-Men intervened, but it meant that she help him escape. In not wanting to hurt her friends, she turned on Pierce and Danielle Moonstar, AKA Dani Moonstar, found her dead after that. Ink resurrected her using his Phoenix tattoo, though in doing so, the healing process caused an alternate future, Earth-90411.
Dust then relocated to San Francisco and then to Utopia along with other mutants. She fought with the X-Men against the Skrull invasion, battled her former teammate Wither after he killed Onyxx, and fought against the Nimrod Sentinels. When David Haller, AKA Legion, warped reality, Dust became a member of the Moonstar Cadre and a harsher, crueler person. After reality was restored, Dust’s memories still lingered. As such, she asked Emma to remove her memories, afraid of even the potential for that person to exist.
When the “Schism” event occurred, Wolverine and Cyclops formed two different teams of the X-Men and Dust joined Cyclops’ team on Utopia. She fought street crime and protected San Francisco, though she joined the Jean Grey School after the war between the Avengers and X-Men ended. After the apparent death of the X-Men, and the arrival of a mutation-suppressing vaccine, Sooraya found herself defending an X-Men monument against anti-mutant protestors. She used her powers against the angry mob to fight for their memory. The Champions intervened, and Dust joined their ranks, helping them battle Rock Trolls.
After the return of the X-Men, Dust became a citizen of their new nation-state of Krakoa.
