View from Dubai: Leaving is not an option when this is your home

I have been asked this, in one form or another, more times than I can count. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in curiosity – a raised eyebrow from a guest who has just noticed my accent, my name, the fact that I come from somewhere else entirely.

Sometimes it arrives as a pointed observation. One guest, a man with a dry wit and a thoughtful gaze, said it best of all. “It’s interesting,” he said, not unkindly, “that you refer to yourself as ‘we’ – even though you are very much a foreigner in this country.”

He was right. I am a foreigner.

I am an Indian woman, married to an American man, a Hindu devotee with Ganesh chalisa in my bag, raising my three Catholic children who were born in the United Arab Emirates, an Arab Muslim country.

In India, I grew up around close Muslim friends, studying to read Arabic, learning about how to perform the wudu ritual and memorising the kalimas. In Dubai, I can be summed up, I am Emirati. I am “we”.

I did not come to Dubai as so many do: with a suitcase filled with hope. Soon after my wedding, I moved to Dubai in a premeditated effort to start my married life. I...

Read more