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 knew Dubai to be the most ideal city at the nexus of India and America, at a robust cross-section of cultures, with a compelling offer of opportunity.

Encountering a world

I did not grow up hearing the call to prayer drift over the rooftops of Al Fahidi. I did not inherit the memory of pearl diving, of the creek before the bridges, of the years before the towers erupted from the sand as though the desert had decided, quietly and without much fuss, to become a skyline. And yet this is the story I felt most compelled to share. I may not be a part of its history, and yet, I belong to its future.

When you guide a visitor through a city as a tour guide, you are not simply reading from a script. You are watching a person encounter a world. You are reading them reading it. All they will take back is you, your stories, your lived life in this country and your truth.

So yes, I use “we”. Not to claim ownership of a heritage that is not mine, but because somewhere between my first tour and the thousandth, the UAE stopped being a place I was describing and became a place I was inhabiting. And in the end, that is a distinction the city itself does not seem to mind.

Dubai has always been a city of arrivals. Alongside Emiratis, it was built by people from somewhere else. Its “we” has always been capacious, pragmatic, and quietly radical in its inclusivity. I borrowed the pronoun from the city itself.

I often bring my guests to Al Quoz, where at the entrance to Alserkal Avenue, Dubai’s vibrant arts district, an artwork draws you in. Large letters installed atop the warehouses, with text that reads: “When did you arrive?” And just inside, the installation’s second half comes into view: “When will you return?”

Deceptively simple questions

This is The Circle Game, a work by American artist Mary Ellen Carroll. The questions are deceptively simple. They are familiar questions asked of many of the foreigners who live in the UAE. I have learned to challenge this notion while guiding my guests through the Avenue.

For many of us, especially over the last two decades, the circle game is no longer a relevant reflection. The revolving door of expats has morphed into a long-term lease or title deed to permanent roots. The Circle Game may have been Dubai’s past but its future is a permanent address. We are not passing through anymore – we are, quietly and collectively, home.

And then came the war. On Saturday, February 28, I was on a tour with two British women in Mike Arnold’s art studio in Al Fahidi. Arnold is an American architect who has lived in Dubai for more than 20 years. When our phones began to buzz with the news, Arnold and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and agreed that this was not our war.

Since February 28, 2026, as the conflict in the Middle East has escalated and missile and drone attacks have struck closer to home – reaching into UAE airspace, rattling windows – we were all shocked that we were drawn into this conflict against our wish.

I watched this city do something extraordinary: it did not flinch. Schools moved online with synchronous and asynchronous learning options. Our parent WhatsApp groups offered support, words of kindness and advice. Most people continued to go to work. Entrepreneurs have opened their shops. Delivery drivers make their rounds.

A dichotomy has emerged among residents, two groups, one that has stayed through the attacks and one set that has chosen to leave the UAE, albeit, temporarily. Departing is being shamed as abandonment while staying is the gritty display of support for the UAE.

There is also a presumption that everyone has an easy choice.

Exposing vulnerabilities

Many do not have another place to leave for. Their entire life, work, family is in the UAE. Leaving is not an option when this is your home. Leaving is also not an option when you are supporting a family back home through your remittances. The war has exposed vulnerabilities in our society that we were not fully prepared to handle.

Yet, kindness has emerged and there is a shared sense of supporting each other through this crisis.

On my tours, I pause at the Creek and tell my guests: everything you see around you was built in living memory. The towers, the metro, the museums, the ports – they were built together. The Emirati government that envisioned the project, the Filipino worker who laid the tiles, the Lebanese designer who conceived the interior, the Indian project manager who delivered it on time, the British communications director who told the world about it – all of them are part of that story.

Dubai’s skyline is not a monument to one people. It is a monument to many.

Articles in the media have been trying to predict our end. They do not realise that the nation has never, not once, stopped building. We were here before their headlines and we will be here long after them.

Priyanka Gupta Zielinski is a business leader and author. Her book, The Ultimate Family Business Survival Guide (Pan Macmillan), is a manual to help family businesses thrive even in times of crises.