In the first two days, my body just stopped. I barely ate. I barely slept. I kept finding myself moving away from the windows without really deciding to. At one point, I realised I had been sitting on the floor in the same spot for two hours. I looked at my hands and found I did not know what to do with them.
I have lived a sheltered life. In thirty years, the most disruption I have known was COVID, and even then, Dubai’s lockdown was mostly a matter of logistics. It was brief and inconvenient. Nothing in that experience prepared me for lying awake listening to sounds above me that I did not have names for.
The jets circle constantly. It is a low, heavy roar that feels like it is being dragged across the sky. Then there are the booms. They are distant but intimate, a percussive thud you feel in your teeth. Each one sends a fresh ripple of fear through my chest. It is a dull, constant weight that does not lift even when the sky goes quiet.
The fear is compounded by a total collapse of information. You consume news in real time, yet you understand none of it. Regional media, international outlets, and frantic WhatsApp forwards from aunties all offer competing versions of the same hour. You find yourself memorising the silhouettes of aircraft or the difference between an outgoing and incoming sound, trying to build a logic out of chaos that refuses to be solved.
There is a specific, jagged guilt to being in Dubai. We are physically safe, yet the sky still hums. Online, the vitriol is constant and casual. People look at our safety and respond with a bitterness that suggests we have somehow cheated. You find yourself apologising for the walls around you, as if comfort is a moral failure.
What brought me back to myself were the people who did not have the luxury of sitting on the floor. While I was processing my shock, the city kept moving because they made it move. I saw the delivery riders weaving through the streets as they always do. I saw the pharmacists behind their counters and the supermarket staff restocking shelves at 3:00 AM. The security guards at the building entrances and the cleaners who showed up for their shifts.
They do not get to refresh news apps every ten minutes. They are in it. Their job descriptions do not include the option of logging off or waiting it out somewhere safe. While the rest of us were retreating from our windows, they were out in the world, ensuring that when we finally stood up, there was still a world to return to.
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I feel steadier now, but normal is not back. I am still uneasy near glass. What helps is walking the dog with my husband and seeing people just existing. Buying groceries. Walking.
It is not about “small things.” It is about the fact that life is happening because someone else is doing the work to keep it that way. The sky is loud, but the pharmacy is open. That is the only reality that matters.
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