On January 17, a drone attack killed three people and wounded six at the Abu Dhabi International airport, about 70 miles south of our apartment in downtown Dubai. The attack was claimed by Iran-backed Houthi rebels based in Yemen; the UAE has troops based in Yemen and backs a Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis. The coalition responded the next day by bombing camps in the Houthi-occupied Yemen city of Sanaa, killing 12. On the following Monday, the UAE, aided by US Patriot interceptor missiles, destroyed two ballistic missiles flying towards Abu Dhabi, fired from Yemen. Houthis again claimed responsibility, and said they targeted Abu Dhabi’s Dhafra airbase as well as…

We spent the winter in Dubai, the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates. Towards the end of our stay (more on that later), we finally got out of the city to experience the rest of the emirate and country. Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, is a popular day trip from Dubai. Strict inter-emirate COVID firewalls necessitated a bit of planning, but in late January we undertook the 90-minute drive to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the jewel of the emirate and one of the largest mosques in the world. While the UAE is fast becoming sartorially Westernized – I saw many…

Let’s continue catching up. We spent the winter in Dubai. As mentioned prior, short-term housing prices proved this to be a bad idea, but we made the most of it: sunny and 75 for three straight months isn’t a bad weather forecast. (On New Year’s Eve we actually got rain, a rarity causing people to peep out of their apartments to film the downpour on their phones.) Our new apartment backed up to the Burj Khalifa, and our bedroom looked south towards Business Bay. Unlike our first month’s rental, this one actually had chairs on its balcony, where we could sit and watch the sunrise. The Burj is one of…