One thing every expat loves to tell you about the UAE is how safe it is. It’s almost a reflex. We say it to visiting friends. We say it to family back home who worry about the region. We say it because it has been true.
This Saturday, I was reading in the hammock on our terrace when I heard two muffled booms. My family and I live between Abu Dhabi’s international airport and the Formula 1 track, so loud noises are part of the rhythm of our days, and it took a message from a friend back home to make me check the news. Those were the first missiles I’ve ever heard.
Not long after, my phone let out a deafening government alert — a personal siren, in Arabic and English, warning of a potential missile threat and instructing residents to seek immediate shelter.
We’ve lived here for four years. I grew up in the UK with the usual shorthand about this region, but living here has never matched it. That’s partly why this feels so surreal.
Since February 28, the UAE Ministry of Defence says more than a hundred ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones have been detected, the vast majority intercepted before impact. It is serious, and nobody here is pretending otherwise.
The gap between social media and daily life
But serious does not automatically mean chaotic. Scroll through social media, and you might assume the UAE is a war zone. Videos from Bahrain circulate as if they were filmed here. Posts predict the end of Dubai tourism.
In an attempt to put some distance between us and the military target, my family and I spent the first day at the park, lying in the grass, occasionally glancing up at small white puffs of smoke against a cloudless sky. It was oddly peaceful having the place to ourselves, the children running wild, with Ramadan already slowing the daytime rhythm.
Since then, I’m seeing roads calmer than usual, businesses open but eerily silent. Joggers and cyclists still pass along the canal, with the odd paddleboarder bobbing by. Shops seem busier, though no signs of hoarding. Delivery drivers are still out, but placing an order makes me hesitate.
WhatsApp groups were constant at first — videos shared, questions asked and answered, and friends checking in. There have been night alerts, a loud siren that serves as a warning, and another for reassurance. It’s hard to relax when the “all-clear” sounds exactly the same. Still, people are steady.
A subtle déjà vu from the Covid years
My husband and I have been careful about what we tell the children. The youngest gets reassurance; the eldest gets context. We showed our 11-year-old son where Iran is on a map, where the US is, and where the American bases sit in between. We want him to understand that military sites, not neighborhoods, appear to be the targets has helped.
But his daily life hasn’t really changed. He isn’t seeing violence or panic. He’s still begging for screentime, still arguing with his sister.
School is online for now, and morning attendance calls have that familiar early-Covid chaos again — children in full uniform, logging in from kitchen tables instead of classrooms.
Six years ago, during the pandemic, we were in the UK with a green garden and a five-year-old boy who barely understood Zoom. Now we’re in Abu Dhabi, overlooking the water, and our daughter, a Covid baby who’s now 5. The setting has changed entirely, but there’s something oddly nostalgic about the routine.
I’m a journalist, and my meetings in Dubai — an hour’s drive north — have become another measure of the mood. One contact is happy to proceed, one canceled, and another told me they’ll reschedule if things are still going “boom boom.” The tone varies — cautious, pragmatic, sometimes slightly dry — but it feels more representative of the mood here than the apocalyptic posts online.
The question people are asking isn’t whether things will return to normal, but when.
The UAE has a track record of adjusting quickly and getting on with it. Whatever people think of how it presents itself, daily life here is built on systems that keep running even when plans change.
Still, that doesn’t mean it feels normal. We’re not used to this kind of tension, and that in itself says something about how protected we usually are.
The alerts may sound again tonight, but normality will return.
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