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.

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........

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