I recently returned to New York City after nearly a year in Dubai. When people ask how Dubai was, or how it feels to be back, I feel an emotional vertigo.
The question feels loaded.
As Americans, we have the luxury of looking away. Our skies are missile-free, even as our tax dollars finance the violence unfolding elsewhere. I left a region being actively harmed to return to the empire perpetrating that harm (though Dubai is entangled in that empire too because the UAE hosts both Israeli tech companies and American military bases).
Are you aware there is a war? I need to gauge.
