By Sandra Carlson Khalil

In Dubai, we are not allowed to gather in protest. We are not allowed to display a foreign flag, so two weeks after the fight­ing begins, my chil­dren and I cover our front door instead with slices of con­struc­tion paper water­mel­on. My son cuts tri­an­gles, my daugh­ter the rinds. Black seeds spark from the blades of my scis­sors and scatter across the table, more than we need.

Every day, my chil­dren return from school to ask if the fight­ing has stopped. Already, they are so much more aware than I ever was. Their open mouths expand with hope, then con­tract against the news: not yet.  

* * *

Rain falls across the desert. I put my phone down and look outside. Clouds don’t often gather here and when they do, they don’t often rain on their own.  They need to be pushed, cajoled. When one appears, a plane is sent to shoot salt flares into its updraft. Droplets never meant to become rain are plumped and prodded. Pin­pricks metas­ta­size into drops and begin to fall with the weight of water balloons. 

This city that rose from the desert in sky­scrap­ers and feats of engi­neer­ing, rose without gutters. Water pools, then flows through the streets. Traffic signs flash warn­ings, and I see a man nav­i­gate an inter­sec­tion on a kayak. School is can­celed and we stay inside, looking out.

* * *

For two weeks, a cease­fire has been floated; vetoes fall, a bene­dic­tion of despon­den­cy.  “I’m sure it seems much more real where you are,” a friend mes­sages that night, and I wonder how far west I would need to wander before my rage less­ened to a dull ache. Where is the line, exactly, beyond which this is nothing more than images on a screen, bodies pressed between squares of cute kittens and Taylor Swift. 

* * *

After the rain, we head out. The sand is dark and pocked with the shape of rain­drops.  The trees, so used to regular feed­ings drip-dropped from irri­ga­tion tubes, sit in pools; the cir­cu­lar berms around their trunks, meant to capture what should be scarce, are full. 

Togeth­er, we walk past the slender boughs of ghaf trees and the usually fra­grant blooms of frangi­pani. Neither yield a scent. Desert flowers, longing for dryness, cling to wet branch­es, with­hold­ing.  The air is sour with the smell of things that don’t belong.

* * *

Days later, the kids are back at school. The rain has stopped; the fight­ing has not.  The sand is dry, but I notice that the ghaf trees have begun to fall. They lean towards the ground as if they wish to lay down and rest. A crew of men in cotton jump­suits hoist steel bars to prop them up, crutch­es that insist that their branch­es, unused to so much heav­i­ness, stay upright.

Later, when I hear the school bus rumble down the street, I hold the front door wide and brace myself for my children’s ques­tions, but today, they don’t ask about the fight­ing. They’ve either for­got­ten or have grown tired of the same answer. Before I close the door behind us, I notice that the water­mel­on slices have curled and faded. I take them down, pulling each slice, careful not to let the tape peel the paint beneath.