Explosions shake Gulf cities as fear grips everyday lives
Iran’s second day of strikes on US targets fuels fear, families brace as uncertainty and anger ripple through the Gulf.
The Sunday morning in Dubai began like countless others before it. The sun rose over the Gulf, painting the glass facades of the Burj Khalifa in shades of gold. In the Marina, joggers completed their circuits, and cafes began setting out chairs for the weekend brunch crowd. The city, a monument to ambition and excess, hummed with its usual energy.
Then the sky broke.
Amira Hassan was on her balcony in Jumeirah, watering her roses, when the first boom echoed across the water. She paused, thinking it was thunder, though the sky was cloudless. Then came the second boom, closer this time, and she saw it: a streak of white smoke arcing across the blue, followed by a puff of white high above the city. Interception. Her watering can slipped from her hand, clattering against the tiles, water spreading in a thin sheet across the floor. She gripped the railing, watching as dark smoke began to rise from the direction of Jebel Ali, a plume so black it seemed to stain the very sky.
Her phone buzzed. Her son, Karim, who worked at the port. “Mama, I’m okay,” the message read. “Don’t go out. I’ll call when I can.” She clutched the phone to her chest, her eyes fixed on that terrible smoke. Karim had worked at Jebel Ali for ten years, supervising logistics, a quiet boy who loved football and his mother’s maqluba. Now he was somewhere in that inferno. She wanted to run, to drive there, to find him. But where would she even go? The city she had called home for forty years, a place of safety and prosperity, had suddenly become a battlefield.
In a villa in the Emirates Hills, Fatima Al Muhairi was hosting her daughter’s engagement party. The women were gathered in the garden, dressed in their finest abayas, sipping Arabic coffee and admiring the bride-to-be’s hands, painted with intricate henna. The first explosion was distant, easily dismissed as construction noise. The second was not. Glasses froze mid-air. Smiles faltered. Then the third boom sent a visible tremor through the garden, rattling the date palms and sending a crystal vase crashing to the marble patio.
The bride-to-be, Noor, burst into tears. Her mother wrapped her arms around her, shielding her from nothing but fear. The women began to gather their things, their elegant party dissolving into a chaos of whispered phone calls and urgent goodbyes. Fatima watched them go, her daughter still sobbing in her arms, and thought of her husband, who was at a business meeting in downtown Dubai. She tried his phone. No answer. She tried again. Nothing. The engagement photos would never be taken now. The catered feast would go uneaten. In its place was the hollow echo of explosions and the desperate waiting for a call that wouldn’t come.
In Doha, Yusef Al Thani had taken his grandchildren to the Corniche for a morning walk. The sea was calm, the sky clear, the city’s skyline gleaming in the distance. His grandson, Ahmed, was flying a kite, a bright red diamond dancing against the blue. His granddaughter, Layla, was chasing pigeons. It was perfect. It was normal.
Then the sky to the south turned dark. Thick, black smoke rose on the horizon, an ugly stain spreading rapidly. The bangs followed seconds later, loud enough to make Yusef’s old heart skip. Ahmed’s kite string went slack as the boy turned to stare at the smoke, his face a mask of confusion. “Grandpa, what is that?” he asked.
Yusef didn’t have an answer. He gathered the children close, herding them toward the car. Layla kept asking about the pigeons. Ahmed kept looking back at the smoke, his kite abandoned on the ground. As they drove away, Yusef caught a glimpse of other families doing the same, a silent exodus from the waterfront. Men in suits spoke urgently into phones. Women clutched children. The city of gleaming towers and world-class museums, of peace and prosperity, was learning a new language of fear.
In Manama, the explosions came in quick succession, four of them, shaking windows and waking those who had slept in. Ali Jaffar, a Bahraini taxi driver, was parked near the Bab Al Bahrain, waiting for a fare, when the first boom hit. His taxi shook. He looked up, expecting to see something, anything, but the sky was empty. The second boom. The third. By the fourth, he was already driving, though he didn’t know where he was going. He just knew he couldn’t stay still.
His phone rang. It was his wife. “Ali, where are you? Are you safe?” He could hear the panic in her voice, the fear of a woman who had raised three children in a country that had always been safe. “I’m coming home,” he said. “Stay inside. I’m coming home.”
As he drove through streets that were suddenly too quiet, he passed a school where children were being led inside by teachers with forced smiles. He passed a mosque where the faithful were hurrying in for midday prayers, seeking solace in the familiar words. He passed a supermarket where people were filling carts with water and bread, the ancient rituals of survival kicking in.
In Dubai, Amira finally reached Karim. His voice was tired, shaken, but alive. A missile had struck near his warehouse. The building was gone. His colleagues, two men he’d shared lunch with yesterday, were dead. He was alive because he’d stepped out for a cigarette, a habit she had nagged him about for years. “Mama,” he said, his voice cracking, “I saw them. I saw them die.”
Amira sank to her kitchen floor, the phone pressed to her ear, tears streaming down her face. She thanked God for cigarettes, for bad habits, for the cruel randomness that had spared her son. Outside her window, the smoke still rose over Jebel Ali, a black monument to a war that had come, uninvited and unforgiving, to their doorstep.