The Emirates embody a vision of progress rising from the desert — a landscape transformed into a realm of skyscrapers, glass, and modernity, yet still intertwined with tradition. When I visited the country in 2008, I traveled through its gleaming cities and into the outskirts, where the desert now seems contained, pushed to the horizon yet still present in the air and light.
As Italo Calvino once wrote, “Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes.” In the Emirates, that tension between emptiness and ambition, silence and construction, defines the spirit of place — a dialogue between what was and what is becoming.
