FIELD REPORT: 04

On standby at all times.

From the inside - UAE, March 2026.

I’ve been away, but I’m back for a bit. Missing you all. If I haven’t replied to you yet, please let this be my reply.

You need to know that I’m well aware of the blessings and the choice to stay or go, and I’m very lucky to be together with my little family. We have plates of dinner to eat, a treasured friend to stay, and we shelter under a warm, solid roof, with access to clean water, outdoor space, handfuls of lemons and aubergines from our daily harvest. There is work to be done, for now, at least, and many options for a safe passage to somewhere else. A growing, unshakable bond.

But then my son drops a fork, and my body remembers. We’re living with new signals now, fresh patterns breathe under warm flesh. Sounds signal jumping jacks, my heart leaps up, and punches towards the ceiling as I register and tune into what the exact sound was.

Shame. Shame on me, spilling all my feelings all over our floor. Eyes remain wide, protective, in an effort to mask, deep.

CROOKSHANK, stand tall, we’re fine. Then:

“Mummy, what’s wrong with your face?” my son cries.

“Um, it’s all in the body son, it’s Mummy’s funny body that’s all, we’re safe, but there are traces of new memories today, marks from a new map in our veins. This face is like, I mean, my face is ummmmm fresh with absorption.”

He looks confused. We both do.

“These are big sounds of ummmm safety,” I say.

And I think I’m just about getting away with it, for now, here on day twelve of a war. Attacked by the so-called fatherlands, ignited by the greedy, hateful guts of the others. And we’re still here, we stay, alongside many others, many who have no other choice, those who book a private jet, leave their pets (I HATE YOU), and escape to palatial hideaways - that’s not the general peeps, I don’t know anyone who has all those options because most of us live life for real.

This shared new chapter sings to a new tune, dictated by sounds and systems now, a sensory reshuffle, underscored by the trusted missile alert tone pinging through the phone. I want to whack it like whack-a-mole. ( I know the privilege of levity. But I’m using it anyway.) What is this untamed and ALARMING creature doing in our bed? It’s so FREAKING loud that it’s received unsolicited feedback, a TripAdvisor review, and like, yeah, it’s meant to be alarming, but let’s tame it so it sounds more like a ding, a neat familiar ping, to regulate our already over stimulated nervous systems, make it act better, you know, more like a missed call or an online shop notification OKAY. THANK YOU. PLEASE.

But that’s a bit pointless because then come the big dogs. The big sings in the form of supersonic jets like beasts above our heads. Followed by the blasts from the mostly successful intercepts of the untamed missiles heading for our future. On a mission to AVENGE someone else’s EPIC FAIL. Resulting in our places of safety shaking at the edges. This is just the new normal now, and can be disguised for a five-year-old as a number of things: Ramadan fireworks, new maps and patterns, a calling from the dragons for protection, Lego bricks tumbling from space, and can sometimes be fully masked when he’s finally sleeping deep.

Then shame again, who do we think we are, taping up the windows? Pulling the curtains firmly shut and leaning a sofa against the glass. Thoughts are with them, with our neighbours next door, then the regional souls, at the mercy of so much more than this for generations, the families and children in Gaza sheltering with nothing but tents, paper-thin walls between the shocks without warning. The dear pals in Lebanon and our treasured Persian family and friends in Iran. Living without a passage to return, zero alerts, an opportunity to WhatsApp back, unravelling generations of trauma without warning. And it’s all coming for them again, no bookends on their watch, no end in sight, no air defence or floor for their spillage of feelings. Nothing held, nothing hidden, and nowhere else to hide.

How dumb am I to be jumping at a fork?

But over seventeen hundred missiles have been flying over my son’s head, intercepted above this city since it began, twelve days ago, and I can’t get that vision out of my mind. The near death of it all, the precision and planning (or lack thereof), the speed, the short distance that floats between us all. And what about the UK? My London. What would London look like if it had to become this good at defending itself? I appreciate the check-ins and love across the miles, but if this were London, would anybody be asking why we hadn’t left yet?

Because we live and work here, we set up shop and home somewhere else, and now we belong to a shared experience with those who chose and had to stay, a new family across the 200 nationalities that graft and breathe here. We all know the drill: trying to reach for opportunity, with the doors more open depending on which passport you hold. We attempt to be all things to all people across regions. And yet, from the eyes of those who have already decided what the UAE is, whole communities of us don’t exist at all.

Staying is a reality for so many of us. And I am reminded of the weight of this as I observe my husband in survival mode, strategizing the next possible steps, calling his Father in the UK, who only just managed to get out of Tehran just a few heartbeats before kickoff. Their DNA is pounded by the trauma of decades of injustice as they collectively attempt to make contact with the family who are still there, existing amidst yet another internet blackout.

Safely, safely. Why don’t you get home safely? Thinking of plan B, C, or D. But who plans for any of this? Tell me about your plan B’s. Tips for your plan C’s, please.

With all the gratitude and privilege in the world, and all my gluttonous grief right now, I am continually unsurprised and disgusted by so much, but mostly by my own rising fears, manifested in emotional eating, drinking, and scrolling. How dare I allow this body to be governed by adrenals, cravings for crap, stuffing myself with a diet of ‘quick fix’ intel, yet I’m hungry to know it all and held by the same systems that defend us like an absolute fortress. Yes, the sand has shifted across this land of opportunity, together we ride the Big Dipper from the inside and hope for another ‘up, up, up and away’.

This war is no longer over there; it’s more loop-the-loop, pulsating inside our bones. It’s scattered across a region across the way that weeps with black tears, beaming into all your screens, blasting comms and late-night WhatsApp messages that blink you awake all night long.

And yet we are considerably, I mean all things considered, FINE.

Still. Staying still and feeling fine. I can’t quite reply. To it, to you all. Sorry. Another shameful challenge. Yet I know how to read a screen, which used to be my job. I check Flight Radar 24 instead; it’s not very yellow anymore, it should be a sea of yellow pulsating civilian aircraft. Why isn’t it yellow?

What is this hole?

And I wait. I know what a signal looks like before it becomes something else. I’m trained to watch for what’s coming before anyone else knows it’s there, and I’ve been doing that for two weeks from a villa blooming with bougainvillea in the UAE, but I’m no longer sure which part of my body is on ops and which part is the target.

And I thank YOU, UAE. For the defence of our fortress, I never thought I’d know those words, and I mark this page in truth completely.

And here’s to us, the people who remain in many forms, the dear working all hours hearts who have already lost their lives to this unbelievably cruel attack. The dear souls who built it well before we and the influencers blew in, humans who built foundations of all community, working on the double to literally share a love language of what that actually means. We are not in denial; no one here is claiming that this is business as usual. But there is a something, a feeling that the narrative doesn’t have the words for yet. I think it’s closer to belonging, or commitment, I’m not sure.

And I’m the first one to speak up about institutions when they fail the bodies in their care. But this is a new feeling; this is the first time I have felt something I can only call trust, something I never dared to think would spill from my greedy chattering mouth. A trust in the leadership, perhaps, and their calm capacity to defend us as people and protect us at all costs. An uprising of feeling from within.

I don’t know what to do with that. It feels hot and messy.

And this is an attempt to find space for that by playing with my limited vocab and English lingo. We are all carrying so much; it’s heavy right now for all of us. Is this terrible timing, or the only possible way to tell it? I can’t tell the difference anymore. It’s all just the sound of that disorienting fork.

And we dig into the anchors, the rituals which might hold the answers hour by hour as this experience grows, it is the children who are the greatest teachers at all times, but especially now. Our little ones are gathering across communities and huddling inside laps, our tender safe spaces, reaching for the familiar. Only this morning were the drama games, and yesterday we made pizza as the matriarchs gathered to conjure daily play.

All of us are sleep-deprived in search of a simple signal in the form of connection, creativity, and innocent joy.

As old as time.

As you must be if you’ve come this far through my yarns. And I thank you.

From the bottom of my ex-military aerospace systems operator-turned-playwright heart, I run to catch up on the full picture and find words to make sense of this experience at the same time. It’s no longer over there anymore. And whatever this is, there’s that growing, unshakable bond again, and we are all on the lookout for what’s coming in thick and faster that nobody else has clocked yet.

There’s a lot of work to be done, play to be anchored, and a community I love that we may have to leave. What nobody is saying out loud is that this is grief, for what we thought we were reaching for, for the life we left behind, for the possibility of security, perhaps, but what does that even mean? There was a version of things that existed across the before times, and yet there must be hope for what comes after. Because we still have so much to reach for, in every language, shape, and sound.

I’m still gladly here, but reading the signals. Checking the forks and tuning in for what’s coming for all of us.

Right now I just want to be close to my son.

On standby at all times.

Over and out.

RC, Dubai, March 2026