I get stamped in like a tourist. It’s seven a.m. and my father’s waiting for me at arrivals. We drive along the impossibly wide highways, over the bridge to the island of Abu Dhabi. Sixty years ago, there was almost nothing here: a single mud-brick fort, where the ruler and his family lived, a few brackish wells, an air strip, and a handful of huts. Now it accommodates one and a half million people from just about everywhere on Earth and hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix. My father pulls up in a parking lot in the middle of Bateen, a residential neighbourhood. On entering the three-storey building where he and my mother live, I spot a succession of bright red crosses spray-painted on nearly every wall, door and hallway. It’s Passover at King Herod’s. My father explains that an official from the Municipality inspected the building last week and ordered all the partitions torn down in accordance with new planning regulations. Most of the building is held up by light interior walls that sound like ripe watermelons when you rap your knuckles against them. The Municipality has given my parents two days to knock down the walls, or they’ll cut off their gas, water and electricity. Over the years, my family has acquired a breath-taking proficiency in paring their lives down to the bare essentials. Living in the United Arab Emirates is like assembling a Jenga tower, then nervously trying to remove as many blocks as you can without the entire edifice collapsing on you. Once the walls are gone, my parents will get a reprieve from the city authorities, like the rest of their anxious fellow tenants: at which point the game starts all over again.