Dubai Airspace Closure
Three bags. Three passengers.
When my husband, our 1.5-year-old daughter, and I left Dubai on February 28, we did so with the certainty that we’d be back within a week. Our return flight was booked for March 8 – there was never a question of staying longer.
What was meant to be a quick trip home – squeezing in a Holi celebration with family in Mumbai, a brief stop in Pune for a work meeting, and then back to routine – has stretched into nearly a month of being stranded.
War broke out the very day we landed in India.
Dramatically, ours was among the last flights to depart from DXB before operations were indefinitely suspended. Missiles were being fired. Airspace was shutting down. And just like that, there was no way back home – well, our second home.
My husband and I moved to Pune when we wed four years ago, choosing it for its calm, safety, and unhurried pace – a welcome contrast to Mumbai. It felt like the right place to build a home and start a family. When our first child was born, that certainty only deepened. I couldn’t imagine raising our daughter anywhere else.
And then, out of nowhere, came a job transfer.
My husband was asked to move overseas – to Dubai – and we followed, our little girl and I, stepping into a life we hadn’t quite planned for.
It was December 2025 when we packed up our entire life in India and left. I was hesitant. He was hopeful.
It was Christmas – everything, everywhere I looked, felt bright and alive, almost electric with movement. It reminded me of an older Mumbai – a time before pollution became a constant concern, when ambition drove everything, when building, expanding, and dreaming bigger felt like a shared national mood. Development was everywhere, and so was hope.
Dubai felt like that version of Mumbai – only amplified. Bigger dreams. Taller skylines. A city constantly reaching upward.
I still remember the first time I saw the Burj Khalifa – it was unlike anything I’d seen before. For the next month, it followed me everywhere, a constant from morning to night. This towering icon I’d only known through photos had suddenly become part of my everyday life – something I woke up to and returned to while I called Dubai home.
The following month, we moved out of our temporary accommodation and into a new home – this time with a view of the Burj Al Arab. Equally magnificent, equally surreal.
But what made this house feel like home wasn’t the view – it was the neighbourhood.
We found ourselves among other expatriate families – away from home, yet bound by a shared in-between. The neighbourhood had its own rhythm: cafés and bars flowing into each other, parks and open-air gyms, lakes catching the evening light, and long stretches of green made for wandering.
There weren’t tall neem, banyan, or gulmohar trees like in Pune. But the neatly lined urban trees felt enough, at least for now – or so I told myself.
And then, just as we were beginning to settle into this life, the war cut it short.
I am writing this from Pune now, where tree canopies once again line the roads and the air feels familiar. And yet, somewhere between these shaded streets and quiet afternoons, I find myself missing the two Burjs, missing that new life we had just begun to build.
There is a strange sense of displacement I can’t quite shake.
I am home, but not entirely.Dubai Airspace Closure
I am away from home, but not entirely.
We book flight tickets, only to cancel them when the news begins to feel too serious. Debris from intercepted drones has already landed in residential buildings – one of them right across from our home in Dubai. The anxiety is real. We want to go back, but how?
The mommy expat groups I’m part of are constantly buzzing. Some families, like us, left after the war began. Some are still weighing their options, looking for a way out. Others have chosen to stay, to ride this out, come what may. None of us know how long this uncertainty will last.
Dubai is home to a vast expatriate population. For a city that once felt like a safe landing place for people from across the world, it now feels subdued – quieter, watchful, holding its breath. Even the Burj Khalifa, the very symbol of all that Dubai stands for, seems to carry the weight of that silence.
And yet, I hold on to hope.Dubai Airspace Closure
That one day, the emirate will find its rhythm again. Children will return to playgrounds. Parents will go back to work. Malls will buzz with life. And the skyline will glow once more – bright, certain, and full of possibility.
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