I have lived in Dubai since 2019. My wife, my kids, our dog — we are all here. And when the missiles started flying in late February, I will be honest: it was not what any of us expected when we moved to the UAE.

But here we are, and I want to write about what actually happened. Because the story being told in some parts of the world is not the one I have lived.

Yes, some people left. I get it. When you see smoke near the airport and hear explosions in the middle of the night, your instincts kick in. You think about your family. Nobody should be judged for that. Some of my friends packed up and flew out within 48 hours. I respect that. Fear is real and looking after your loved ones is the most human thing there is.

But a lot of us stayed. And the reason we stayed is the same reason we came here in the first place.

We trust this place.

What the UAE government did in the days after the first strikes was nothing short of remarkable. On day one alone, the UAE Air Force intercepted 132 out of 137 Iranian ballistic missiles. 195 out of 209 drones. The numbers are staggering. While people in other countries were watching the news in horror, residents here were watching those same defense systems light up the sky and thinking: they’ve got this.

There was no panic from the top. No chaotic press conferences. The government communicated clearly, calmly and consistently. Emergency alerts went out. Guidance was issued. And the underlying message was always the same: we are in control, and you are safe.

That composure matters more than people realise. In a crisis, leadership sets the tone. And the UAE set exactly the right one.

Emirates resumed flights. The airport stayed open. Life in most of Dubai continued almost normally. Schools, restaurants, offices. Yes it was tense. Yes people were checking their phones more than usual. But the city kept going. Because the city was built to keep going.

I had a conversation with a neighbour last week. She is Indian, has lived here for 22 years, and she told me she flew back from Mumbai the moment she could get a seat. Full flight, she said. Everyone was coming back. Because this is home. Not just a place to work or a tax-efficient address. Home.

That is the part of this story I do not want to get lost in all the noise about property prices and transaction volumes and Goldman Sachs notes. The human story. The millions of people from 200 nationalities who chose the UAE, built their lives here, and did not run when things got hard.

I am proud of those people. I am one of them.

The UAE will come out of this stronger. It always does. Every crisis this country has faced, it has absorbed, adapted, and come out the other side with more credibility, more resilience, more reason to be taken seriously as a global hub. This will be no different.

Something I did not expect during all of this was how many people reached out to tell me that Handled — the productivity assistant I have been building — became genuinely useful when things got stressful. That meant a lot to hear.

Not in dramatic ways. In the small, practical ways that actually matter when life gets uncertain.

People used it to stay on top of flight updates when Emirates kept changing schedules. To quickly translate emergency alerts that came in Arabic. To set reminders for things that were easy to forget when your mind was elsewhere — renewing documents, calling family, checking in on neighbours. A few people told me they used it to research what the air defence sirens meant, or to find the nearest hospital to where they were staying. One person said they asked it to draft a message to their parents back home to reassure them, because they did not know what to say.

None of that is heroic. But when the world feels a bit wobbly, having something calm and reliable in your pocket that just helps you get things done — that turns out to matter more than you would think.

In the meantime, the malls are open. The weather is perfect. Ramadan is beautiful this year. And if you left and you are thinking about coming back, you will be welcomed. Because that is also what this place is: generous, open, and bigger than any one moment.

This is our home. And nobody is taking us away from it.