Fast forward to 2008. When the real estate market crashed and triggered a worldwide financial crisis, our life savings was wiped out. I vowed to recover financially with a teaching job that included free housing, so Fareed and I traveled to an international job fair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He learned there was a demand for native Arabic speakers, but he needed a teaching certificate, so he enrolled in a master’s program at Whitworth University in Spokane to make it happen.

While Fareed was in grad school, the Obama administration launched a hiring campaign for the Foreign Service, my dream job in college. My window of opportunity was closing, and I wanted to move on from teaching, so I seized the moment. For a period of nine months, I progressed through a series of steps with the U.S. State Department—while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State—including an oral exam in Washington D.C. and a top-secret security clearance. My name was added to a waitlist, ranked by score, in February of 2010. I would know my fate within 18 months. If accepted, Fareed could teach while I worked as a diplomat, so our plan would change. But it would still include housing.

Later that month, Fareed reached out to the principal of Dubai American Academy (DAA) whom we’d met at the job fair. She offered him an elementary art position with housing and free tuition for Raquel, who was a junior at the time. The caveat was that I had to accept a job at DAA’s sister school as a condition of his employment.

Fareed graduated in July. In August, we stopped at Baca’s to say goodbye on our way to SeaTac airport. While there, Fareed met my dad, who couldn’t help but like him. We landed in the United Arab Emirates the next day, during Ramadan, where the principal greeted us with a bottle of water. The Filipino bus driver piled our belongings into the school bus that came to pick us up. Then he drove us to our employee housing, a two-bedroom apartment across the street from DAA. Our address was Al Barsha, Interchange #4, off Sheikh Zayed Road, next to Lulu’s Hypermarket, and Mall of the Emirates—Ski Dubai, so we would have never found it on our own. Adrenaline surged through our bodies as we beheld the futuristic city where everything was bigger, taller, faster and more spectacular than anywhere else in the world.

We were jet lagged and had the “wide-awakes,” as Baca called it, when we arrived. So, we explored our new neighborhood in the wee hours, because everything was open late that month. First, we walked behind our apartment building to Lulu’s and were thrilled to find a gelateria and an Indian restaurant on the corner. The multi-story building was impossible to miss. It was covered with brightly-colored string lights that twinkled and moved in fast motion. There, we could buy everything we needed for daily life, including exotic produce. The Indians stood in line for fresh coconuts that workers husked and ground up on the spot. I wanted to follow them home for dinner. Lulu’s was like a Walmart super store, only several times bigger.

From there, we walked down the block to the Mall of the Emirates (MOE) to see Dubai’s famous indoor ski mountain. Because of the city’s stifling heat, residents spent much of their time in air-conditioned spaces that resembled American malls, only bigger.  Everything was in English—the functional language in the UAE—with which Emiratis conducted business with the city’s expats who made up 80 percent of the population. U.S. and European retailers dominated the indoor cities. If not for the Arabian souk and food court, we would’ve forgotten that we were in the Middle East. We were apprehensive about being out in the middle of the night, but we learned that Dubai was one of the safest places in the world. People came to the Emirates to work, so they stayed out of trouble and crime was low. Local women veiled to varying degrees, and visitors wore bikinis and drank alcohol. But not during Ramadan.

When we returned to our apartment, Raquel leaned over the balcony with bright eyes and beckoned me to listen to the mesmerizing call to prayer, as the first rays of sun broke through the morning sky, marking the beginning of the fast. If we were in the mall or the metro when they broke the fast at sunset, we would be offered water and a date—sometimes chocolate covered and stuffed with an almond.

My school was on the outskirts of town, so I leased a car for the 20-minute commute, passing grazing camels on my way to work. Driving was dangerous, so I returned it a month later. After that, I took a taxi to work and chatted with Indian taxi drivers along the way. I enjoyed hearing their stories. Workers returned home every two years and repatriated their earnings back to their families, as their children grew up in their absence. One driver talked excitedly on the phone in Hindi while I sat in the back seat, and he proudly told me that his wife was giving birth. After school, I caught a ride with a colleague to Jumeriah Lakes Towers (JLT), took the metro to MOE, and walked the rest of the way home from the mall.

When we taxied to the Dubai Mall for the first time, Raquel and I caught the dramatic finale of the dancing fountain show while Fareed paid the driver, just as the towering jets plunged spectacularly into the reflective pool and came to a rest below the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Our eyes popped out of our heads.

“Did you see that fountain?”

“Yah. So.” Fareed shrugged, unimpressed with the small fountain at the mall’s entrance.

Our first stop at Dubai’s biggest mall was Café Blanc, a Lebanese restaurant with front-row seats to the choreographed water show that was set to music and repeated every 30 minutes. Andrea Bocelli’s rendition of “Ave Maria” gave us chills. Our meal started with complimentary lupini beans—yellow legumes that you pop out of their skins in your mouth. The next course was the creamiest and fluffiest hummus I’d ever tasted, served with the softest and warmest flatbread that had ever passed my lips. I drank and then ate my floral jallab beverage that was garnished with cashews and almonds. My main course was deep-fried kibbeh made of diced lamb, bulgar wheat and pine nuts. Raquel ordered chicken skewers and Fareed ordered falafel. We were too stuffed for dessert, but we shared a piece of kunafa anyway, because the cheese, pistachio, and shredded filo pastry was Fareed’s favorite. When we finished our Mediterranean meal, the waiter cheerfully brought us warm rose water in a delicate tea glass. Service in Dubai was top notch.

We had lots of food options on the block where we lived. Geddy specialized in Egyptian Koshari—a layered dish of white rice, lentils, macaroni, vermicelli, and a spicy red sauce that was topped with caramelized onions. The Indian restaurant staff soon recognized Raquel’s voice on the phone, because she was a pretty blond girl, let’s face it. “Butter chicken, butter naan mam?” In Dubai, takeout was less expensive than cooking, so you couldn’t afford not to eat out. Our favorite Italian restaurant was Medzo at Wafi Center. I don’t remember the food, but I remember the owner, Nona Livia.

In the cool months, we could walk to the Madinat Jumeriah—a mini-Arabian city on the Persian Gulf—in 20 minutes via the MOE metro station. From the skybridge, we could see dust-covered cars that were abandoned when the global economy crashed two years earlier. The government had addressed the crisis by putting a ceiling on the price of essential consumer goods, like food and housing. Consequently, the cost of living was surprisingly affordable—better than in the U.S. Our favorite spot at the Madinat was the Costa Coffee that sat in the shadow of the Burj al Arab. From the outdoor patio, we admired the changing colors of the sailboat-shaped building while modern abras—small boats traditionally used to ferry people and goods across the Dubai Creek—buzzed through the canals beneath us.

In the warm months, Fareed’s suit was drenched with sweat before he could finish his affogato while walking across the street for crossing duty (like patrol duty in the U.S., where teachers guide children safely across the street). After a fancy year-end school party, I slid onto a wet spot in the back of a taxi that soaked through my dress. “There’s something on the seat,” I alerted the driver.

“Don’t worry mam. It’s just body water.”

In the hot months, people left the city or stayed indoors.

My job wasn’t what I signed up for, so I cancelled my contract after a year and subbed at DAA. I was unlikely to clear the Foreign Service waitlist, but passing all of the tests and clearances on the first try was an accomplishment, so I was honored to have made it that far. While I waited on the results, the lighter subbing schedule gave me time to explore other career opportunities and pursue another dream, writing. I wrote my personal story of resilience and pitched it at a writer’s conference in Portland, while on break, and was bluntly brought down to earth. “Your writing style is boring and no one’s interested in reading the memoir of a nobody.”

Who reads books anymore? Anyone can write these days. I dissuaded myself. The internet was saturated with aspiring authors writing for blogs and podcasts, and I wasn’t interested in any of that. I loved the way classic books felt and smelled, delighted in turning pages, and preferred to see the big picture, not just a snippet of a page. I relished the experience of perusing a brick-and-mortar store with others, and the sense of connection it evoked. I couldn’t imagine a main street without a local bookstore. But bookstores were dying, and my confidence was shattered, so I took a break from writing. That’s when I started dabbling with a business plan for a gelato shop and art café.

After two years of living in Al Barsha, we relocated to JLT, across from the Dubai Marina, because we had discovered black mold in our apartment. Amelia, my free-spirited middle daughter, was dating Ben, a young man from Seattle, whom she’d met while studying in Costa Rica. I met him for the first time when they departed from Dubai for a three-month journey through Egypt, Greece, Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. My dear friend, Leonardo Leopoldo—whom Fareed and I had met the previous summer when traveling on the Algarve Coast—graciously offered to host them in Tavira, because the old man was a free spirit too. Following her adventure, Amelia stayed with us for a month and subbed at DAA. One of my fondest memories was smoking sheesha with her, sipping Moroccan mint tea, and eating date gelato at Stefanos on the Marina Walk while I graded tests; then dangling our feet off a porch swing at Picolo’s afterwards. We did saki bombs together at our back-to-school party, which was a hoot. That night, the adventurer tested the strength of my heart muscle when she confessed her risky escapades: a bumpy ride to the outskirts of Cairo with a con man, an infected burn from a motorcycle tail pipe in Santorini, and broken glass from Madrid still lodged in her foot. I was glad I didn’t know about those mishaps while they were happening.

Exploring our host city with my girls was my favorite part of our overseas sojourn. Raquel told me our explorations were some of her happiest family memories. Lauren struck gold with the timing of her trip. In the week she was there, we dined while sitting on carpets at the cultural center on UAE National Day, got free henna tattoos in a tent on the Marina Walk, went dune bashing in the desert, shopped at the Madinat’s Christmas wonderland, and listened to a speech by Bill Clinton at DAA. On her last day, we took a taxi to the Al Ain Zoo, an hour away. We’d missed the bus, and it was getting late, so the driver picked up speed and made an illegal turn. A policeman stopped him and escorted him the rest of the way once he learned of my daughter’s need to visit the zoo before it closed.

While we were gone, my stepdad—a Vietnam vet in the last stages of ALS, caused by Agent Orange—went into hospice. Fareed’s oldest son, Ramy, married longtime girlfriend Shannon. His middle son, Bobby, landed a finance job. And his youngest, Katie, moved to Utah. Lauren was engaged to her long-time partner, Luke, after following him to Virginia and spending two summers at the Oregon Zoo. Amelia moved to Olympia, Washington’s state capitol, for college where she lived with five roommates. Raquel dropped out of Western Washington University after catching pneumonia her freshman year. And Baca went into assisted living. I was conflicted about being so far away with so much going on back home and took it as a sign it was time to go home when we were evacuated from our 16^th-floor apartment at 2am on November 19, when the Tamweel Tower next door went up in flames. The apocalyptic images were burned in my mind as we walked past charred cars and fallen debris on our way to work that morning. Two weeks later, we witnessed a fiery car crash while filming a torrential rain. The universe had confirmed that I needed to leave before my own life went up in smoke.

Those were the people and circumstances that led me first to Spokane and then to Dubai, and brought me full circle, back to my birthplace.