Life

One of the things I find so charming about the UAE is the annual theme that is announced each year as a way to frame unifying national initiatives. Last year the theme was community, and this year it’s family. In my mind they are two sides of the same coin and on a more profound level they are both about belonging. This is why I wanted our February edition of Emirates Woman, as we head into the start of the Holy Month, to be called the Belonging Issue.

On a deeply personal note, not since I left my own close knit family in California have I felt such a sense of belonging as I do in the UAE. I was welcomed here with open arms four years ago and since then I have formed a number of rewarding friendships, found fulfillment from a career standpoint, and have seen my own family embrace life here wholeheartedly. So when it came time to find a cover star that embodied this idea of belonging, I didn’t need to look any further than Nadia Zaal, the Emirati entrepreneur who has made creating spaces of community the cornerstone of her real estate endeavors. The latest of which, Zuhha Island off the coast of Dubai, is where we shot our cover story Building Belonging. Another one of Zaal’s designs, the Al Fanar school in Dubai, was also the backdrop for our Ramadan fashion shoot and is a subtle nod to the breadth and width of Zaal’s commitment to helping people in the UAE carve out spaces of connection. This is also why we have put a list together of fun communal actives to explore, have a feature called Built, Not Born, on the unique ability of the UAE to create found families and highlight the studios, or rather the Home Away From Home of a number of Dubai-based designers. This issue is all about coming together, finding kinship, and leaning into an ease that only truly manifests itself when we finally feel like we belong.

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