The heat was unbearable. At the airport I couldn’t take a single step outside, so I rented a car, offering up my first attempt at driving left-hand traffic to this city — a city forever hungry for “firsts”.

Forty degrees, fourteen lanes of traffic running both ways. Too many delivery riders in long-sleeved uniforms darting past, overtaking me again and again. I wondered how many cars they would have to pass before finding themselves inside one of the sports cars they kept racing beyond.

And the sheikh, somewhere far removed from this scene, said only one thing: I want it now.