The day started with a cupcake. It ended in a basement car park as missiles flew overhead

Dubai: Saturday morning began like any other. A routine swim with our young daughter before celebrating her six-month “half birthday” with a cupcake – only partly in jest. To think we would end the day bunkered down in our basement car park, fearing the risk of intercepted missiles and falling debris.

Like so many families living across the United Arab Emirates, this weekend’s assault on Iran by the US and Israel brought the reality of an even wider Middle East conflict closer to home than ever before.

Gulf states that have remained untouched by major regional unrest experienced a discomforting rupture to the relative safety and peace they have largely enjoyed to date.

On Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, where we have lived the past three years, the sense of unease began building through Saturday afternoon when the first booms rang out.

At home in our living room, the initial sounds were enough to make you double-take, but still go about your day. It was only when the windows shook in the late afternoon that we began to appreciate how close a potential threat could be.

I had earlier been speaking to friends across Dubai’s many residential communities. They had heard the sound of missile intercepts hours before we did, so loud it was as though “in their backyard”.

Soon, local community WhatsApp threads were lighting up, and videos began circulating, appearing to show missile activity over communities, parks and golf courses.

There had already been reports of explosions in neighbouring Abu Dhabi and at least one fatality. As ever, verifying genuine content spreading across social media was difficult and reliable information was hard to come by.

On the Palm, the mood among my own community shifted shortly after sunset when the atmosphere was punctuated by another loud boom, again shaking the windows.

When most think of Dubai’s trademark man-made island, they think of its line-up of exclusive beachfront hotels, luxury villas and the arrogant hum of cruising supercars.

Yes, the Palm is all of those things. But what is often missed is the extensive community of families that populate the many apartment blocks lining the “trunk” of the Palm. For so many of these families who move to the UAE from across the globe, Dubai’s longstanding “safe-haven” status is what first brought them here. This weekend, that reputation has been challenged.

We were just putting our daughter to bed when we noticed ribbons of smoke outside our windows. Fire had erupted at the nearby Fairmont Hotel.

Videos quickly circulated showing what looked like a drone heading towards the building, which is no more than a one-kilometre walk from our front door and, incidentally, where our daughter attends a weekly swimming lesson.

This incident – whether falling debris or indeed a drone – felt far too close for comfort. Grabbing a few essentials, we were soon among families heading to the underground car parks to spend the next few hours camped out in our car, unsure what to do next.

The best advice we could gather was from contacts, work associates, friends of friends. Ultimately, it seemed our safest move was to leave the Palm, which an informed source suggested was most likely to feel the brunt of any falling debris. And so we headed to a friend’s place to see out the night.

Even here, the booming sound of aerial intercepts continued, and we would later see reports of evacuations at Dubai International Airport, and suspected debris falling on our local park and the facade of the famed Burj Al Arab.

Shortly before 1am (Dubai time), our phones rang with the first emergency alarm we had received, warning of “potential missile threats” and recommending immediate shelter away from windows, doors and open areas. Waking to this sound alongside our baby was surreal to say the least. It was around this time that we saw the first reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been killed.

As the UAE’s Minister of State for International Co-operation, Reem Al Hashimy, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Sunday morning, these are wholly unprecedented times for the UAE.

For months, it has worked behind the scenes trying to encourage dialogue and avoid this very situation. And yet, jarring booms continued to ring across Dubai on Sunday – the sound, authorities said, of the UAE’s defence system working as it should, having intercepted at least 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and 541 drones over the weekend.

Three people have been killed in separate incidents caused by falling shrapnel, and at least 58 others have been injured.

What comes next remains to be seen. But even by Sunday afternoon, it was clear a relative calm had returned, with food delivery services resuming, the occasional dog walker on foot and a tennis court in use.

But this is all to say nothing of the situation for the people of Iran, where the true impact is being felt and where the real challenge is only just beginning.

For us and many others in the UAE, this has been a small brush with conflict – close enough to be unsettling, while underscoring that we remain fundamentally safe. For me, at least, it has been a stark reminder of the everyday reality for so many living through genuine and lasting conflict.

Lucy Cormack is a former journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, now based in Dubai.