As a woman in Abu Dhabi, I have often questioned the absence of female presence in many public spaces in the city. When I took an Ethnography class, where we were prompted to carry out a field research over three months at a given site, I knew that I wanted to investigate the non-public spaces female migrants often occupy. This led me to a field site that was unexpected, bizarre and groundbreaking all at once.

I enter a hotel with a red-carpeted staircase. I am stopped and checked for my ID card while other guests brush past me unquestioned. They are all men. I sense a quiet habitualness in their walk, an unspoken understanding between them and the man scrutinizing my ID card. After a couple of minutes, I am permitted to enter.

There are many floors, and multiple rooms on each floor. Every room has a theme: Irani, Pakistani, Ethiopian, North Indian, South Indian, Filipino, Tanzanian and so on. It is as though the city’s social categories and ethnic hierarchies are neatly transposed onto one concrete building.

Distinct music flows out of each room — each of which seems to lure in a distinct type of man. I recognize Laila Main Laila, an 80s Bollywood song, playing in one room. I too am lured in.

There are men of my color in the room. They wear kurtas, suits and kandoras. There are also women of my color in the room. They wear saris, anarkalis and evening gowns. The former are the spectators, the latter the spectacle. I observe cautiously, increasingly aware of my positionality as a woman, student researcher and, most importantly, an outsider. “What am I doing here?” a small voice in me asks. But I am determined to stay — a decision that seems both political and necessary.

I am standing in a parking lot around midnight. Like a good ethnographer, I am taking notes of what I observe around me. There are women leaving taxis, and women entering SUVs. I feel uncomfortable. “What am I doing here?” the voice returns, asking once again. But I shove it aside. This time I want to stay because I am curious.

A woman stands outside a building speaking to an older man. I observe them for a couple of minutes. Eventually, he gets into his car and leaves. Hesitantly, I walk toward her.

“I am a student researcher,” I tell her, “Would you mind if we had a conversation?”

She laughs nervously and nudges me to enter the building with her. I compliment her on her dress, and she tells me that she made it herself. “I am a fashion designer too,” she remarks.

After an hour of chatting, we exchange numbers and agree that we’ll meet again. As I leave, she makes sure to remind me that I owe her a photoshoot. Riding home that evening, I believe that I may have found my subject, or at the very least, an entry point into my research.

The following evening, I call her. It rings and rings and eventually cuts. I call again, and the same thing happens. After a couple of attempts, I realize that my number has been blocked.

I revisit the hotel with the red-carpeted staircase. Just like last time, I go to the room that plays 80s Bollywood music. Amid the flashing lights and rituals of dancing, I see a woman crying. We make eye contact. And though we aren’t permitted to speak to each other, I am able to get her number through a middleman.

We speak the next day. “I knew you would call,” she tells me.

I have a list of questions lying in front of me that I had spent the morning tediously drafting. Now, they appear impersonal, extractive — almost irrelevant. Instead of asking them, I attempt to have a conversation with her. We talk about home, our families and how long we’ve lived in this city. We bond over Bollywood, exchange notes about makeup products and confess that we miss our families. By now, I am almost convinced that we are having a conversation.

Feeling slightly brave, I ask her about the previous night. Why was she crying? Had something happened? Had someone upset her?

She laughs momentarily. I’m not sure if it is directed at me or at the question, but I wait patiently. Eventually, I learn that she had a small argument with her long-distance boyfriend. “We are fine now,” she assures me.

I feel my face heat up in embarrassment. Suddenly, I am confronted with the many assumptions that brought me into this conversation, and I am angry at myself for it. Had I not already conjured up a narrative of victimhood in my head even before speaking with her? Why did I think it would be okay to call a stranger and ask her why she was crying the previous night? Was this not precisely the kind of invasive research that I was trying to escape?

I am at the hotel with the red-carpeted staircase. Once again, I find myself in the room that plays 80s Bollywood music. We make eye contact. I gauge that she isn’t happy to see me. Soon after, I became aware of her friends watching me and whispering among each other.

This time I feel uncomfortable, not by the male gaze that is so pervasive in this space, but by the gaze of the women I have come to research. I understand that I am not wanted, and so I leave.

I don’t visit the hotel with the red-carpeted staircase. My ethnography is not complete, but Covid-19 restrictions have begun, which means that all in-person research is to be suspended indefinitely.

Almost a year later, I wonder what would have happened if my ethnographic project were to have continued. A small part of me wishes that I would have seen it through, but a more salient part of me feels relieved. I do believe that the lived experiences of the female migrant community who live and labor in that space are important to be heard, understood and documented. But I also question what it means to do so ethically and critically.

Ethnography as a form of research has a complex history of colonialism, racism and cultural othering. Even today, it has proven difficult for ethnographers to transcend the problematic roots of the discipline, particularly when engaging with marginalized communities and minority groups.

My research as a student and woman of color is not exempt from this history. While I wished to put forth a critical feminist ethnography on an understudied community in Abu Dhabi, I found myself lapsing into the same ethnographic gaze that I so heavily critique otherwise. There were instances where I was unable to fathom the risk I was subjecting my interlocutors to during our telephonic conversations, where I was unable to recognize the power imbalances that existed between us under the facade of easy conversation, and where I didn’t stop to question the implications of my research on a community already so vulnerable in society.

I must therefore ask myself: did those individuals really want to speak with me? Who was my research for? And can ethnography be liberated from its history at all?

I must confess that I continue to hold faith in the potentiality of ethnography as a method of ethical, critical and meaningful research. Many ethnographies have revealed oppressive practices and helped us better understand the complexities of gender and labor, among other things.

Perhaps what we require, more than anything, is to keep that small voice in ourselves alive as we attempt to observe, understand and make sense of the world around us.