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Abu Dhabi was not always the place of high-rise hotels, gleaming shopping malls, and busy streets that we know today. In her straightforward yet affectionate memoir Mother Without a Mask, Patricia Holton recalls an earlier time in the emirate, when most of the population still lived a semi-nomadic existence and the Hilton Hotel was the only accommodation amid miles of empty desert. An American by birth, Holton first came to Abu Dhabi in the 1970s as the guest of one of her British husband’s colleagues, whom she identifies in the book only as a prominent local sheikh. The visit marked the beginning of an enduring friendship between Holton and the women of the sheikh’s family, a friendship that crossed oceans and spanned cultural and linguistic divides. Holton’s recollections of her time in the UAE and of the Arab women who embraced her as one of their own are lovingly detailed, but what makes this memoir truly remarkable is the portrait it paints of a deeply traditional society teetering uneasily on the brink of modernity.