Air conditioning is a very serious concept, in the UAE. Without it, the country is close to uninhabitable over the six-plus months of summer.

To make do without it for any length of time is to be reminded of how perilous is civilization’s grip on this land. Without AC, Abu Dhabi and Dubai would not be cities of 1 and 2 million, respectively. Perhaps villages of oil workers, and a few support businesses. But no more.

Which was something to ponder, here in the 20-story building where we live, when the AC went out — and stayed out — for about 45 hours, including two nights.

From mid-April forward, most people run their AC without stop for six months. Even if we are out of the house eight to 10 hours a day, because a house will heat up so profoundly that the AC can’t reclaim the interior from the heat for several hours.

Easier to let it run.

I was sitting on the couch, which is just below the vents blowing cold air into the main room, when I felt the incoming air suddenly go warm in mid-afternoon.

The temperature on the thermostat almost immediately climbed from 23 Celsius (73 Fahrenheit) — which is the standard low temp, at least in this apartment, during the summer — to 24.5C (76 Fahrenheit). This was a matter of minutes.

Off to work I went, and I came back to a sweat box. It was 110 outside (feels like 118) and perhaps no less than 90 inside. To sit up was to sweat. To sleep, one had to have a large fan, and we do, and aim it directly at your uncovered body. Even then, I woke, overheated.

I didn’t management about the breakdown that first day; it was brutally hot, a high of 116 (feels like 123) the next day, and I figured the system had been overwhelmed by the heat, which is the worst so far this summer.

When I came home the second day and it was still hot, I went down to the security guard on the ground floor, where complaints can be registered, and already ahead of me there was a women giving the security guard hell about why the AC had not been fixed.

“You must speak with the manager.”

“He does not return my calls.”

It wasn’t like the security guard was downplaying the complaints. He was wiping his sweaty forehead with a cloth while speaking to the woman.

I went back upstairs, and noticed that the temperature in the hall was cooler than it was in my apartment. So I opened the main door, placed my fan in the entry way, and let it blow cooler air into the main room.

It helped. It might have been 90 in the room; before it might have been 95. Even still, I considered going over the nearby hotel and checking in for the night.

When it gets that hot, and you are stuck in it, you begin to notice how your body is taxed. It’s work, to be that hot. And it certainly struck me that sickly or elderly people could be killed by temperatures not far above those we were sitting and sleeping in.

The European heat wave of 2003 was thought to have killed 70,000 people. Heat stroke, heart failure, dehydration, etc., can push someone over the edge.

One other instance when I was stuck without AC for a length of time was when the battery of my car went dead in early September, two years ago. That, too, felt like a situation that some of us might not survive.

So, next morning, the third day, I was on the couch about 9:30 when I felt the air coming in seem to get a bit cooler. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that was the case.

Off to work, return to the apartment, everything is fine. Cold air coming out of the vents. Not hot air.

That night, a letter was slipped under my door, in which management of the building laid complete blame for the two days of hell at the feet of “the master developer” and said the AC went out when the pipe bringing cold water into the building had broken.

(Which now explains what I always thought was occasional sounds of water trickling: The AC here is based on chilled water, not on mountains of freon, which is what I assumed ran it. Turns out chilled water system often are cheaper than older methods of cooling buildings.)

Now, everything is hunky-dory. It’s not like it’s cold in the room, but it’s fine.

But I take away from me the knowledge, which will be fresh for a week or two, anyway, of how fragile are the mechanisms that shield us from potentially lethal heat.