Just about the only time in the UAE when I feel like an American is when I am in the U.S. Embassy, which is barely a mile from where we live, near the southern end of Abu Dhabi island.

Granted, I don’t feel it right off.

I had some business with the embassy — a need to get my passport renewed.

So, much like the modern Department of Motor Vehicles (back in California), you make an appointment, and the theory is you will not have to wait too long.

As I drove to the embassy, a gray, wedge-shaped structure that looks a little like a sinking ship, I wondered if any outward signs of heightened security would be noticeable, now that the U.S. is bombing the Islamic State in Syria (as well as in Iraq).

Terror attacks in the UAE are pretty much nonexistent … but if you are going to stage one, the U.S. Embassy the first target you consider.

I did not feel heightened security, though I may have seen some — two guys in fatigues in a small outbuilding at the point where visitors enter the embassy compound.

They were not U.S. Marines, the branch of the U.S. military assigned to U.S. embassies around the world. Actually, I have never seen a Marine at the embassy here, other than the one party we went to that the Marines staged. You never see them on the perimeter.

But two guys were there, in uniform, and they almost certainly were UAE soldiers, augmenting the unarmed security otherwise on the perimeter. I had never seen those guys there, since I’ve been going to the embassy, but it is possible that some other duo of real soldiers had remained inside that little building in my previous visits and I missed them.

I had to go back to the embassy after neglecting to write down my Social Security number on the passport renewal form, and my third stop there (my second was a dry run, because none of the passport guys were working yet) came with a big crowd already lined up. Twenty to 30 people, waiting in searing heat to get inside.

Scanning them quickly, they seemed far more like non-Americans trying to get visas than they did Americans trying to fix a passport mistake, so I just walked right to the head of the line, and talked to the security guy from (I’m going to guess) the Philippines.

I wore a baseball cap (Long Beach State) to the embassy, without really thinking about it. But it might have been a good call.

I’m not sure most Americans realize what a message a baseball cap sends, outside the U.S.  Basically, it says, it shouts: “I am an American!” You could hardly be more blunt about it without walking up with a U.S. flag draped around your shoulders.

Almost no one else wears western clothes and a baseball cap. Not Brits, not Canadians, not Australians. A few Emiratis wear baseball caps (usually red, with Ferrari logos on them), but the kandura/robe yanks you right back to “not an American”.

Anyway, I think having the baseball cap on helped me get away with walking right to the head of the line, showing the guard my email print out of “let this guy in without an appointment” and having it work out. I mean, no one but an American would wear a ballcap, and it is the American embassy, after all.

Inside the metal door (with the bullet-proof, I assume, glass) and into the mag-and-bag area, also run by non-Americans. (Non-mother-tongue English speakers, too.)

Through another room, out into the interior of the grounds (volleyball court on the left) and then to the first real offices of the embassy — which you get to by dragging open a very heavy door probably designed to withstand an explosion of some significance.

Then past one last non-American security person, who gives you a number, and then you get to see some fellow Americans.

A few people in the waiting room are likely to be Yanks, and usually you spot them by their accents or their clothes or their haircuts. But, again, most of the people there are pretty clearly non-Yanks trying to get visas, which seems to be the primary activity, in the clerical area.

Behind the windows in the waiting room are actual Americans. Not part-timers from somewhere else.

So, I decided I would walk up to the passport window the moment it was open — without being part of the official “your number will be called” queue. (Not just rudeness; I was confident I would be out of there in a matter of minutes.)

The 50-ish guy I had seen the day before recognized me, even with my ballcap on (perhaps he liked seeing it, too) and was quite friendly. He didn’t even give me trouble for not waiting my turn.

“Oh, yeah, you forgot your Social Security number,” he said and fetched the forms, and I plugged in the SS numbers, and he scanned my handiwork, slid my passport back under the glass, and I was off. “Have a nice day,” he said, and seemed to mean it. (Yanks in a foreign land.)

I had jumped two lines, done my embassy business and gotten in and out in about 10 minutes.

It’s like I got a little bit of an American discount, in the embassy, that I would not get elsewhere here. I took advantage of it. And the ballcap probably helped.