This is a late town. But it’s not. Everyone is out and about at 10 p.m. … but no one is still out at midnight.

The climate has much to do with it. When you have entire months when the average high temperature is over 100 degrees … you learn to stay inside during the day and come out of your air-conditioned bunker at night.

After work, we were dropped off a block short of our hotel after work tonight. We decided to take advantage by picking up a few items at the little market, and I waited outside,  just taking in the scenery.

No sun. That’s always a good start, here. Still warm. Maybe 85? A bit of wind blowing down the street. Not much wind here, generally, so the heat just seems to clot at about eye level. But at night … there can be a zephyr of a breeze.

And people everywhere.

Traffic choking Electra Street. Pedestrians on the sidewalks and in the parking lots. Our neighbors, I guess. The ones who are at work or holed up in their homes who come out after dinner but before bed.

The Indian family of four, with kids wearing Western clothes and mom wearing a chiffon-ish powder blue sari-like outfit. A guy about 20 squatting in that peculiarly Asian way (backside touching his heels, but not the ground) near the entrance to the market. Four or five men unloading a truck outside the grocery. Two 30-ish men on their cell phones, speaking hurriedly. Lots of people going down the street and taking a long look at the European guy standing next to the street lamp.

The men wearing drab, utilitarian clothes. White or gray, loose-fitting, covering most of the body. Men do not wear short pants, in Abu Dhabi. It is not dignified.

Women in various states of covered-up: Sorta, moreso and seriously. It seems to be a matter of personal preference. Or perhaps husband/father/brother preference. An African woman in a heavy robe, not the usual basic black, but with geometric designs in white. Her head covered. She must be warm, even at night.

The traffic surges behind us. The rev of engines and the blat of horns is the aural backdrop to life here.

The pedestrians pick their way between cars. There is very little formal parking here. Not nearly enough to handle all the cars. So people here tend to park anywhere, which I will note at more length later. And anyone on foot has to pick between those parked cars, and hope they aren’t hit by someone trying to manuever his SUV (and most of them are SUVs, it seems) down what little slice of pavement remains open to moving vehicles.

Is there a scent in the air? I don’t notice, but Leah claims to smell spices. Indian restaurant-type spices. That would make sense. About 90 percent of the people around us appear to be from south Asia — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. I’m not sure there is an Emirati (a native of the United Arab Emirates) anywhere on this long block. I’ve seen a few other Westerners. A few Africans. Some Filipinos. A few Chinese, perhaps.

Where am I? Someplace hot and sticky and tropical. If I went by who is walking past, I’d think I was in India. But there are the signs in Arabic, and a mosque every 100 yards, and very few women and lots and lots of young men. So this isn’t India.  It’s a oil-rich country that has so many foreign men working construction jobs that the gender ratio here is 70-30 male.

The expat men. The non-Westerners. I feel badly for them. It’s another Saturday night and they ain’t got nobody. They sit around in groups of three, four, five. Anywhere they can find a bench or patch of grass, they sit on it. And look. And watch. They don’t seem to talk much.

I assume they have nothing more interesting to do. No money to spend on formal entertainment. Perhaps no TV back in the room they live in — or share with others. Maybe not even any air-conditioning.

So they are sitting out on patches of grass, and what few benches are around. Most of the south Asian expats are here on their own. Their wives, their families, back home, waiting for the money they will send. They work long and hard, and are paid very little — but it’s good money compared to what they can make at home, which tells you a lot about “home.”

I see them every day, but I don’t know them. I doubt I ever will. I speak none of their languages. They speak only enough English to get by in dealings with the government.

We go back to our hotel, and an hour later I look out the window. Traffic is still moving in the street,  but all the pedestrians I saw 60 minutes before … gone. Back into their homes, with the doors closed, and kids headed to bed, presumably, so everyone can get back up in the morning, Sunday morning, a work day, and get back to the business of making some money.