A condition of living in a place with a long and oppressive summer … is how quiet things go.

We don’t always notice things that are not there. And what happens in the UAE is something like a literal silent spring (as opposed to the book of the same name). Though you don’t notice right off.

Eventually, you walk outside one day in April or May … and you realize that you don’t hear another human being. Not a whistle or a snatch of conversation. Not a giggle or a shout.

Why would that be?

Because this is the time of year when the weather turns vile. The heat gets switched on, and it will not go away before November.

Meantime, the whole country hunkers down. Windows are shut, air conditioners are cranked up, and no one goes outside except to hustle to cars or hope a cab comes along soon.

We can see each other, in our little enclosed weather capsules, on the road, but we can’t hear each other.

More particularly, the areas around living areas are now deathly quiet. The dull buzz of cars on the street … I can hear that. But humans or pets? Can’t hear a thing.

At this time of year, it seems like we are the only people on the block, surrounded by empty apartments and houses.

But then along about November, windows finally are opened and children emerge from their cooled rooms and play outside.

We remember again that we actually have neighbors. Turns out, we have a family with several kids living just the other side of the wall on our little patio. During the too-brief temperate months, we could hear some of the merriment from barbecues and parties.

Now … quiet as a tomb. All we hear is the hum of the AC. A silent spring, and a silent summer and a silent fall, too.

That will be the sound track here for the next half a year. It’s a curious condition.