The Sheik is pissed. Along with his wives and children, the Sheik got put on the wrong plane, and ended up waiting hours in the desert on a hot tarmac for a crew that never came. As usual– it's Riya's fault. Riya works for Discover Arabia, a rinky-dink tour guide company in the far-flung desert outpost of Dubai. It's 1990, and the city's iconic skyline, along with its global reputation, remains but a gleam in developers' eyes. For twenty-five year-old Riya, Dubai is a desert purgatory that spreads out between her family back home in India, and an as-yet-defined future ahead of her. If she belongs to anything, it is to the city's transient underclass of young people from South Asia, Africa, and Europe who arrive with the ubiquitous goal of earning more than they could at home. Will a favor from Dubai's most notorious fixer get Riya back in everyone's good graces? Or will the impending possibility of an invasion by Saddam Hussein make Riya's problems...