I was at the passport office in Karachi when a woman with a newborn baby sat next to me. She slept through the noise, wrapped in a blanket, unaware that she was about to receive her first official document.

They were not alone. Another family sat opposite us, also with an infant, also waiting for their turn. I knew it would be a bit of a wait so I struck up a conversation. I asked where they hoped to travel. Saudi Arabia, the newborn’s father said. Not for Umrah, not for a holiday. To try for work; they had a cousin who was calling them.

The couple in front of us said “us too!” in excitement. “My brother has been in Riyadh for 5 years and been telling me to come try my luck too.” He was a software developer.

What does it say about us that a baby’s first official document is a way out?

—Muna Khan

Let me be clear about what this is and what it is not. It is not a survey. I spoke to a handful of people on one morning in one office. These are not statistics, and I would not present them as such. But sometimes a single room tells you something the numbers cannot.

Both families were planning a part holiday, part reconnaissance trip. They needed passports for their children and were hoping to go as soon as they received them. Then the attacks began. Houthi missiles and drones struck Saudi airports, including in Riyadh, where an attack last week killed at least 12 people. Flights were suspended. The plan was put on hold.

What happened next surprised me.

Others in the waiting area joined in, not talking to me, but to each other. Who do you know in Saudi? Where is your cousin? My uncle is in Riyadh. My friend has done very well in Jeddah. It was a conversation I have heard before in Pakistan, in different decades and different cities. A map of family and friends, drawn across the Gulf.

But one thing had changed. When I was growing up, the phrase was “Dubai chalo.” (Let’s go to Dubai.) It was the 1970s slogan of a generation of Pakistanis who built a city in the desert and sent money home.

In that passport office, however, it was “Riyadh chalo.”

An elderly man said Dubai was not issuing visas to Pakistanis the way it once did. “After all the work we did building that city,” he said, shaking his head. Whether his account of visas is entirely accurate, the feeling behind it was unmistakable. The dream had moved. It now pointed toward a Kingdom that is changing fast.

I asked what they planned to do now. Their answer was not anger. It was patience. They hoped the war would end soon, so they could go. Someone they knew had done well there. Someone was telling them it was worth it. They would wait.

There was something else I noticed, and I keep coming back to it. Nobody ranted about Pakistan. There was no bitterness, no long list of grievances. If anything, there was a strange acceptance. This is where we are. This is what we have. And this is where we might go.

These were not people in desperate circumstances. They were at the executive counter, which costs more. They were not risking their lives on boats in the Mediterranean. But they were not thriving either. They were somewhere in the middle, where so many Pakistanis live, comfortable enough to plan and uncertain enough to look elsewhere.

For millions of Pakistani families, the Gulf is not an abstraction. Saudi Arabia is one of the largest sources of the remittances that keep households, and the economy, afloat. When missiles fall on Riyadh, the shock travels to waiting rooms in Karachi, to parents filling in forms, to a baby who does not yet know she is part of the story.

The war matters to Pakistan in ways that go beyond diplomacy. Islamabad has condemned the attacks and pledged to stand by the Kingdom. But the stakes are also deeply personal. Saudi Arabia is the main destination for Pakistanis seeking work abroad, and every disruption there is felt in homes across Pakistan. A country that depends this heavily on one region for jobs and remittances is exposed when that region is under fire. The lesson is not to look away from the Gulf. It is to prepare our workers better, protect them once they are there, and build enough opportunity at home that leaving becomes a choice, not a plan.

I do not want to read too much into one morning. Perhaps another office, on another day, would tell a different story. But I left with a question I have not been able to shake.

What does it say about us that a baby’s first official document is a way out?

The author is a journalist and conducts writing workshops.

X: LedeingLady