OUTSIDE our door, high up in the Burj Khalifa, we board one of the tower’s 57 elevators and are catapulted even higher, to the 123rd floor, as if we were weightless objects being effortlessly lifted through the air. Our ears adjust several times as we speed along at almost 60 feet a second.

This is our journey, a ritual that begins our Friday morning routine, early enough to catch the new light rising over the distant desert.

We have our coffee in the wood-paneled residents’ library, elegantly carpeted with designs mimicking the undulations of dunes and the wispy serifs of Arabic calligraphy.

Looking out beyond the city through giant glass panels, we feel the space of the desert that broadens our horizons and asks us for more. On a perfectly clear day, rare as a gem in this sandy climate, we can see as far as the shores of Iran, over the Strait of Hormuz beyond Oman’s rocky mountains. Looking out the other side of the room we can see across the Persian Gulf, beyond the man-made islands created to form a map of the world.