Ahhh, parking....
I went away on a trip and returned to find my car had taken wing. When I left, all the parking slots outside my villas were taken, so I parked all of two to three metres away from where I usually park, on the street outside the next door neighbour's house - where there are no No Parking signs of any description in evidence.
Unfortunately for me, that neighbour is a Local, and the police, who had taken my car and put it in the Police Impound Lot while I was away, informed me that unwritten rule #22546a sub section 29887b of "Living in the Sandpit as a Non Citizen" clearly states (well, actually, it doesn't, 'cos like so much else in the Sandpit, it's unwritten, you see) that the unmarked-in-any-way public curbside outside a Local's house is for his and his alone use and should he ring the police to complain about a car parked outside his villa, that car will be removed and the miscreant who owns it will pay Dhs 310 (and endure three visits to the police station - one of them, [unbelievably, but I swear that this is true] after midnight, because the officer who had impounded the car was working the midnight to dawn shift, and I had to speak to him and have him explain to me the error of my ways before I could get the car back).
I witnessed another example of this when attending a party at a friend's villa in Al Barsha. With all the space outside the host’s villa taken, some of the guests had parked their cars outside the (Local) neighbour's house, and the (Local) lady of the house came over screaming, just about fit to be tied, demanding stridently and very loudly that all cars be removed IMMEDIATELY from the desert outside HER house. (In my many years in Dubai, this is the only time I can recall a Local lady speaking to a gathering of mixed gender expat strangers.)
I think it comes from an old custom that it was a given, (if unwritten), rule - and good manners - that Ahmed didn’t graze his camels immediately outside Ali’s tent when Ali had pitched it between the second and third palm trees of the western side of the oasis during one of his infrequent visits to that particular oasis.