I have written before about the caretaker/super/handyman here at our aging, low-rise apartment complex near Airport Road, here in Abu Dhabi.

That would be Mr. Mohammed.

He seems to have first made an appearance under that name, in this blog, nearly three years ago. If you followed the link, go past the Tiger and Frank Carroll stuff, and there is Mr. Mohammed.

Mr. Mohammed has been a character is our daily lives here since December of 2009, when we first moved in on the other side of this odd sprawl of apartments.

But now we have a bit of a mystery on our hands.

What happened to Mr. Mohammed?

When we left for Spain, a month ago, he was still here. Doing what he does. Which on many days seems to be not much of anything.

We often saw him when returning from work at about 8 p.m.  He would be over on the swathe of grass between our door and Airport Road. Sometimes sitting and smoking. Sometimes with friends.

We would get out of the cab. I would smile and wave. He would smile and wave.

I never knew his full name. Mohammed would be his given name, and usage here is to refer to people with “mister” and a person’s first name. This applies across the spectrum of expats from the region.

For nearly three years, he was the go-to guy for problems in the rental unit, and we nearly always had some. Insect invasions. Balky air-conditioning blowers. Bad power outlets. Plumbing disasters.

It was only about six weeks ago that we had a major blockage on the plumbing front, and we had all sorts of water back up onto the floor of the kitchen and bathroom. Not pretty.

After trying less dramatic methods, Mr. Mohammed finally came in one night with a industrial-size plunger and a big screwdriver, and he proceeded to pull some genuinely horrific … stuff … out of the drains. I believe he said it was congealed cooking oil. Chunks of it. Whatever it was, it was nasty. And since then, the drains have worked fine.

I was rarely sure what Mr. Mohammed said because he barely speaks English. Certainly less English than anyone else with whom I actually need to speak regularly.

He comes from Pakistan, and I believe from the neighborhood of Peshawar, in the northwest, a point of origin for many of the UAE’s Pakistanis, and known as a home to particularly devout Muslims.

He generally wore loose trousers, and a buttoned shirt, and sandals. On occasion, he wore the skirt-like garment that men from the subcontinent sometimes wear when they are lounging.

He stands perhaps 5-foot-8, has a bit of a pot belly, and spends at least some of his pay on cigarettes, because the smoke often wafts into the apartment. He is graying and keeps his hair fairly short.

And we were very close to him, physically. If we look out the bedroom window, all that can be seen, about eight feet away, is the door and window of the little apartment he lived in. One room, from what I could tell, the few times I got any look inside.

That apartment is so close to ours that we could hear him coming and going to prayers, with the doors banging, and we were party to discussions/arguments he might have had just outside his door.

We sometimes could take a stab at what he was eating because we could smell it.

He has been generally cheerful. Even with the communications issues, he never expressed anger. Though he did seem a bit put out, a time or two, when I called during the early afternoon, which apparently was his nap time here.

Presumably, his native tongue is Urdu. I know not a word of it. So it was English between us, and had you listened to some of our “conversations” you might have laughed aloud.

Me asking him technical questions in the simplest terms I could imagine, him responding with several paragraphs of which I could discern perhaps 25 percent of the message. Never quite sure if we had exchanged anything understandable.

Nearly always, the best way to convey a problem was to bring him in and show it to him. I would dial his cell phone. He would answer. I would say: “Mr. Mohammed: Can you come?” He would say: “I come now.”

He generally tried to fix things himself, though he often deferred to a younger guy, a Mr. Mosul, especially in the matter of air-conditioning.

Thus, over nearly three years, Mr. Mohammed spent more time inside our apartment than all but a handful of people in the world. Coming and going with tools, trying to tell me what had happened, and what he was doing.

We tipped him, a time or three, during the holiday season, or after something that seemed generally heroic — like working on a Friday, the Islamic equivalent of Sunday.

So. We returned from France about 17 days ago … and no Mr. Mohammed.

We didn’t notice right away. But after a few days … no sightings of him puttering around. No views of him sitting on the grass at 8 p.m., talking with other Pakistani guys in the area. I have not heard his voice, outside the window.

By now, we are fairly certain he is gone. It has been more than two weeks, and we have not seen him once. But we have seen some other guy, a sort of dark and sinister, unsmiling figure, hanging about the property. Once I saw him come out carrying some refuse, which leads me to believe he has replaced Mr. Mohammed.

Where is Mr. Mohammed?

Gone back to Pakistan, would be my guess.

I have no idea how old he is, but if he is 60 or over, he would not have been able to get his work visa renewed. The manager of the complex, a Mr. Iyad, made a remark to me a year ago or so, in which he seemed to disparage Mr. Mohammed’s value, and added. “He is getting old.”

I would have guessed he was 50. But he could have been older.

Ultimately, he was a generically friendly character who usually was helpful in solving our problems, and they were many.

I don’t expect we will see him again. We are planning a move, in the next couple of weeks, and unless something goes badly wrong inside the apartment, I won’t be seeking help.

I imagined I would say “See ya later, Mr. Mohammed” at some point. Since his disappearance … I guess farewells will not be forthcoming.

Odd, though. A guy you don’t really know, never really spoke to … but someone who was important to our lives for a significant stretch of time. Then he was gone.