Speaking with Princess Haya of Dubai
Princess Haya bint al Hussein is one of the most influential people in the Middle East - not just because she is the daughter of the late King of Jordan and wife of the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and ruler of Dubai, but because she is changing the way Middle Eastern women are perceived. She talks about her time at Oxford, her mother's death, and her love of Jilly Cooper.
Princess Haya, daughter of the late King of Jordan and wife of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, has impressive driving skills - which she learned, Princess Anne-style, in order to ferry horses around when she was a professional showjumper. She is a UN Messenger of Peace and Chairperson of the Dubai-based International Humanitarian City (IHC), one of the world's leading early-response aid agencies. But Princess Haya is not a distant, immaculately blowdried figure, talking about help rather than delivering it. She is often scrambled, along with other team members, to help with international crises - not least in Haiti, to which she flew after Hurricane Matthew, but also in Gaza in 2014, and in Liberia and Ethiopia. And I'm listening to her tell me all this in a sitting room in a palm-fringed palace in Dubai, which makes her life seem all the more surreal. The room is a modest affair by UAE standards: silver mirrors, green silk carpets, a painting of her husband the ruler of Dubai, and a bronze sculpture of a horse's head, on a rock of crystals.
Hair loose, Princess Haya is dressed in Joseph chinos, a Gap shirt, a Chanel cardigan and Lanvin flats. The palace is quiet, except for the occasional sound of the soft-soled shoes of the staff on the polished floors of the corridor outside (at one point, she mistakes the sound of some footsteps for those of her husband, 'because he wears those shoes too'). This Badminton- and Bryanston-educated Oxford graduate, anglicised and sophisticated, is the second wife of Sheikh Mohammed, with whom she has two children, Jalila, nine, and Zayed, five. Sheikh Mohammed has 12 more children, including the Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan, with his first wife, Sheikha Hind bint Maktoum bin Juma al Maktoum.
Princess Haya is bracingly open. As a schoolgirl, she loved the books of Jilly Cooper, saying with a smile, "that was quite raunchy. Yeah. Should I admit it? I think I read all and any material I could get my hands on." Later she says, "I would have been a journalist if I'd had the choice. I'd write honestly." She has strong views on the issue of Palestine (her late mother, Queen Alia al Hussein, was an Egyptian-born Palestinian), the current refugee crisis in Europe, and the situation in Syria. "Ahmed, our cook here, is Syrian," she says. "His brother was killed the other day. He has lost three or four members of his family in two years. It's horrific. A lot of people are losing relatives. It's just become kind of normal." What has happened, I ask, to the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that existed for so long between Arab leaders and even between the wives of Arab leaders? "It exists," she says. "But Syria, to be honest, is a one-off." The last time she saw Syrian President Bashar al Assad's wife, Asma, was in 2007, "during a visit to Damascus with the World Food Programme".
Princess Haya was drawn to humanitarian projects because her mother was so passionate about them. "She was really interested in [ending] poverty and in humanitarian issues. I got involved in healthcare because her last trip was to visit a hospital." Queen Alia was only 28 when she was killed in a helicopter crash in 1977, leaving Haya, two, and Ali, 13 months. Does Princess Haya remember her mother? "I think I do. But I'm one of those people who put things in boxes if it hurts too much, and I put the box away. I've been telling myself for the past 40 years that I will deal with it at some point." She laughs. "British education definitely gives you a stiff upper lip. You just keep burying things. But when I had my daughter, I was holding her on the first day and I thought, 'Oh my God, my mother loved me this much.' I'd never consciously thought about how much she loved me. I was shocked by [the idea] that there had been someone here who felt this way about me. And since I've had my daughter, I've understood so much more." That understanding has given her some peace, she says.
The loss of Queen Alia meant that Princess Haya and her brother were as close as twins. "We were forever driving our nannies mad. It was a campaign," she admits. So they were naughty? "Very naughty. We had quite a disciplined upbringing [but] we got into a lot of mischief." Among the more hair-raising of their double-act stunts was stealing their father's car. "It was always parked outside. The first time my brother and I stole it, we were about five and six. I wasn't tall enough to reach the pedals, so I persuaded him to do the pedals, and I did the steering wheel." Inevitably, they crashed, but that didn't stop them doing it again. "I got grounded a lot."
Despite his role as monarch at a highly sensitive time geopolitically, King Hussein had breakfast with his children every day and was, says Haya, genuinely devoted. "Whenever we weren't in school, we'd go to the office with him, and weekends were ours. He'd take us driving, take us around the country, show us places that he'd grown up seeing, talk to us about his experiences. No nannies - he'd take us on our own and we'd just be with dad. If I saw a donkey on the side of the road, I would bring it home. Stray dogs, stray cats. We had an ever-growing collection in the garden."
This was, in part, what prompted her father to introduce her to horses. He bought her a foal when she was six. "The foal's mother had also died, and it had to be hand-raised," she recalls. "It was a hugely sensitive and intuitive thing to do, because it was exactly what I needed. The stables became a whole new world for me." At her father's insistence, she was involved in the mucking out and brushing, and in cleaning and polishing the tack. "I had to take care of them, drive them, compete, look at the training bills that I had, manage all those. I started on dressage, but I didn't find it exciting, so I moved to jumping. I used to love watching things like Horse of the Year on TV and then racing up to the stables to build my own jumps, which was probably quite life-threatening, but fun."
Bearing in mind her closeness to her father and brother, her position in society and the topography of dry, hot Jordan, her arrival at Badminton School for girls in England's West Country in the rainy autumn of 1985 must have been something of a shock. "I was 11. I don't want to be..." She hesitates. "It was a wonderful school. But I was terribly homesick. I would have hated boarding school anywhere. They said, 'you'll cry for the first 10 days and then you'll be fine.' I cried for five years."
Her brother was sent to Papplewick, in Ascot, 100 miles up the M4. "One of the hardest things was being away from Ali. We were inseparable. In a way, when my mother died, I assumed he was my responsibility. Not being able to see that he was OK was a bother." They wrote to each other - sometimes several times a day. "I was just looking at the letters. I'd write: 'Five days, three hours and twenty minutes until I next see you,' and then the next letter would be, 'Four days, three hours...'
King Hussein's rationale was that boarding school in England would instil some (relative) normality in his children. He wanted them, says Haya, to be "exposed to the world, and to see other cultures and to understand what life was like without the royal machine." Was she treated as just another kid? "Yeah, definitely," she laughs. "I remember being picked on. I was the shortest. It definitely made me stronger. But once I made it onto all the sports teams, I was fine." She cheerfully admits to whacking hockey rivals square on the shins "on purpose. That was one of my tactics."
She was doing her A levels at Bryanston, in Dorset, when the First Gulf War broke out in 1990, which was "tough", because she worried so much about home. Nevertheless, she was offered a place to read PPE at Oxford that year. "My father was so proud. I got a two-E offer and then proceeded to nearly get two Es - but managed not to." What she loved about the university, along with the "atmosphere and history", was meeting "open-minded people who were prepared to debate anything. You're at an age and in a place where things aren't held against you. You explore ideas without judgement in a way that you really can't now, because the world is so politically correct."
At the same time, she was pursuing her love of riding. Soon she was competing at a national, then international level. In 1992, the year I was born, she took the individual showjumping bronze at the Pan Arab games in Damascus, and in 2000 she qualified for the Olympics in Sydney. "Constantly, people commented, 'Do you understand what's happening politically while you are worried about your horse?' My father really protected me. He had to fight hard to allow me to compete internationally rather than just do my royal duties."
Today, she still keeps horses in Dubai, and she travels to the UK every year with Sheikh Mohammed and stays in their house in Newmarket. Although shuttled about in air-conditioned luxury with her husband and an entourage that runs into double figures, she's perfectly happy to run herself around in her car, drop the kids at school and whip them up a bolognese or lasagne for tea. She also says she's most comfortable in jeans.
Princess Haya reads widely, speaks five languages, wants to learn to play the piano and to cook better. She runs as well, and says she'd like to compete in a pentathlon (riding, shooting, swimming, running and fencing). "I'm good at all those things [in the pentathlon] except fencing. I've never done fencing."
On the topic of feminism and women's rights, Princess Haya says that she's not a feminist, but concludes, "I had rose-tinted glasses growing up. I was sheltered from the realities of what women in the region and in general face. And now I think I would absolutely support the fact that women deserve equal rights, if not a little more." •
Princess Haya, daughter of the late King of Jordan and wife of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, has impressive driving skills - which she learned, Princess Anne-style, in order to ferry horses around when she was a professional showjumper. She is a UN Messenger of Peace and Chairperson of the Dubai-based International Humanitarian City (IHC), one of the world's leading early-response aid agencies. But Princess Haya is not a distant, immaculately blowdried figure, talking about help rather than delivering it. She is often scrambled, along with other team members, to help with international crises - not least in Haiti, to which she flew after Hurricane Matthew, but also in Gaza in 2014, and in Liberia and Ethiopia. And I'm listening to her tell me all this in a sitting room in a palm-fringed palace in Dubai, which makes her life seem all the more surreal. The room is a modest affair by UAE standards: silver mirrors, green silk carpets, a painting of her husband the ruler of Dubai, and a bronze sculpture of a horse's head, on a rock of crystals.
Hair loose, Princess Haya is dressed in Joseph chinos, a Gap shirt, a Chanel cardigan and Lanvin flats. The palace is quiet, except for the occasional sound of the soft-soled shoes of the staff on the polished floors of the corridor outside (at one point, she mistakes the sound of some footsteps for those of her husband, 'because he wears those shoes too'). This Badminton- and Bryanston-educated Oxford graduate, anglicised and sophisticated, is the second wife of Sheikh Mohammed, with whom she has two children, Jalila, nine, and Zayed, five. Sheikh Mohammed has 12 more children, including the Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan, with his first wife, Sheikha Hind bint Maktoum bin Juma al Maktoum.
Princess Haya was drawn to humanitarian projects because her mother was so passionate about them. "She was really interested in [ending] poverty and in humanitarian issues. I got involved in healthcare because her last trip was to visit a hospital." Queen Alia was only 28 when she was killed in a helicopter crash in 1977, leaving Haya, two, and Ali, 13 months. Does Princess Haya remember her mother? "I think I do. But I'm one of those people who put things in boxes if it hurts too much, and I put the box away. I've been telling myself for the past 40 years that I will deal with it at some point." She laughs. "British education definitely gives you a stiff upper lip. You just keep burying things. But when I had my daughter, I was holding her on the first day and I thought, 'Oh my God, my mother loved me this much.' I'd never consciously thought about how much she loved me. I was shocked by [the idea] that there had been someone here who felt this way about me. And since I've had my daughter, I've understood so much more." That understanding has given her some peace, she says.
The loss of Queen Alia meant that Princess Haya and her brother were as close as twins. "We were forever driving our nannies mad. It was a campaign," she admits. So they were naughty? "Very naughty. We had quite a disciplined upbringing [but] we got into a lot of mischief." Among the more hair-raising of their double-act stunts was stealing their father's car. "It was always parked outside. The first time my brother and I stole it, we were about five and six. I wasn't tall enough to reach the pedals, so I persuaded him to do the pedals, and I did the steering wheel." Inevitably, they crashed, but that didn't stop them doing it again. "I got grounded a lot."
Despite his role as monarch at a highly sensitive time geopolitically, King Hussein had breakfast with his children every day and was, says Haya, genuinely devoted. "Whenever we weren't in school, we'd go to the office with him, and weekends were ours. He'd take us driving, take us around the country, show us places that he'd grown up seeing, talk to us about his experiences. No nannies - he'd take us on our own and we'd just be with dad. If I saw a donkey on the side of the road, I would bring it home. Stray dogs, stray cats. We had an ever-growing collection in the garden."
This was, in part, what prompted her father to introduce her to horses. He bought her a foal when she was six. "The foal's mother had also died, and it had to be hand-raised," she recalls. "It was a hugely sensitive and intuitive thing to do, because it was exactly what I needed. The stables became a whole new world for me." At her father's insistence, she was involved in the mucking out and brushing, and in cleaning and polishing the tack. "I had to take care of them, drive them, compete, look at the training bills that I had, manage all those. I started on dressage, but I didn't find it exciting, so I moved to jumping. I used to love watching things like Horse of the Year on TV and then racing up to the stables to build my own jumps, which was probably quite life-threatening, but fun."
Bearing in mind her closeness to her father and brother, her position in society and the topography of dry, hot Jordan, her arrival at Badminton School for girls in England's West Country in the rainy autumn of 1985 must have been something of a shock. "I was 11. I don't want to be..." She hesitates. "It was a wonderful school. But I was terribly homesick. I would have hated boarding school anywhere. They said, 'you'll cry for the first 10 days and then you'll be fine.' I cried for five years."
Her brother was sent to Papplewick, in Ascot, 100 miles up the M4. "One of the hardest things was being away from Ali. We were inseparable. In a way, when my mother died, I assumed he was my responsibility. Not being able to see that he was OK was a bother." They wrote to each other - sometimes several times a day. "I was just looking at the letters. I'd write: 'Five days, three hours and twenty minutes until I next see you,' and then the next letter would be, 'Four days, three hours...'
King Hussein's rationale was that boarding school in England would instil some (relative) normality in his children. He wanted them, says Haya, to be "exposed to the world, and to see other cultures and to understand what life was like without the royal machine." Was she treated as just another kid? "Yeah, definitely," she laughs. "I remember being picked on. I was the shortest. It definitely made me stronger. But once I made it onto all the sports teams, I was fine." She cheerfully admits to whacking hockey rivals square on the shins "on purpose. That was one of my tactics."
She was doing her A levels at Bryanston, in Dorset, when the First Gulf War broke out in 1990, which was "tough", because she worried so much about home. Nevertheless, she was offered a place to read PPE at Oxford that year. "My father was so proud. I got a two-E offer and then proceeded to nearly get two Es - but managed not to." What she loved about the university, along with the "atmosphere and history", was meeting "open-minded people who were prepared to debate anything. You're at an age and in a place where things aren't held against you. You explore ideas without judgement in a way that you really can't now, because the world is so politically correct."
At the same time, she was pursuing her love of riding. Soon she was competing at a national, then international level. In 1992, the year I was born, she took the individual showjumping bronze at the Pan Arab games in Damascus, and in 2000 she qualified for the Olympics in Sydney. "Constantly, people commented, 'Do you understand what's happening politically while you are worried about your horse?' My father really protected me. He had to fight hard to allow me to compete internationally rather than just do my royal duties."
Today, she still keeps horses in Dubai, and she travels to the UK every year with Sheikh Mohammed and stays in their house in Newmarket. Although shuttled about in air-conditioned luxury with her husband and an entourage that runs into double figures, she's perfectly happy to run herself around in her car, drop the kids at school and whip them up a bolognese or lasagne for tea. She also says she's most comfortable in jeans.
Princess Haya reads widely, speaks five languages, wants to learn to play the piano and to cook better. She runs as well, and says she'd like to compete in a pentathlon (riding, shooting, swimming, running and fencing). "I'm good at all those things [in the pentathlon] except fencing. I've never done fencing."
On the topic of feminism and women's rights, Princess Haya says that she's not a feminist, but concludes, "I had rose-tinted glasses growing up. I was sheltered from the realities of what women in the region and in general face. And now I think I would absolutely support the fact that women deserve equal rights, if not a little more." •
No comments: