Earlier this summer, Palestinian-Dutch-American supermodel Bella Hadid posted an Instagram Story featuring her shoe against a backdrop of an airport runway on which an Emirati and Saudi airplane were parked.
This led to calamity as Twitter erupted in accusations of Hadid’s “racism”. Of course, if photographing footwear is racist, one can only surmise as to what the proper descriptor might be for the manic Saudi-Emirati bombardment and starvation of Yemen.
Meanwhile, in other Gulf-related news of the rich and famous, the United Arab Emirates was recently dealt another underhanded blow by its very own Princess Haya, the sixth-or-so wife of Dubai ruler and prolific poet Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
The princess, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, is currently reportedly “in hiding” in an £85m ($106m) townhouse in London, where, according to a source cited by the New York Times, she is seeking political asylum as well as a divorce.
There are varying hypotheses as to the motives behind Princess Haya’s flight, many involving the idea that she had “discovered disturbing facts” (BBC) about last year’s failed escape attempt by Sheikha Latifa, one of Sheikh al-Maktoum’s numerous offspring, who was intercepted off the coast of India and forcibly returned to the UAE.
As the New York Times notes, Princess Haya is “at least the third woman to flee Sheikh Mohammed’s palaces in Dubai”. Granted, given the present context of Europe’s lethal war on refugees, one might find it difficult to muster much empathy on behalf of someone pursuing political asylum from within an £85m property in the UK.
But the defection of Princess Haya - not to mention less-high-profile escapes from the UAE of females claiming domestic abuse - is at least as good an occasion as any to contemplate the Emirates’ self-portrayal as an island of women’s rights in the midst of a gulf of oppression. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.