If you’re an Arab first lady, then chances are the British government has flown you over to London, plumped up the pillows in a Mayfair hotel room and stationed a burly bodyguard outside the door in return for a favour – that you address a Department of Trade and Industry conference called Women in Business. Suzanne Mubarak of Egypt, Asma al-Assad of Syria and Queen Rania of Jordan have all taken part. It’s Davos for Arab leaders’ wives, and giving a speech is a good opportunity to dazzle with economic erudition.
That is, if you are a political science graduate or have spent your productive years before marrying the president as an intern at Goldman Sachs. But, for one of the newer recruits to the Middle East’s first sorority – the wife of Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani – it’s not coming so naturally. Talabani and his wife, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, have spent most of their lives in the mountains of north Iraq as “peshmergas”, the term coined by Hero’s father (himself peshmerga aristocracy) to describe those Kurds fighting Saddam Hussein for independence. During this time, Hero didn’t do much trading in oil shares or market speculating.
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