“If you are watching this video, it’s not such a good thing. Either I’m dead or I’m in a very, very, very bad situation.”
Editors handpick every product that we feature. We may earn money from the links on this page.Amid a rash of women fleeing oppressive families in the middle east, the case of Princess Latifa, who has tried to run away twice, has been splashed across headlines around the world. In exclusive interviews with her friends and family, Marie Claire goes behind the scenes of her last attempt and their fight to #FreeLatifa.
The princess was right to worry. After eight tense days at sea, the yacht carrying the two women was stormed by a heavily armed commando unit sent by Latifa’s father. Jauhiainen, along with the yacht’s captain, Herve Jaubert, and three Filipino crewmen, were held with machine guns to their heads while Latifa was dragged off the boat. “She was fighting with all her strength. She shouted that she wanted political asylum,” recalls Jauhiainen.
Latifa’s flight was especially shocking because Dubai maintains a carefully cultivated image as the region’s most open and progressive society. A hugely popular tourist destination, it is crammed with high-rise hotels, shopping malls, theme parks, and party-ready beaches. Women drive, work, and study, and in some areas they excel. According to a 2017 figure from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 52 percent of university degrees are earned by women. Yet appearances are deceptive.
Latifa wasn’t the only girl in her family to find her caged existence unbearable. In 2000, at the age of 18, her older sister Shamsa ran away. The family was visiting their multimillion-dollar estate in the British countryside when Shamsa jumped into one of her family’s black Range Rovers, drove to an open gate, and fled on foot.
Essabri understands what it’s like to be a young woman kicking against a rigid existence. In a way, he has his own escape story. He was born a woman, Mita, and lived as a female until he was 33. He married young and had three children before his sexuality and desire to change genders brought his conventional family life to an end. He now lives in the British city of Gloucester, where he worked until recently as a community police officer.
“It was very, very hard for her in Dubai. Everything is so in-your-face: all the freedom, the travel, the modern lifestyle,” says Jauhiainen. “She wasn’t even allowed to get into a friend’s car or visit their apartment. On social occasions, she had to make excuses to leave so she could make her curfew. She didn’t know what it was like to wake up in the morning and make a spontaneous decision to do anything she wanted.
In February 2018, everything was finally in place. In her video, recorded just days before her escape, Latifa sounds upbeat. “Pretty soon I’m going to be leaving somehow. I’m not so sure of the outcome, but I’m 99 percent positive it will work.” Then she adds caution. She emailed the video to a law firm in the U.S. that Jaubert had introduced her to, with instructions to release it to NGOs and the press if she was captured.
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