Desert Storm

It had a long run in both the printed and celluloid media - a story of a (sometimes) doomed relationship between a white 'goddess' and a hot-blooded, sultry non-white male, usually Arab-Muslim.

We know of Shakespeare's Othello the Moor and Desdemona the Venetian.

Then in 1924 E.M. Forster wrote "A Passage to India"  about Adela Quested's  fantasy of Dr Aziz Ahmed's sexual attraction for her.

From Hollywood in the 1920s we had the smouldering sex icon, the 'Sheik' and  'Son of the Sheik'  starring Rudolf Valentino.

Another movie  'Island in the Sun' (1957) touched on the delicate story of a black activist (Harry Belafonte) and a blonde beauty (Joan Fontaine).

So, I was quite chuffed to discover this same motif in my 1934 Woman's Needlework Magazine.

By the way, this was the period in-between the two massive European Tribal Wars aka the First World War and Second World War - when there was rampant unemployment and poverty of the lower classes (or the Great Depression) somewhat like today after the Banks' Crisis.

There was this icy-cool English brunette ....

 .........who was irresistibly attracted to ......... the Dark Cavalier.......

who actually turned out to be ...  An Arab ......... Sidi Zarouk ben Mohammed ben Amor Metlaoui!!!

...... from a noble and royal Moroccan pedigree!  (Well, it had to be aristocratic enough for our fine  English lass, hadn't it?)

"You see they are really still living centuries ago - they have their brutality and splendour, the magnificient qualities and the terrible faults of another age."   (Hold on mate, you're only making it more exciting for the English rose!)

Well, these words  (the ones in italics) could have come from our present-day journalists, academic and social commentators and of course Cameron and Sarkozy and  America's super-hero.

The one difference is this: present day magnificent savages have ... OIL!

Well, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, if only you and your father had played the game right.  Instead of  feasting and feteing  sultry western maidens like you did ......

...and English political scroungers like your father did .......

..... and donating loadsofmoney, to the tune of  Sterling 1.5 million, to the London School of Economics ...... you should have spent it on more worthy causes, if not in your country but to other poverty stricken people.  But rich Muslim potentates seem to have a penchant for throwing money at institutions in the West.  Shouldn't charity begin at home?

Undoubtedly your father provided Libya with an impressive education and health system that put Cameron's to shame - but other issues seem to have been neglected or made to look more dire.

Your father tweaked the Judaeo-Christian's tail once too often and he had to be run into the ground -in fact lynched by a mob while the self-righteous mullahs in the West looked away.  (Remember, they allowed  Chilean dictator and murderer Pinochet to get away with his "crimes against humanity"). 

And so, poor Saif, finally in your blackest moments you donned your traditional Arab robes.....

..... but you will not be a heartthrob like the 'Sheik'  (Rudolf Valentino) and other glamorous male Arab-Muslim 'heiristocrats'  for the trophy collectors in the West.

Perhaps , your father might have lasted longer if he had fostered this image of the Arabs  - as seen in this video "Ahab the Arab".  Long live Coca Cola and McDonalds and cheap oil!!!

By the way,it was not until the 1967 US Supreme Court decision that US-based inter-racial marriages were allowed.