Word: alanoud
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...ALANOUD BADR TAKES ONE HAND off the steering wheel of her limited-edition Peugeot 407 convertible, turns down the volume on the Black Eyed Peas and pulls her Moto Razr V3 out of her Gucci tote. "The traffic's terrible," she tells the friend she should have met 10 minutes ago at the Mall of the Emirates, the gargantuan new shopping destination that looms out of the construction-site-riddled desert along Dubai's Sheik Zayed Road...
...mall comprises not just a still-to-be-completed five-star hotel, a branch of London's Harvey Nichols and every designer boutique you can think of but also its own ski slope. Alanoud has graciously invited me to go along with her and her friend while they shop, grab a coffee and ski. Skiing, of course, is not normally part of their daily ritual, but in Dubai you have to do things when they are new. And new is a relative term in a place where there's always a bigger mall being built, boasting even more outrageous tenants...
...Alanoud glances at her diamond-encrusted Chanel J12 watch. The truth is, today's schedule is a little ambitious. We've already "done" Wafi Mall, which opened in 1991 and since then has virtually doubled in size, with a new subterranean "suq shopping experience" planned. We've stopped by the chic Emirates Towers Boulevard to mooch around Villa Moda, the designer emporium that also has stores in Kuwait, Qatar and Bombay. And Alanoud has taken me to the Village Mall, near her family home in the ritzy suburb Jumeirah, where the latest must-have accessory is a clutch bag made...
...knew about Alanoud, 25, before we met this morning was that she's the oldest daughter of a prominent Saudi businessman and that her mother, who is half Lebanese, attends the haute couture shows in Paris fully veiled. Yesterday in the malls, as I watched women in floor-length black robes called abayas and head scarves called sheilahs, as well as those wearing burqas covering everything but their eyes, I wondered what Alanoud would be like and whether it would be difficult to relate to someone from a culture so different from mine. That was before a dazzling girl...