Conglomerate's son

Unconventional family registries

My parents met at a New York ZARA fashion show in May 1989, four months before the opening of the first American ZARA storefront at the corner of 59th and Lexington. My dad, after earning his undergraduate business degree at Macalester College in Minnesota in 1985, was ordered to station in New York and tasked with finding opportunities to expand the family's business to the North American continent.

"With big grey eyes and straight brown hair, your mom's dazzling smile was very captivating," my dad recalled. Mom probably caught his eyes because of her beautiful Irish-Scottish face and gorgeous figure of a top-tier model. Freshly graduated from Traphagen School of Fashion as a Fashion Design major in 1989, just 2 years before this famous New York-based fashion school was permanently closed down, my mom soon discovered that she preferred walking the stage in glamorous clothes over spending countless hours designing other people's outfits.

Being one of the few descendants of a prominent family-owned banking corporation founded in the U.S. since 1784, my mother could seemingly afford the liberty to do whatever she wanted. Since day 1, the concern was about how much time would she have to spend money, not how much money would she have to spend. Yet, mom was raised outside of the spotlights for fear of being kidnapped, always with her caretakers instead of her busy parents, constantly surrounded by undercover bodyguards, and somehow, perpetually lost her freedom due to her sumptuous automatic inheritance. Growing up, she couldn't tell others who her parents were. She was never introduced to relatives again after the age of five when she was moved to a separate mansion, with an entirely new crew of caretakers, housemaids, chauffeurs, security guards, and an alternate identity... just so no one else would know about her. From then on, she didn't get to see much of her parents besides, perhaps, once a year somewhere aboard to prevent breach of security. My mom tried her best to live a "normal" life, making friends, going on trips. But "normal" was never normal when everywhere she went, the operatives would follow her nearby. It couldn't be normal when she would have to move to a mock-up secondary house just for the night every single time her classmates wanted to come for a sleep over. And then, of course, her parents would be "away on business trip". The answers to "What do your parents do?" were always a vague "They work at the headquarter of a bank." Her legal guardians for parent meetings at schools were the consistently different lawyers who did not even know who her parents were. So my mom was living a life, but not of her own.

Perhaps, that's why she fell for my dad, a free-spirited prince-charming of an Arab descent, one who was also surrounded by undercover bodyguards but was able to remain cheerful and could act at will. "When he entered my dressing room after the show, I could immediately spot the movements of his garde du corps as the door was closing," said my mom, "I was intrigued, as if I was seeing another me, but a me who was completely in control of me. For a moment, I was envious of your father and just wanted to see him again. You know, to learn his tricks so I could seize control of my own life."

Shortly after that first meeting, my parents, then at 26 and 23 years old, had to replace most of their guards once again and would only allow trusted personnel to accompany them to their secret meeting locations.

As a male Muslim who grew up away from his family and schooled mostly in Europe or North America, my dad had a different take on his family's traditions. He believed in individuals' freedom to love and engage in voluntary sexual relationships. He wasn't personally committed to the governing religious laws at his birth rites. That's why my mom became pregnant with me, before marriage. But, at the time, my dad was under critical watchful eyes as his family's conglomerate was still deciding on a worthy heir. So, he could not bring home an already pregnant bride. On the other hand, my mom could not disclose the identities of her parents so she could officially get married with the family's recognition, thus had already decided to not marry my dad in any circumstances.

That's precisely why my birth had to remain secret. 

In the U.S., I didn't have a father. I was the son of my mom's alternate identity, hidden even from her birth parents. In the United Arab Emirates, I didn't have a mother even though my dad discretely registered me as his son without being married.

My existence did not become known to the rest of the world until my father officially took his shares of the family's fortune in early 2000, through the largest business settlement in Dubai at the time.

Suddenly, I became my father's sole heir, at the age of 10.

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*Author's notes:

1. The first U.S. ZARA storefront was indeed opened in New York in September 1989 at the corner of 59th and Lexington.

2. Yes, Traphagen School of Fashion was permanently closed down in 1991. 

3. Yes, Macalester College is in Minnesota and had several business programs in 1985. And, yes, a real-life Futtaim got such degree from here in the same year. 

4. Yes, one of the most prominent, family-owned banking corporations in the U.S. was founded by an Irish-Scottish American in 1784. Their extended businesses are highly valuable to the U.S. and the world economies to date.

5. "garde du corps" means lifeguard in French. The Garde du Corps  was the name of a military unit (founded in 1740 by Frederick the Great) consisting of calvary personal bodyguards for the king of Prussia.