Writer tells of being duped by Assad’s wife

LOS ANGELES: The American writer behind a famously flattering Vogue profile of Asma al-Assad has described how she was ''duped'' by the wife of the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.

Joan Juliet Buck's 3200-word article, entitled ''A Rose in the Desert'', was published in March last year and described the British-born Mrs Assad as ''glamorous, young and very chic - the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies''. Writing in Newsweek magazine 14 months later, the author called Mrs Assad ''the first lady of hell'' and outlined how ''the devil and his wife'' had ''showed off their fantasy lives for me''.

Buck said that, at the time of the interview in Syria in December 2010, fashion magazines had regarded the country as a ''forbidden kingdom, full of silks, essences, palaces and ruins, run by a modern president and an attractive, young first lady''. The writer said Mrs Assad had seemed ''as friendly as a new acquaintance at a friend's cocktail party'' and had ''sounded like the kind of young Englishwoman you'd hear having lunch at the next table at Harvey Nichols''.

 

However, she also revealed how, on a visit to a youth centre, Mrs Assad had caused children to cry by falsely telling them the centre was closing. Mrs Assad told her it was ''just to get them out of their comfort zone''.

The writer also described how she once asked Mr Assad why he had wanted to be an eye doctor and he replied: ''It's very precise, and there is very little blood.''

The profile was later removed from Vogue's website.