A couple of nights ago I sat next to a young man at a drinks party who had escaped from Iran aged 14 in the back of a van. This was in 1987. So while I was going to dinner parties at university and making vital decisions like what to wear, he was risking his life for a better future.

“Iran is nothing to me now,” he told me. “I am an American.” Interestingly he also told me that if he ever wanted to go back, he would have to adopt Iranian nationality. Iranians are not allowed to visit unless they are nationals. The reason for this? “So they can throw you in jail with impunity,” he said.

As I write a young student from the University of California is languishing in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Her alleged crime? A totally fabricated minor traffic offence. Her real crime? Investigating women’s rights in Iran for her university thesis. She is also a member of the Iranian women’s rights group Change for Equality (www.forequality.info/english/). Esha called her family the day after her arrest on October 15th but no one has heard anything since then.

Esha Momeni is Iranian/American. Her family, who live in Iran, were told that if there was no publicity surrounding her arrest she would be freed. This has not happened, so her desperate family have told the press about it. They must remember the case of the Canadian journalist raped and murdered there a few years ago and countless others who have never been seen again.

Evin is not a place you would want to end up. I have just finished reading an excellent book about it called Prisoner of Tehran which tells the story of a young student who escapes the firing squad by marrying her interrogator. But not before she is tortured to within an inch of her life. And all because she wanted to learn something at school and not just listen to rants about how marvellous Khomeni was.

If you do nothing else today then please spare a thought for Esha and sign this petition (www.PetitionOnline.com/EshaM/) or join Amnesty International and find out how you can help Esha and others like her.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

What do you thing your average Abu Dhabian does of a weekend? A spot of swimming in the warm sea? A trip to the desert? Some camel racing perhaps? No, we go to Carrefour.

For reasons too tedious to explain, I have been to two Carrefours today and you would have thought they had announced that you got a year’s free groceries judging by the queues. Or that every litre of milk came with a kiss from Carla Bruni for the blokes and one from Olivier Martinez for the girls.

Sadly none of the above was true. We just all happened to be there at the same time. Luckily the children and I had begun the day with a little more culture. We went to perhaps the only other building here that is bigger than Carrefour; the Grand Mosque. 

I was asked to put on an abya and a scarf before I went in and found it a rather interesting experience. It wasn’t hot or uncomfortable as I imagined it would be. I felt rather elegant sweeping through the vast rooms with my children in tow. Olivia and Bea, never one to miss an opportunity to dress up, donned scarves as well. If I could only get the photo from my phone to the computer I could show you. Leo acted as photographer and did a great job.

The Grand Mosque opened earlier this year and is the final resting place of Sheikh Zayed, the Father of the Nation, to whom it is dedicated. A friend told me today that there are several people employed to read The Koran out loud to his remains at four-hour stretches each. The building covers an area of 22,000 square metres (who does the hoovering is what I want to know) and the building is entirely clad in marble.

It is big enough for 30,000 worshippers, assuming they can tear themselves away from Carrefour that is.

 Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

My step-daughter Julia was here last week for half term. She is fourteen and I thought that she was old enough to come along with me for a manicure and a pedicure. We eased into our comfy chairs feeling jolly pleased with ourselves. Then I spotted her. A girl who could have been no more than seven years old having her nails painted a glittering silver colour.

“What on earth is that child doing here?” I asked my manicurist.

“Oh her,” she said, glancing over her shoulder, “she comes every week.”

Apparently lots of them come every week, especially when they have a party to go to at the weekend. They come with or without their mothers and they have their little fingers and their little toes done and then go off for more I assume; facials, hair extensions, belly-button piercing, massages…..

Is this normal behaviour I ask myself? I wasn’t allowed to have my ears pierced until I was sixteen. I didn’t even know about lip liner until last year. Call me old-fashioned, but does a seven-year-old really NEED perfect nails?

I am going to write a feature on the topic so would love your views, experiences, comments etc. Is it just harmless fun or is it deeply disturbing to see little girls dolled up? Is it industry driven or can we blame the likes of Hannah Montana? Should Olivia and Bea have a manicure and join the crowd, or should they remain natural?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

One of the side-effects of moving to Abu Dhabi, apart from learning to pole dance and belly dance, is meeting interesting people and going to glittering events. It is true that in Gabian the most glittering event was watching Italy beat France in the football world cup with a few locals who seemed to care less than we did. I often wondered if we had hidden ourselves in the depth of the countryside a little too early.

All that has changed. As I write a stunning brown sequined gown lies in my bedroom ready for a reception this evening in honour of the King of Sweden. It is backless and off the shoulder, cut on the bias. I hope the king likes it. I have been told I might be able to interview him.

I have never met a royal, at least not knowingly. The closest I got was Margaret Thatcher and only because she had by then adopted the royal “we”. I am intrigued as to what he will be like. I know from Wikipedia that his father died when he was nine months old but that he wasn’t told about it until he was seven. Tragic and almost comic; you can imagine questions along the lines of “er, whatever happened to that bloke who used to have breakfast with us?”

I am keen to ask him what it’s really like to be royal. Is it as much fun as I think it could be; sleeping in silk sheets and having anything you want. Or does he feel like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and long to escape? I wonder where he would go in Abu Dhabi - Marina Mall perhaps? There’s an IKEA there, we might find him asleep on one of the sofa beds.

 I suspect it really isn’t that much fun. It must be tiresome never being alone, always having someone around you to pick things up or tell you what your next meeting is. Meanwhile I am very much looking forward to slipping into my full-length glittering dress, it makes me feel like I’m going to the Oscars. Maybe if I’d worn it to the World Cup final the Gabian villagers would have perked up a bit. I may go back and try it at the annual school party.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

This morning a woman was shot on her way to work in Kabul by a fundamentalist who sped past her on a motorbike. Her crime? It could have been as mundane as being female and having a job. As it turned out she was a western aid worker whom they accused of spreading Christianity.

Yesterday I read on the BBC website the tragic case of a young girl (who looked uncannily like Olivia and was around the same age as her) who has been desperately saving up money to buy medical books and who’s most fervent desire is to continue studying so she can qualify as a doctor and “help my people”.

But her brothers and her father keep telling her girls don’t go to school; only boys do. I fear she will soon be forced to give up her studies. I feel like going there and adopting her.

Her story reminded me of a conversation I had with an Iranian film-maker at the Middle East International Film Festival which was held here last week. We talked about political prisoners and women’s rights.

“The worst goalers are the husbands, brothers and fathers,” he told me. “The opression from the state is nothing compared with them. There are thousands and thousands of women in prison in their own homes.”

This was not a man who could be described as liberal. When I suggested that maybe stoning people to death for adultery was a little old-fashioned and that we too used to do things like that in medieval times but have now moved on he said that while our law is secular, theirs is religious.

Oh, so that’s all right then…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

“Hi hope evrefing is fine and i hopes you are happy here evrefing is misrebulle,” Bea wrote to her best friend Manon yesterday. This morning though there is a feeling a little like Christmas in the air. In Rupert’s briefcase there is a contract. At 10 o’clock we have a meeting to exchange said contract for a key to our new home. This is the closest we have got to leaving the hotel. The only thing that can go wrong now is that the landlady disagrees with something in the contract. I don’t think I’ll be able to breathe as she reads it.

It is a beautiful villa, slightly out of the centre of town but close to the office and also close to the new Corniche, which is not as posh or beautiful as the one we know and love, but it’s still a corniche. There are three floors which we will need to find furniture for and a huge roof terrace where we can sit outside when the weather allows. As a friend pointed out last night; it’s too hot for many months.

I have shopping lists buzzing around my brain; washing machine, fridge, soap, towels, beds, clothes hangers, tea-towels. I am trying to remember how big our bathroom is and how many of my products I can fit in there. I can’t believe that after almost five months on the road (we left Sainte Cecile in June) we may finally have a home to go to.

I hope we will all be less misrebulle come 10 o’clock……

I am about to interview a handsome young man called Ben Barnes who is in Abu Dhabi for the Middle East International Film Festival. He stars in a great new film called Easy Virtue with, among others, Colin Firth.

Tragically Colin is not here or I would have been interviewing him as well. I was rather depressed last night as I watched the film and quickly realised that I found the middle-aged Colin a thousand times sexier than the young gun. This is clearly a sign that I am just that - middle aged.

Ben’s next film is Dorian Gray. We all know the plot; young man makes pact with devil to stay handsome and young. Staying young is a bit of a theme this week. As you may know I saw Duran Duran on Sunday. I was so excited. John Taylor and Nick Rhodes were among my top ten list of gorgeous men for many years.

“This is such a great east meets west event,” a young Arab said to me while we waited for my heroes to show up.

“I was rather hoping it would be more of a Helena Frith Powell meets John Taylor kind of event,” I replied, edging closer to the front of the stage. Big mistake. Huge. Getting close to the front that is. Being so close made it easy to see the decline in the heroes of my youth.

John Taylor has for some reason turned into Jim Carrey. His face is all crinkled and rubbery. Nick Rhodes is a square blob with hay-stack hair and Simon Le Bon is horribly jowly. He also had a dreadful habit of spitting onto a piece of kitchen paper (obviously laid out for that purpose) every ten minutes. And all the songs they were going to do were written in HUGE BLACK LETTERS on a piece of paper on the floor. Possibly so they wouldn’t forget them. I saw straight away that Save a Prayer wasn’t on it and although I did enjoy bopping along to the others, that was the one I wanted.

The extraordinary thing was that Le Bon acted as if he was Dorian Gray; as if he still looks twenty and is incredibly sexy, which he just isn’t. I suppose the sad truth is that although we age on the outside, inside we still feel as funky and pretty as we did when we were young. My mother-in-law says she is often horrified when she catches a glimpse of herself. “Who’s that old dear?” she asks, before realising it is her.

So although I did fancy Colin more than Ben, there is something undeniably attractive about youth. And it is something we all long to hold on to. But Duran Duran should stop dying their hair, prancing around in badly-cut nylon suits and realise they have no portrait in the attic.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

When I dropped out of school aged 16 and got on a bus to London from Stockholm with my friend Suzanna I had one burning ambition. I wish I could say that I was heading to London with a fervent desire to free Tibet or even get a degree but no, I wanted to meet John Taylor. Or maybe Nick Rhodes, but one or the other.

For those of you who are too young to remember them, they were (and are) members of the band Duran Duran. They had a huge amount of hits in the 1980s like Save a Prayer and Girls on Film. They were ‘new romantics’, they followed in Byron’s footsteps, at least when it came to flouncy shirts.

So I packed my flouncy shirt (it was black with lots of ruffles) and headed off with this burning and most worthy ambition. Although I did meet quite a few pop stars (I even sang backing vocals on a Steve Strange single with my friend Floss) I never met any of the members of Duran Duran.

I am pleased to report that is all about to change. Tonight Rupert and I are invited to a private event where they will be performing. Rupert says he is coming along purely to restrain me. I am wondering if they will still be wearing silly shirts and what they will look like; middle aged? gorgeous?

Whatever else, it’s a great excuse to party, dance and wear a flouncy shirt. As the song goes; don’t say a prayer for me now, save it till the morning after….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

John D Rockefeller said “I have tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.” So I tried yesterday to overcome the disaster of losing our dream apartment by buying a car.

“Wouldn’t a dress do the trick?” suggested the charming man who is going to rent our house in France.

Not compared with a red convertible Porsche with leather seats. Sadly the fantasy lasted about five minutes. I can just about get away with a four-seater (it’s mainly just me or just me and the children I drive around) but the only Porsches I can afford have only two seats. And although I am willing to squeeze the five of us into a two-bedroom apartment if I need to, three children in one car seat is probably pushing it, even if it is leather.

So instead of Porsche-buying I went Pole dancing. Yes, Abu Dhabi may seem like an unlikely place to learn to gyrate around a metal pole, but there are classes here (diplomatically called Vertical Flex) and as it is something I have always wanted to try (don’t pretend you haven’t as well, if you’re female that is) I went along.

It was great. Once I got the hang (pardon the pun) of actually swinging around the pole without falling off I totally loved it and am going back for more next week. Assuming I can move that is. One of the reasons people swear by pole dancing is that it is such good exercise. I can vouch for that. Today my arms are a shaking shadow of their former selves. I could barely lift them to brush my teeth this morning. But at least the pain has taken my mind off the lack of housing. And I didn’t even need to buy a Porsche.

I can now save that for when the next flat falls through. If the global meltdown continues, they’ll be even cheaper by then.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

One of the most brilliant flashing motorway signs I ever saw was in France on the road from Paris down south. “Restez Zen” flashed above us in big neon letters as we sat in a traffic jam on our way home.

It is this attitude I am trying very hard to adopt as I come to terms with the fact that our dream apartment has fallen through.

There is something almost lyrical in the inevitability of it. We were due to move next week; we had organised the money (well, almost); I was just about able to cope with leaving the beach villa in Dubai as I thought we were going to have our very own kitchen; my stepchildren Hugo and Julia are coming to stay soon and I was relieved we weren’t going to have to put them on the floor in our hotel bedroom; it was five minutes from the school; every time we drove past it the children shouted “there’s our house”; it is a one-minute walk from the beach; it was all furnished thus saving us that hassle….the list goes on.

But the landlord has got wind of our contact leaving the country and wants to do everything by the book. So our contact has to stay on for another two months at which point his contract will be terminated and the landlord will be free to hike the rent up to a price we will not be able to afford.

Anyway, onwards and upwards, or as Homer Simpson says “forward not backwards, upwards not forwards and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom”. Or failing that: Restez Zen.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008