Samira Khashoggi

Her father Muhammad Khashoggi was a medical doctor of Turkish descent,[1] and was King Abdul Aziz Al Saud's personal doctor.[2] She died of a heart attack in 1986 at the age of 51.[3] Her family surname, Khashoggi, means "spoon maker" (Kaşıkçı) in the Turkish language.[4]

She wrote under the pseudonym Samirah ‘Daughter of the Arabian Peninsula’. Her books include Wadda’t Amali (Farewell to my Dreams, 1958) “Thekrayāt Dām’ah’ (Tearful Memories, 1963), ‘Wara’ Aldabab’ (Beyond the Cloud, 1971), Qatrat Min ad-Dumu’(Teardrops,1979) and ‘Barīq Aynaik’(The Sparkle of Your Eyes). Since 1972, Al-Sharkiah (the oriental woman) has been the leading monthly pan-Arab women’s magazine. Khashoggi was the first Saudi female publisher and columnist; a dynamic, pioneering and highly respected thinker.

She met Mohamed Al-Fayed on the beach in Alexandria and they married in 1954.[5] The marriage lasted two years, and produced one child, Dodi Fayed. Samira separated from Mohamed Al-Fayed just months after Dodi's birth. She then married Saudi Ambassador Anas Yassin and had her second child, Jumana Yassin. She was the aunt of actress and producer Nabila Khashoggi and of political journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Her son Dodi was reportedly devoted to her, and would telephone her almost every day up to her death. Dodi once told a friend: "If it meant giving up everything I have—cars, wealth, and women—I would do it to bring my mother back."[6] Her son was dating the late Diana, Princess of Wales, when they both died in a traffic collision in Paris on 31 August 1997.