Two famous women. Both very attractive, well bred and brilliant. Both flawed and in many ways sad, and lonely in crowds of people. Both came from illustrious families. One was the darling of the West, the other the darling of the world.
Both were murdered because they came to Pakistan and wanted to get away from their husbands. Both assassinations are embroiled in controversy and inquiries. Both had an impact on the politics of their countries. One was royalty and one considered herself royalty.
Much has been written about Princess Diana and her affairs with Hasnat Khan and Dodi Fayed. In this news story, Hasnat speaks for one of the first times. Apparently Diana used to read the Quran and according to many reports had converted to Islam. Many including Mr. Fayed claims that the British could not accept having a Muslim “Step-Father-in-Law” for Britain and therefore she was involved in the “Accident” which took her life. There are too many lose ends in Diana’s death. That is why another inquiry is being conducted. Like Diana’s death the simplistic reasons are not acceptable to the Pakistanis.
HE is the man Princess Diana famously described as “Mr Wonderful” – the undisputed love of her life.
Ten years on, Hasnat Khan leads a mellow existence in the garrison town of Jhelum, Pakistan– thousands of kilometres from the unrelenting storm that surrounds the memory of Diana.
A mild, unshowy figure – he ruefully concedes that in recent years he has run to fat – Mr Khan has nevertheless been at the centre of some of the most momentous events in contemporary history. He has never spoken publicly about his affair with Diana.
Mr Khan, 48, remembers the Princess with warmth and pride. But he is suspicious of attempts to canonise a woman whose very ordinariness was, to him, one of her most attractive features.
He smiles and says: “I found her a very normal person. We all have our drawbacks, but Ifound her a very normal person with great qualities and some personal drawbacks, like bad habits. We all have drawbacks.”
He pauses, then declares: “I think she did great work for the country and for people all over the world … I think that is important.”
Mr Khan, a consultant cardiologist, has broken his silence because of frenzied speculation that he would attend the Diana inquest, which continues to run in London. This is a circus he is determined to avoid.
He left London in October and is staying with his elderly parents in Jhelum, a sleepy town with a population of 200,000, before starting a new life as the head of a cardiac hospital in Malaysia.
Mr Khan spends his days fishing with his nephews and nieces. His three siblings have six children and the family is very close. The home is surrounded by mango and orange groves, where he goes walking.
He admits that two months ago, he separated from 29-year-old Hadia Sher Ali, the daughter of a noble Afghan family and his wife of 18 months. And although he refuses to say why the arranged marriage failed, blaming “multiple reasons”, he concedes the events of 10 years ago still dominate his life.
“Sometimes I feel like screaming. There have been very bad times. I have moved on but it keeps coming back.”
When he first set eyes on her, the man who became the most important figure in her final years says he was far from overwhelmed.
“I was working in Australia at the time of the bicentennial celebrations in 1988 or 1989,” he recalls. “We were sitting overlooking Sydney Harbour at the ceremony and we had Princess Diana and Prince Charles visiting.
“We were among some friends and we didn’t pay much attention to the royals. Inever followed the royal family and in Australia there was no coverage and no interest. Then you go to Britain and you realise how big it is.”
It was perhaps precisely this down-to-earth attitude that attracted Diana to him. The surgeon was quite possibly the least star-struck person she ever met – and, on meeting him, one recognises instantly his calm charisma.
They met in 1995, two months before Diana’s famed Panorama interview. The Princess was visiting a friend at Royal Brompton Hospital, West London, where Mr Khan was a leading heart surgeon.
At the height of their romance, she kept his picture by her bedside, introduced him to William and Harry and studied the Koran every night.
The couple went to great lengths to keep their relationship secret, Mr Khan was even smuggled into Kensington Palace in the boot of butler Paul Burrell’s car.
She left messages for him at the hospital under the name Dr Armani and wore a long, black wig to fool photographers when meeting him in pubs and restaurants. Mr Khan reveals his family were complicit in their secrecy.
His uncle, Professor Jawad Sawid Khan, who is head of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology in Lahore, owns a six-bedroom house opposite Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon.
“Diana used to stay here with Hasnat and the rest of us,” he says. “We never let anyone know she was here.’
Diana visited Pakistan several times and there was speculation she intended to follow in the footsteps of her friend Jemima Khan, who married former cricketer Imran Khan, and move there.
But when their relationship was uncovered, the publicity was reportedly too much for Mr Khan and he ended it, leaving Diana devastated.
Unfailingly courteous, he simply smiles and says: “I’m sorry, but that’s something Icannot talk about.”
But he pays tribute to her work and the magical effect she had on those she met: “She got to where she was on what she was. She didn’t just shake hands and wave.”
“Now she has gone, there is a huge vacuum, she left a gap.”
Mr Khan admits he found the scrutiny he faced after Diana’s death immensely difficult. Especially so after he vowed to never speak publicly, which paved the way for even greater speculation.
He simply says: “There have been people who said to me, ‘Why don’t you set the record straight and it will be all over for you?’ But it’s not my way.
“It is very annoying – things have been written by people who didn’t know me at all or Princess Diana. They were written by people who never knew me or met me.”
Returning to Pakistan, where Diana is not constantly in the news, was a release.
“In the UK it’s always in your face. You walk past a newsstand and it’s there. You go into a hospital coffee-room and it’s there. Wherever you go, it is there. Here it is not and that’s a great relief.”
Mr Khan says he was sent a letter, forwarded to him from London, two months ago suggesting he might need to attend the inquest.
He replied with an email saying he had nothing to add to his statement at the 2004 Lord Stevens inquiry.
At that time, he told the inquiry that she talked about marrying him and moving to Pakistan after he told her it was the “only way he could see them having any sort of a normal life together”.
But he says he hopes the inquest will provide closure for the British public, for Prince William and Prince Harry, and for Dodi’s father Mohamed Al Fayed.
Indeed, he hopes to open a hospital in or near Jhelum where poor children with heart defects can be treated, his “dream” project.
Although Mr Khan is aware his appearance has changed since he first hit the headlines.
“The only problem with my new life is my waistline,” he says, glancing at his stomach. “I’m trying to go on a diet.”
Asked if he believes he has lived up to his nickname of Mr Wonderful by refusing to speak of his relationship with Diana, he says: “I don’t know. I’ve just been myself.
“Diana and I were very good friends and I am like that to all my friends. I have been loyal to all of my friends.”
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Say Thank You
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Here we go again! Another Indian prophecy of doom. The first one was in 1947
We would like to refer our readers to the an article on “Toppling the US military” that is worth its weight in gold. Search for it on this site. See: “Kissinger threatened Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto”
