In honour of International Women’s Day and mothers around the world, Abu Dhabi Week sits down with some of the capital’s most influential women to find out who has inspired them.

It’s a stunning Thursday morning and the view from the Royal Suite of the Beach Rotana hotel is nothing short of magnificent. Even more inspiring than the spectacular architecture outside the window are the ladies coming to meet with us this morning.

Despite a jam-packed schedule, HE Ms Sarah Suhail has managed to make some time for us. She spends her days heading up Ewa’a, an organisation affiliated with the UAE Red Crescent Society that provides shelter for women and children who are victims of human trafficking. Though her influence has reached hundreds of women in need, Ms Sarah is an inspiration to everyone around her, such as her assistant Mahra Al Qubaisi who is sitting beside her.

“I worked before in a bank but I quit to stay at home and raise my kids,” says the beautiful young Mahra. “When I first met [Ms Sarah], she spoke passionately about the issue of human trafficking. She inspired me so much I decided to join her team. She hasn’t just taught me how to do my job, but also how to raise my kids, how to deal with my husband, everything – she’s like
my mother.”

Surprised by this revelation, Ms Sarah laughs – she doesn’t think of herself as an inspirational woman. As far as Ms Sarah is concerned, that title goes to her role model, HH Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, wife of the late HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and president of UAE Women's Association.

“Sheikha Fatima is a great woman and a great humanitarian,” she says. “Once she visited the victims in my shelter. These women had escaped from some very bad situations. They were desperate but Sheikha Fatima said, ‘Don’t worry – I will solve your problems and you will go home. I will take care of everything. And don’t cry – in this country, don’t cry.’”

With reverence, she recalls how Sheikha Fatima kept her word, following up on individual cases, cooking familiar food for the victims and seeing them returned to their native lands.

“She didn’t just send these women home,” says Ms Sarah. “She gave them the money and the means so that these women would be able to start over in their own countries. She changed their lives.”

 

Sitting across the coffee table is another of our guests who is no stranger to changing lives – Dr Chandrakumari Shetty, Group Medical Director at NMC Specialty Hospital, who grew up to be a strong woman - largely thanks to her father as well as her mother.
“My parents believed that what a man can do, a woman can do,” says the soft-spoken grandmother who has lived in Abu Dhabi since 1976. “I am one of nine children, but my father used to always push us girls to compete with the boys.

“It was the tradition in India when I was growing up that if the boys came down the hall at school, the girls were expected to move to the side, but my father said no – when I was at school, I would not move out of the way for the boys. Every step of the way you find somebody who inspires you. When I turned 50, I thought I should retire – then I met a lady who was a doctor and she was 87, so I decided to keep going.”

It’s no surprise when the conversation turns to the words of our mothers. Dr Shetty says that, even though her parents died when she was just 17 years old, she can still remember their words.

Abu Dhabi Week’s editor Megan Wynes knows just what Dr Shetty means. She recalls her German grandmother who survived World War II and the fall of Berlin – only to marry a British soldier and move to the heart of London where people hated her.

“She used to go shopping and people would spit on her feet,” says Megan. “Unfortunately she died when I was 11 but I find myself saying the same things to my little nieces that my grandmother used to say like, ‘Don’t watch TV for too long or you’ll get square eyes’. Even though it was so long ago, I remember so much about her.”

Having finally overcome the traffic, artist and gallery owner Salwa Zeidan arrives with her sister, artist and art therapist Dr Leila Al Husseini. Like Dr Shetty, Ms Salwa was also greatly influenced by her father.

“My father was the big inspiration in my life – he was a poet and a doctor, an extremely intelligent man,” says the Lebanese Ms Salwa. “My mother was not educated but very intelligent in her own way. She was much younger than my father – she was only 36 when he died, but she had 13 children. Watching her take care of a huge family with love, we learned love, patience and discipline. My mother was artistic in her day-to-day work, but the culture and all that comes with it came from my father.”

 

Despite the many accomplishments of our guests, none of them thinks of herself as a role model. Dr Shetty says leadership is a big responsibility. “If other women are watching us, we have to be careful about what we do,” she says.

And while Ms Sarah appreciates hearing that she’s been an inspiration to other women, she only wants to see her protégés inspire those around them.

“I would just ask all women to act like role models,” says Ms Sarah. “We all have the choice of what we want to do. When I see my children, I feel proud because they are a credit to me – they make me think I did something good, and I want all women to do the same.”

Amid the shuffle as the ladies rise to go, called back to the many commitments that have inspired the next generation to follow in their footsteps, Dr Leila leans over and makes a comment in passing that seems to sums up our intention for the day.

“It is important for us to remember women and honour them,” she says, “because women create life.”

Laura Fulton