Marriage To Arafat
Suha, her mother, and her sisters met Arafat for the first time in 1985. When he visited France in 1989, she acted as an interpreter at the meetings with visitors and French government officials. It is argued that through her mother Suha met her husband. However, it is also argued that Suha met Arafat in 1987 and 1988, and helped organize his visit to Paris in 1989.
Soon after his departure from Paris, Arafat asked Suha to come and work with him in Tunisia (where the Palestinian Liberation Organization had set up a haven). Suha converted to Islam and secretly married Arafat on 17 July 1990, when she was aged 27 and he was 61. Their only child, daughter Zahwa, was born on 24 July 1995 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Zahwa was named after Arafat’s mother.
In 2004, when Arafat was dying in a Paris hospital, she talked to him in an attempt to bring him out of his coma. Arafat died on 11 November 2004.
Read more about this topic: Suha Arafat
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