Asma al Asad (born Asma Fawaz al Akhras) was 25 years old when she married a ophthalmologist of Syrian origin, expert in glaucoma who worked at the Western Eye Hospital in London, Bashar al Assad.
Daughter of a cardiologist and a diplomatic mother Stationed in the Syrian embassy, Asma was born in 1975 in the English capital and trained at King’s College. Graduated in Computer Science and French literature, she began working at Deutsche Bank until JP Morgan at the New York headquarters.
The young woman aspired to a comfortable life in England, but in 2000, the death of her father-in-law, the dictator Hafez al Assad, and that of her older brother-in-law precipitated her husband’s return to Syria to take his place and become the now deposed by his country as president, accused of being a dictator and a criminal.
Asma, who was a paradigm of exquisiteness, from whom a touch of modernity was expected for her people, is the mother of three children (Hafez, Zein and Karim). With them and her husband Bachar has fled the country, a personal drama to which the illness adds. The wife of the former Syrian president suffered breast cancer in 2018, from which she recovered.
But this year, the former first lady relapsed and was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. an aggressive cancer that affects the bone marrow and blood.
Called at the time by some sectors The Rose of the Desert, Asma could not meet the expectations that her arrival in Syria entailed, where she began to promote initiatives aimed at to alleviate poverty and improve the position of women.
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