Right mix

Three Dubai-based couples show how a marriage between individuals from different backgrounds can be successful

Life takes on a whole new meaning for the two people who get married. And when they come from divergent backgrounds, their life becomes all the more fascinating. Things such as where they met and how their relationship has worked out, especially in an increasingly intolerant world, stereotypic prejudices makes mixed marriages extremely interesting.

Alison is from the UK while Zia Nazim is a Turk. They have been married for 17 years. She is the general manager of Dubai Ballet Centre. He is a pilot with Emirates.

Joji, a Filipina, is a part-time model married to Neville Hodges, an Australian pilot. Cyntha Gonzalez-Kabil is an American psychotherapist married to Yahia Kabil, an Egyptian-born British ENT surgeon.

The marriages of these couples have one thing in common. If not in heaven, they took shape in the air. Alison and Joji, met their husbands during their stint as stewardesses. While Cyntha met Yahia at Sao Paulo airport, Brazil, in transit.

"We were both on our way to Manaus, Brazil, in the Amazon Jungle for an International Psychology Conference. During the four-hour layover, we spoke quite intimately. By the time we were on the plane, we had hinted about marriage," says Cyntha.

Zia fell for Alison's eyes and smile from the start, while she admired his sense of humour. Joji, on the other hand, is adamant that she never asked Neville "Coffee, tea or me? I just remember that he had lovely eyes, but we did get teased a lot, because how much more clichéd can it get than a pilot and a stewardess?" she says.

Though Yahia loved Cyntha's vibrant blue eyes, her broad smile and outgoing personality, it was the intellectual common ground that brought them closer.