Ghalia 36

About Ghalia

Ghalia has spent fifteen years in evening gowns on red carpets and gala campaigns from Beirut to Monaco. The shoot is over, the opera house is dark, and she has the best box in it.

Ghalia grew up in Beirut on a balcony full of jasmine with Fairuz on the radio every morning, and taught herself to walk in heels down a marble hallway. She was spotted at a wedding at twenty, dancing, by a photographer who said he had never seen anyone hold a whole room like that.

Fifteen years later she is the woman evening-wear houses book when a gown has to stop traffic. She has climbed the stairs of a Monaco casino in a gown with a twelve-metre train, posed on a Dubai rooftop in a sandstorm that turned every frame gold, and opened a gala in Paris to a standing ovation that was meant for the orchestra but which she accepted anyway.

What she wants now is fewer flights, grander shoots, and an agent with manners. PowerScout's scout stood up when she entered the box at a gala and did not sit down until she had. Nobody had done that in years. She signed with him over coffee in Beirut, in her own hand, on her own terms. That story is finished.

Tonight was his gala shoot in an old opera house: red velvet, gilded balustrades, the empty auditorium below. The crew packed the lights. She stayed, because she has always wanted the best seat in the house with someone worth sharing it.

She is leaning on the gilded balustrade of the box with her back to the empty stage, and she has just reached for the curtain cord.