Anyone who met Taff al-Khalifa, in
casual clothes and crew-cut, would see a polite
young man, small for his age. He calls himself
Taff now and dresses in the men's clothes he has
felt drawn to since he was a small child.
But three weeks ago things were very
different. Then Taff was Princess Latifa of
Bahrain the niece of one of the most powerful
men in the Middle East, King Hamad bin Isa
al-Khalifa.
Brought up to follow royal protocol and
Islamic law in the oil-rich kingdom, Latifa, 21,
tried everything to reconcile what she knew was
expected of her and the inner voice that told
her she was transsexual, a boy born into a
girl's body. Three weeks ago, as the pressure
for her to marry became unbearable, Latifa ran
away from her family while on a visit to London
and created herself a new identity - Taff.
Accustomed to luxury, Taff has nothing now,
except his friends. He has no papers or passport
and no means to sustain himself. He is trying to
regularise his status as an asylum seeker with
British immigration but it will be a long, slow
process. His family who consider him mentally
unstable, have had him tailed by a private
detective and he has fought off an abduction
attempt.
If Taff is returned to Bahrain he faces the
death penalty. Islamic law would consider him
gay, a crime punishable by stoning. Tampering
with his body - as he has done through
testosterone injections and as he intends to do
through gender reassignment treatment in this
country - is taboo.
"As a member of the royal family you are
supposed to set the example for everyone else,"
Taff explains. "The way you behave can give
permission to everyone else to behave that way.
That is why what I have done is so serious."
He laughs, sadly.
"The King was always my favourite uncle. But
there is no way he can tolerate this."
He has felt for as long as he can remember
that he ought to have been born a boy.
"I also knew, even as a child, that I wasn't
the only one in the world feeling like this,"
says Taff.
"When we were abroad on holiday I was always
looking out for people like me."
It wasn't till 15, when a friend told I him
what a transsexual was, that Taff realised what
he felt had a name.
While he always played the role of a Bahraini
princess at royal functions, Taff's upbringing
was different from that of his cousins. His
mother, the King's sister, is a divorced
businesswoman who is extremely liberal by Middle
Eastern standards and refused to allow her three
girls to grow up like spoiled little princesses.
Taff knows she will be blamed for having brought
up a transsexual for a daughter.
He grew up, as Sheika Latifa, working on his
mother's farm.
"When you are a child in Bahrain, you grow up
like a male until you reach puberty," he says,
"but then, at 11 or 12, girls are suddenly
separated from boys and they clamp down on you.
There's suddenly a mould you are supposed to fit
into. I found it shocking to have to suddenly
behave as a female and be separated from my male
friends. In a way I expected to grow up and
become a man. At puberty it was like my body was
rebelling against me."
At 12, Taff was sent to Weston Birt, a girls'
boarding school in Gloucestershire. Although the
family could have afforded any of Britain's top
schools, they chose a minor one to stop Latifa
acquiring airs and graces. Peer pressure made it
impossible not to have a boyfriend. "It was like
an experiment. I was trying to fit in," he says.
At 16, on his return to Bahrain, Taff announced
he intended to join the army. This was always
the next step after school for princes. For a
princess, it was unheard of. In the end, the
King agreed.
"It was the happiest time of my life," Taff
says. "It was a great release. Some I of the men
were surprised at first but in the end they just
treated me like one of the boys."
One year on he was recommended for elite
officer training at Sandhurst - one of 90 women
out of 400 soldiers - where he flourished. But
at times he felt isolated.
"At Sandhurst, women are kept separate from
men and I found this odd after having served
alongside men," he says.
He yearned to serve alongside men as in
Bahrain and, because, it is illegal to be gay in
the British army he could not tell anyone about
his dilemma. After Sandhurst, Taff was obliged
to return to Bahrain and join the infantry,
which involved carrying heavy weapons.
"It was impossible," he admits. "I wasn't
able to take the physical stress because my body
wasn't built for it." After a hip injury, he was
medically discharged last year.
Now he needed to find a way to put off his
family's increasing insistence that he find a
husband. He found himself a boyfriend who he was
eventually able to tell about his fears of being
the wrong gender - but all the time pressure was
building to be more feminine, to settle down. "A
couple of times I was suicidal," says Taff.
He became part of an underground gay scene in
Bahrain, so it was possible for him to start
having girlfriends. Even there he had to
pretend.
"I used to pass as a lesbian because I knew
the gay community did not accept transsexuals,"
he says.
A couple of times he was picked up by the
police's Ardab (discipline) squad but,
recognising a princess from her ID card, they
let Taff go.
"I knew no one would tell the King because
they would be afraid to be the messenger of such
news, but I was shaking in my boots every night
when my mother came home in case someone told
her something," he says.
Three weeks ago, Taff came to London to visit
his married sister.
"I thought I could tell her what was going
on," he says. "She's very open and I love her to
bits. But I didn't get the reaction I wanted.
She is religious and there was no way she could
embrace what I was telling her.
She said, 'I knew you were different, but not
like that'.
She thought I was mentally unstable and
called the police, saying I was on drugs."
Taff ran away but was enticed back by the
promise of a job for life in the Bahraini army,
with a promotion. His passport, money and
clothes were taken and he realised that being
allowed out to say goodbye to his friends for
the last time was his last chance to escape. A
private investigator employed by his family
tried to abduct him. "There was a fist fight,"
says Taff. "I decided then never to go
back."
He will miss his home and his family but
there is little option now for him except to
seek asylum in Britain.
"I've gone too far now," he says, "and if I
have any form of surgery I will never be able to
go back."
In the next few weeks he has to evade
possible further kidnapping attempts, begin the
process of seeking asylum and - having given up
the fortune he was due to inherit and any hope
of a royal lifestyle - find a way to support
himself.
But he is looking forward to starting
treatment as for most of his life he says, he
has felt as if his body is a prison. In Britain,
he says, he may be poor but at least he can
choose who he wants to be.
