Rising Star: Nawal Farih, 35, Brings Diverse Background to Belgian Parliament

Nawal Farih traveled a lot in her twenties as a consultant. "I worked for a publishing company that published professional magazines and was looking for partners abroad. It was my job to explore and prepare potential partnerships. Having learned Arabic at home, Spanish as an Erasmus student and also speaking a little French and English, was of course a great advantage. Unlike Belgium, the contract alone is not enough to do business in countries like Dubai or Qatar. Everything revolves around trust..." she explains to Nieuwsblad.

At the age of 30, the Moroccan woman decided to enter Belgian politics, the "best decision" she has ever made. "Jo Vandeurzen, then Health Minister for the CD&V, was looking for a secretary. As a Genk resident, he asked Mayor Wim Dries if he knew of a political talent. At that time, I had been involved with vulnerable groups and was giving private lessons to refugees in Genk. The minister invited me for an interview and I was immediately hired. (...) It didn’t take me long to definitively catch the political bug," Nawal confides.

It was in the same minister’s office that she met her partner, Sammy Mahdi, then president of JONG CD&V, received in audience with about forty young people by the minister. "I welcomed them warmly and led them to a meeting room, then I went back to my computer. The spark didn’t happen until last summer, although Sammy’s friends claim he had a crush on me from the start," says the deputy who is not ready to put her political career on hold to get pregnant, despite Sammy’s desire to be a father.

Nawal recounts that she was very conscientious from a young age. "My two parents are hard workers: my father was an independent butcher for years, before working as a factory worker at Yoko’s cheese factory in Genk. My mother is a civil servant at the Genk town hall. I come from a family of five children and we were all raised with rigor. But we had the freedom to make our own choices and I am very grateful to them for that... Without that, I probably wouldn’t be a deputy today," she testifies.