London: Princess Diana was so "madly in love" with Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan that she wanted to marry him and was even willing to move to Pakistan, according to Jemima Khan. Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan's former wife, who was a friend of the late princess, has written a detailed account of their friendship in an article for the September issue of 'Vanity Fair' titled 'The Grandmother Prince George Never Knew'.
"Diana was madly in love with Hasnat Khan and wanted to marry him, even if that meant living in Pakistan, and that's one of the reasons why we became friends," she told the magazine. "She wanted to know how hard it had been for me to adapt to life in Pakistan," she added, in reference to her own marriage to Imran Khan, which took her to Pakistan.
Jemima disclosed that Diana visited her twice in Pakistan to help fund-raise for the hospital where her former husband a distant cousin of Diana's lover worked. "Both times she also went to meet his family secretly to discuss the possibility of marriage to Hasnat," she reveals. Diana made every effort to get to know Khan's family but for a son to marry an English woman "is every conservative Pashtun mother's worst nightmare", Jemima says in the article.
The couple are thought to have discussed the possibility of marriage but Khan told police in an interview after her death in a Paris car crash in 1997 that he told her "it was a ridiculous idea" and that the only way they could have a normal life would be to move to Pakistan, where the press "don't bother you".
As her love affair with the doctor began to crumble, Diana began a new relationship with Dodi Al Fayed. The source of her apparent frustration with Khan his reluctance to marry was no longer an issue with Al Fayed, whom she reportedly believed was going to give her a ring.
She told close friend Rosa Monckton, the former managing director of Tiffany & Co, that the ring was "going firmly on my right hand". However, according to Monckton, Diana talked much more about Khan than Al Fayed and she still believes she pursued the relationship only to make the doctor jealous.
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