My UK Life: Dentist raised in Libya considers London her home

In a new series, The National speaks to Arabs living in the UK about their jobs, hopes and dreams. Magda Al Sharef travelled a lot as a child, but has returned repeatedly to Britain, where she was born

Magda Al Sharef at her clinic in London. Photo: Magda Al Sharef

As the daughter of a Middle Eastern diplomat, Magda Al Sharef travelled regularly as a child, but she considers London her home. Born in the UK, she returned repeatedly, and now lives in the capital city with her husband and three children.

“It’s called Great Britain because all of us live in one island,” she said. She admires “the unity, the quality, the strength, the standards, our law”. “So we have to be happy and positive because we are living in a beautiful country,” she said.

It is a far cry from her childhood, when her family travelled extensively, mostly between Saudi Arabia and Libya, where her parents are from.

Her father had a good job in Libya, working for the government, until Muammar Qaddafi came to power. He started his own business after that, running a successful construction and manufacturing chain.

“We had our own farm, we had horses, we travelled a lot. It was a really good time,” says Ms Al Sharef. “When he had a Mercedes, he had three colours of the same model.”

Her family provided the inspiration for her career as a dentist, with her parents modelling healthy lifestyles. “I was always copying my older brothers, sisters and mum and dad. They didn’t eat sugar and they loved a healthy lifestyle. So that started with me from day one,” she said.

Her mother would give them a treat once a week, every Friday – a small handful of sweets. “We used to get excited about it, not for the sugar. Just for the moment,” she said.

“She would come and gather us all and put her hand in her bag and say 'here is one for you, here is one for you'. And we looked at each other to see what we got. My dad used to bring them from outside Libya. He got them from France, or from the UK. That reminded us of when we were on holiday.”

Her own three children are allowed a little sugar – although never lollipops, gummies or any hard sweets. Ice cream is OK, as are biscuits with fruit and chocolate as an occasional treat.

Juggling her busy job and being a mother of three is not easy. Ms Al Sharef has a nanny, and the children can stay at school up until 6.15pm, which helps.

However, she says it can be hard to move between work and her home life. “Sometimes in the middle of my holiday I think: what am I doing here? I am not doing something for someone else,” she said. “I find it hard to switch … I love routine.”

Ms Al Sharef does not remember wanting to be anything other than a dentist, an ambition her father encouraged. “He said when you open your clinic or people come to you, you can’t pick and choose. So you have to be able to accommodate everyone and serve everyone to their level and expectation,” she said. “I took that message and it does work. I talk to my patients the way they like to be talked to.”

She specialises in aesthetic, restorative dentistry, dental implants and Botox. But she generally does not like to work on anyone under the age of 30 because they do not need it, she said. “It’s not about changing your look and having big lips or a small nose, big cheeks. That’s not beauty,” she added.

“Beauty is about who you are. How you are created. Everyone has a proportion in their face. If we touch any area without planning it will always look noticeable [that] we have done something.”

Ms Al Sharef trained to be a dentist in the UK, due to the reputation of British universities. When she graduated in 2006, there was a shortage of NHS dentists and she was offered a job straight away, working first in Sheffield and Derby and later in Nottingham.

As an adult, she has also lived in Germany, Switzerland and New York, where she studied for her master's degree – but she has always returned to the UK.

“All of my children were born in New York. I love it as a city, but the quality is higher here. Shopping-wise, food-wise we are more healthy and have better standards,” she said. “I feel the UK is my home because I was born here. So there is some sort of connection between me and London.”