As a child, there was a particular magic in fairy tales that mentioned Arabia or Persia. Those names spoke of midnight blue skies studded with diamond stars; of cobbled alleyways in hot and dusty souks; magic lamps and secret caverns of Ali Baba riches.

They had rearing white steeds on open plains, ridden by royal princes whose arms gripped the waists of beautiful women destined to be Persian princesses. That was glamour. At 10, my sense of geography was romantic but hazy; my feminist theory beyond dodgy.

In truth, there can be few areas of the modern world less glamorous to be a woman than the countries clustered around the Arabian peninsula.

Who could fail to be disturbed by recent smuggled footage of Princess Latifa, the pale-faced daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai? After an unsuccessful 2018 attempt to escape the country, when she was returned to Dubai at gunpoint, Latifa was imprisoned in a villa. For the last two years, she has lived with bars on her windows and policemen barring her exit. In the footage, she was huddled in a toilet, her only private space, speaking into a smuggled phone, her huge, frightened dark eyes staring from the white canvas of her face.

But even more disturbing is the silence following that footage. I have waited these last six weeks, waited for action to follow the short kerfuffle that Latifa’s video prompted, the little flurries of noise that turned out to be no more than embarrassed coughs in the silence.

Ahem… where is Latifa? asked the UN. Anybody?

“Disturbing,” murmured Boris shuffling sideways. “Concerning,” said Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, backing out of the room in the hope that nobody saw him go. “But not our business,” he added as the door closed.

Is it possible, in 2021, for a man, by virtue of his power and his wealth, to imprison his daughter, like some ancient king in the Arabian Nights? For the world to simply watch? Apparently so.

The sheikh has got away with it before. Latifa, 35, is the second of his 25 children to attempt to flee Dubai. In 2000, her sister Shamsa made a desperate call to a British solicitor. A few days later, she was whisked off the streets of Cambridge by four Arab men and has since disappeared from public view.

Then there’s his ex-wife, 46-year-old Princess Haya, who made it to a family court in London with her two young children. The court ruled she had been subject to a campaign of intimidation by the sheikh.

The world’s reaction? Unfortunate. Now, horse racing anyone?