In the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills episode “Busted BBQ,” at Kyle Richards’ barbeque Yolanda Foster and her family becomes a hot topic at the table. In Yolanda’s absence, the women discuss her illness which Yolanda says is caused by Lyme disease. Others are skeptical about the diagnosis. What’s more curious is that Yolanda has said publicly that two of her three children – Bella Hadid and Anwar Hadid – also suffer from chronic Lyme disease. So if Yolanda doesn’t have the disease, what about her teenage kids? When Kyle asks Lisa Vanderpump what their father, Mohamed Hadid thinks, Vanderpump says, “No.”
Yolanda and Mohamed married in 1996 and divorced in 2000. The Jordanian-American (born in Palestine in 1948) moved to the US went he was 1. His father worked at the Voice of America headquarters in Washington, DC. Mohamed went on to study at North Carolina State and MIT but returned to DC where he sold classic cars in Georgetown. With his profits, he started investing in real estate. In the 1980s, he “outmaneuvered” Donald Trump to buy the Ritz-Carlton hotels in New York and DC ($150M), and Aspen ($42.9M). According to Washington Post archives: “Trump had signed a contract to buy the [Aspen] site from a creditor in a foreclosure proceeding, but Hadid made use of an obscure Colorado law and preempted Trump’s deal.” At the time, Trump called Hadid “a wonderful man … but as a businessman, I believe he pays far too much for property.” Hadid is worth $200 million. Trump is worth $4 billion. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs Tuesdays at 9pm on Bravo.
