Verena Wermuth, born in 1956 in Dietikon, Switzerland now lives near Zurich. Before she met Sheik Khalid, she attended the Swiss Art School in Zurich, and obtained an education as a shop window designer. This was followed by a 6-month sojourn through Andalusia, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Later, she settled in the Swiss Ticino region where she worked as an independent decorator and ran her own boutique. There she counted among her friends the German writer Peter Heim and the former actress Ruth Schmidhauser. Coincidentally, it was at the home of Ruth Schmidhauser that Verena met Patricia Highsmith. After this encounter, at the fair age of 23, it became clear to Verena how important knowledge of the English language is. She gave up her business in Ascona and moved to South England where she enrolled in a 3-month intensive English course at the “International Language Academy” in Torquay. There she met Sheik Khalid. Verena Wermuth has been married to a Swiss since 1995.
