Dating & Relationship status

Al Gala grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, but was raised in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He was a student at the Abu Obaida Ahjarah Public School in Dubai, and was also a student of the Faculty Executive Hotels International Institute of Hotel Management, where he studied hotel management. He was married from 2015 with Yasmin Oweidah, with whom he had a son. At some point following his gain in notoriety in 2013, he relocated to Vancouver.

Al Gala became notorious in 2013. The incident occurred during the Jandriyah Cultural Festival in Riyadh, in which Al Gala, plus two other male models, worked on a promotion stand. In a January 2015 interview, Al Gala said that at the festival, some girls recognized him from some modelling he had done, and they gathered for autographs and photos, after which the crowd around them grew. Al Gala said that “the religion police didn’t like it,” and “they came and they asked me politely to leave the festival.” According to a police officer, “the members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices feared that female visitors would fall in love with them.” Later, the delegation of the United Arab Emirates issued a statement clarifying that Borkan and the other two models were never asked to leave the country, only the festival, and that had nothing to do with being “too handsome,” but was related to the unexpected presence on the stand of men, something that challenged the country’s custom regarding having women not to interact with men who are not of their family. They also stated that Al Gala had performed “indecent” dances at the event.

Omar Borkan Al Gala (born 23 September 1989) is an Iraqi-Emirati model, actor and photographer. He became internationally notorious in August 2013 after being expelled from Saudi Arabia supposedly for being “too handsome”, a story that became popular on social media.