The man who Simon Cowell's new love left behind

The man who Simon Cowell's new love left behind. With his thinning hair and faded blue oversized polo shirt, he looks for all the world like a man who has succumbed to the comforts of middle-age and is not, perhaps, the catch he once was.

He is Ahmed Shah Zahiri, who has made a decent enough living supplying Oriental rugs to the whitewashed stucco villas of Santa Barbara in California.

At first glance, the possibility of any link between the dishevelled Ahmed and the star-studded world of television celebrity might seem remote - but there is a fascinating connection. For this man's ex-wife is the new girlfriend of millionaire X Factor mogul Simon Cowell.

Taking a back seat: Cowell leaves Mr Chow restaurant in Knightsbridge with Mezghan Hussain

Ahmed was married for eight years to Mezhgan Hussainy, who appears to have bewitched Cowell to the extent that the confirmed bachelor has been happy to be seen kissing and hugging her in public.

Mezhgan - pronounced 'Mishgan' - and Ahmed were married in the early Nineties and were together for eight years until their divorce.

While the intervening years seem to have taken their toll on Ahmed, it is clear that Mezhgan has undergone an utterly astonishing transformation from traditional Muslim wife to astute businesswoman with access to some of Hollywood's most powerful people.

Last night, in an exclusive interview, Ahmed's nephew expressed admiration - and some bafflement - at what she'd achieved. John Niazi, 27, said: 'I couldn't believe it when I first heard Mezhgan was with Simon Cowell.

'But then I was also surprised when she got married to my uncle. Back then, she was about 20, and she was the prettiest Afghan girl I'd ever seen. She was like a supermodel, really beautiful, and my uncle was an average Joe, more than ten years older than her.

'Why would they marry? Maybe money. My uncle was pretty well off. He was driving the latest Mercedes and his rug business was doing well. Simon Cowell isn't that good-looking either but then again he's fabulously wealthy.'

The relationship is believed to have started last summer, a year after Cowell broke-up with Terri Seymour, his last long-term girlfriend.

Mezhgan has known Cowell for six years through her work as a make-up artist on American Idol - the US version of Pop Idol that put Cowell on the path to stardom in the States - and to a different level of wealth.

Last week Mezhgan, 37, was pictured snuggling up to Cowell, 50, following a romantic and no doubt exceedingly expensive Chinese supper.

Last autumn they flew to Miami on a private jet for a five-day getaway in a £19,000-a-night penthouse. At a recent audition show for Britain's Got Talent he gave her a hug and kissed her on the lips - in a most uncharacteristic public show of affection.

A friend said: 'She is Simon's first new girlfriend for years. Maybe Mezhgan is the woman who will finally tame him. If so, she has hit the jackpot.'

Mezhgan's new romance is just the latest dramatic development in the life of this determined beauty whose 'back- story', featuring an escape from war-torn Afghanistan to freedom in America, is every bit as tear-jerking as the rags-to-riches tales which so often feature on Cowell's TV talent shows.

However, an investigation by The Mail on Sunday suggests that compelling though this account may be, Mezhgan Hussainy's version of the past is not necessarily complete.

Moving on: Mezhgan Hussainy's first husband, Ahmed Shah Zahiri, today

Her story started many thousands of miles away in Afghanistan where, Mezhgan has said, she was born into a rich and educated family.

Her father, she says, owned one of Kabul's first computer companies, employing 40 workers, while her mother was a respected teacher. They lived in a villa staffed by a cook, nanny, housekeeper and chauffeur.

Everything, though, changed with the Soviet invasion in 1979. She has described her terror as a house exploded under fire from the Soviet invaders: 'There were body parts everywhere. My brother saw a hand stuck in a tree. The scary part, though, was that no one did anything. No one asked any questions.'

Her family's response was, naturally, to escape. In 1981 they paid smugglers to escort them on a ten-day trek on foot through the mountains into neighbouring Pakistan.

'We had to leave in secret or we would have been killed,' she recalls. 'We were so hungry and tired. We were allowed to take only hard-boiled eggs and water with us.

'We got shot at once and that's when the smugglers asked for more money. Smugglers could name their price because people were so desperate to escape. My mother had sewn money into her dress so we were able to pay.

'By the time we got to Peshawar in Pakistan, I had blisters around my lips from being so dehydrated.'

They were some of the lucky ones, who had the money to pay smugglers, but they also had relatives in New York and California. After nine months in Pakistan, they were given permission to emigrate to the US, where Mezhgan found herself thoroughly at home.

It is when the family reaches the bright lights of Los Angeles that Mezhgan's story seems to fragment.

She says that her first American home was in Hollywood, where she watched fascinated as her mother prepared for fashionable soirees.

'I would always find the red lipstick, and before I knew it, there I was, standing at my mother's vanity table with lipstick all over my face, looking like a clown,' she has said.

'Living in Hollywood, you would always see celebrities walking around with their funky hairstyles and eclectic make-up, and something about that always intrigued me.'

The earliest public records available show, however, that from 1988 her parents rented a series of humble homes in Van Nuys, a working-class Los Angles suburb, where the only movie stars in evidence were on faded posters at the local cineplex.

Her mother, Mary, helped to support Mezhgan and her three brothers by starting a Halal butcher's, The Family Meat Market. It is still in business though under different management.

The owner, who declined to give her name, said: 'Mrs Hussainy used to own the shop. Her son, Ahmad, still pops in every few months to buy his meat.'

In 1984, Mezhgan's life suffered more trauma when her younger brother was killed by a car. 'It made her realise life is very short,' one acquaintance said.

Today her mother and other family members live in a shabby, wooden-fronted, rented bungalow. Stained net curtains shield windows with rotting frames, and a pick-up truck belonging to one of Mezhgan's brothers sits on the cracked tarmac drive outside.

'She's my sister but I don't wish to comment,' says one brother when asked about his successful sibling. Peering through a slot in the door, Mezhgan's mother also nervously refuses to speak.

Curiously, Mezhgan has never made any mention of being a shopkeeper's daughter, preferring to suggest that by the age of 11 she was giving manicures to women living in her family's 'Hollywood apartment building'.

Wedding day: A smiling young Mezhgan with Ahmed Shah Zahiri at their marriage party

She says that her striking looks led to teenaged modelling assignments for MAC cosmetics and acting roles in two daytime soaps, Sunset Beach and The Bold And The Beautiful. She does admit that she held down a day job selling make-up in a local department store.

Mezhgan also makes little mention of her ex-husband. According to some of her closest friends and relatives, she was barely out of school when those remarkable good looks attracted Ahmed, who successfully traded in antiques as well as rugs.

He was some 13 years her senior when he became her husband in the early Nineties. The marriage was a clear step up for a girl from a struggling family of immigrants.

The couple's wedding ceremony took place in a Beverly Hills catering hall. Our exclusive picture shows her dressed in a high-necked virginal-white lace gown with a heart-shaped headdress, looking exquisitely lovely - and very young - as she smiles shyly. The wedding was attended by around 600 guests, many of them fellow Afghans.

'It was a really traditional Afghani wedding,' recalled John Niazi, speaking at the bead shop he runs in Santa Barbara, a seaside resort north of Los Angeles.

'The bride and groom sat in a decorated chair, and everyone on both sides of the family gave the bride gold: a bracelet, a ring, a necklace.

'I believe the marriage was arranged through our families, because her mother and father were friends with my eldest uncle back in Afghanistan. But she had to have been happy at the time of the marriage, because she gave her approval.

'My uncle's a nice guy, but he's an average kind of guy. They had a good marriage while it lasted. I don't remember what she was doing at the time, but it wasn't much.

'They had a home in Northridge, a suburb north of Los Angeles, and seemed happy enough. They never had any kids.

'I don't know why they divorced, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because she was so beautiful, and attracted so many guys. I thought, a girl like that married to an average guy - it just doesn't make sense.'

Ahmed is now approaching his 50th birthday - which makes him almost the same age as Mezhgan's new love.

A stocky, balding man with a curt demeanour, Ahmed is now remarried and refused to discuss Mezhgan.

But his wife Roman told The Mail on Sunday: 'I asked him once, "What happened between you guys?'' He said it was something that he said, and Mezhgan hadn't listened. And he said, "I'm done.'' I met her with Ahmed once. She's very nice and she's family.'

Determined beauty: Make-up expert Mezhgan Hussainy during a photoshoot

Mezhgan seems to have forged another relationship within her family, with John Niazi's older brother, Yama Azizi Niazi.

Yama, now a charismatic, deeply-religious 35-year-old Imam, runs a mosque and Islamic school as well as maintaining an interest in the family rug business. 'Yama and Mezhgan grew up together and were very good friends,' John said.

In 2003, Mezhgan got her first big professional break when she was hired to do make-up for the second season of American Idol. A picture of her with a contestant who appeared to be fondling her breasts was posted on the internet under the headline 'Who's That Girl?'

An enraged Yama posted a response. 'I know Mezhgan better than any one of you - for about ten years,' he wrote. 'We were separated because of personal reasons of mine.

'She is married, by the way. Still I believe. She loved me for a long time and deep down she still does.'

After Ahmed and Yama, Mezhgan is said to have dated a number of male models.

In 2004, after her second season on Idol, she bought a modest single-storey home in the middle-class Los Angeles community of Sherman Oaks, which she shared with web designer and artist Alejandro Saavedra and their Yorkshire terrier, Buddy.

In publicity material for the show, she described Saavedra as 'my man' and named him as the one luxury she would take on a desert island.

Now, however, unshaven and drawn, Alejandro concedes that she has traded him in for Cowell, saying: 'I never stood a chance. He's a world-famous celebrity, worth a fortune. I just can't compete.'

His grandfather, Darko Bergamo, speaking from his home north of Los Angeles, said: 'They were together for years, and talked about marrying and starting a family.

'But her work kept taking her away. When they met she was just selling cosmetics in a shopping mall, but she's very bright and came a long way.'

The young woman who just a few years ago was a spurned submissive wife is now 'in the driver's seat', as an acquaintance put it.

In the past few months Mezhgan has launched her own cosmetics line, Me By (Me)zhgan, and is trying to find a publisher for an autobiography, titled From Afghanistan To American Idol.

She has her own website, too, in which she says that Cowell's Mr Nasty image is all a ruse and that he 'is a piece of cake. His bark is much bigger than his bite'.

Friends of Cowell say that he and his make-up artist girlfriend have found true love. A guest at a recent dinner party which the couple gave said: 'He was staring at her with puppydog eyes.

'After dinner, she perched on the side of his chair and he was just constantly stroking her arm. I have never seen him like this.'

Mezhgan is now the chatelaine of Cowell's 12,000sqft, £15million Beverly Hills mansion - complete with tanning salon - where a butler supervises the live-in staff.

For a girl from war-torn Kabul, by way of the Los Angeles backstreets, it might seem like the ultimate conquest. But as Mezhgan Hussainy has herself remarked, life is about looking forward.

Last night, Mezhagan declined to comment. ( dailymail.co.uk )