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True Unbeliever
Neoconservative, middle-aged white men, Dutch author Ian Buruma noted, tend to swoon when she walks into the room. Muslim women of her complexion, whom she says she wants to rescue from Islamic oppression, tend to recoil.
She says, at a recent book launch party in Washington:
  Hirsi Ali's arrival in Washington comes after condemnation of her book by Muslims and a stint in the Dutch parliament that ended with her resignation. (Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post) |
"I am a happy individual now."
Severed Family Ties
She comes into a nearly empty Zaytinya on a recent Saturday afternoon, the bodyguards staying at the door. She's wearing a gray suit and a disarming smile. She's willow-thin and takes the seat next to you, rather than across the table, because "you'll never be able to hear me if I sit that far away."
This proves to be true.
She gets asked about her family a lot, about how they said she lied about details of the arranged marriage that she fled, and she is unfazed. She hasn't spoken to her father in three years, her mother in four. "If they were to show any affection to me at all, they would be in terrible trouble."
She's pretty sure her father is still in London. Her mother lives in northern Somalia. She has a brother in Kenya but doesn't talk to him much.
"They're all praying for me, hoping that one day I'll wake up and see that Islam is best. Repent. I think that's what they want me to do."
She doesn't get recognized as much on K Street as she does in Europe, which allows her to go shopping, to movies, without as much hassle. One has a public face and a private life, and the difference is striking in her -- the public persona tough and confrontational; in private, she giggles and makes, for lack of a better term, girl talk.
"All we talked about was manicures and clothes," says Martha Levin, executive vice president and publisher at Free Press, her American publishing house.
"I thought I'd meet someone who was much more single-minded, humorless, strident, shrill and uncompromising," says Isabella, a friend in London. After a man stood in front of her mother's house taking pictures when Hirsi Ali was visiting, Isabella asks that her last name not be used. "I think she's very much misunderstood. She's immensely entertaining."
Hirsi Ali, nibbling on some warm bread and a salad, says she is not conflicted about the whirlwind surrounding her.
