Waris Dirie

Waris Dirie (born 1965 in Somalia) is a fashion model and a UN advocate for the abolition of female genital mutilation.

Early life
Dirie was born into a nomadic tribe in Somalia. Her home was a portable hut woven from grass. According to her autobiography, at age five, her mother held her down while a local woman cut away her genitals. Afterwards, she was stitched up tightly, leaving a hole the diameter of a matchstick and making it nearly impossible to walk. "I felt not complete with myself as a woman. Some days I felt so powerless," she said. "When I think back about that, it still disturbs me. But coming back over that is still the hardest thing for me because you have to learn about yourself, you have to feel comfortable with yourself." Although Dirie survived the procedure, her sister and two cousins did not.

Modeling career
Dirie fled Somalia at the age of thirteen because her father gave her in marriage to a 61-year-old man in exchange for five camels. She escaped the marriage by traveling to her uncle's home, and hid her passport when he was going to return her. She ended up staying in Britain illegally and surviving by scrubbing floors at McDonald's.

By chance, she was discovered by photographer Terence Donovan, who put her face on the cover of the 1987 Pirelli calendar. From there, her career took off, being placed in ads for designers such as Chanel. "It's very sad that I had to make the choice to leave my country and at the same time I did not want to leave," she said. "Africa is different. I was young. I had nothing to worry about. I had my family, I had my animals, I had my simple life. It was beautiful." Dirie now lives in Vienna, Austria but still feels the contrasts between the West and her war-torn home. "Here it seems like it is chaos forever and I'm trying to sit down for a moment and there's no time for that," she laughed. "In Somalia we don't have clocks so we don't care what time it is. But in the West, everything is money-money, power, sucking, sucking away. It is never enough."

In 1987, Waris played a role in the Bond movie The Living Daylights. In 2005 she became an Austrian citizen.

Waris is a cousin of fellow Somali supermodel Iman.

Humanitarian work
In 1997, Waris Dirie quit modelling to focus on her work against female genital mutilation. That year UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation.

Her autobiographical novel Desert Flower, which tells the story of her own childhood and genital mutilation, has been printed in numerous languages and topped best-seller lists in Europe. ,

In 2007 she received the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for her humanitarian work.

Attack
Waris Dirie was attacked in March 2004 at her home in Vienna. Then aged 40, she had moved from her flat in Cardiff to escape the persecution of a 26-year-old Portuguese stalker who had become convinced that she loved him.

Paulo Augusto was in custody after apparently following her 1,000 miles across Europe and gaining access to her apartment by climbing through a neighbour's window. "She was so frightened and in shock that she let him in," a police spokesman, Harald Hofmayer, said. Waris Dirie suffered minor injuries when her assailant threw her to the floor, he added. The attacker left in a taxi, only to return later on foot and smash one of the building's ground-floor windows. He was arrested when neighbours called the police.

The suspect had met Waris Dirie six months earlier when his brother was working at her previous residence in Wales, police said. He later broke into that home and stole items of her clothing. 

Distinctions

 * Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur