“I feel that God made my body perfect the way I was born. Then man robbed me, took away my power, and left me a cripple. My womanhood was stolen. If God had wanted those body parts missing, why did he create them?
I just pray that one day no woman will have to experience this pain. It will become a thing of the past. People will say "Did you hear, female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Somalia?" Then the next country, and the next, and so on, until the world is safe for all women. What a happy day that will be, and that's what I'm working toward. In'shallah, if God is willing, it will happen. ”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower
“My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower
“Women’s loyalty has to be earned with trust and affection, rather than barbaric rituals. The time has come to leave the old ways of suffering behind”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower
“Many friends have expressed concern that a religious fanatic will try to kill me when I go to Africa. After all, I’ll be speaking out against a crime many fundamentalists consider a holy practice. I’m sure my work will be dangerous, and I admit to being scared…. But my faith tells me to be strong, that God led me down this path for a reason. He has work for me to do. This is my mission. And I believe that long before the day I was born, God chose the day I will die, so I can’t change that. In the meantime, I might as well take a chance, because that’s what I’ve done all my life.”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower
“The people celebrate with our traditional dancing: the women clapping their hands and chanting, their low sweet voices humming across the desert night, and the men leaping high into the air. Everyone contributes food, and we eat”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower
“When the shows begin in Milan for the season, every woman and girl in modeling heads there, along with every woman and girl who’s ever dreamed of becoming a model. Suddenly the city is mobbed by extremely tall mutant women, running everywhere like ants.”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower
Waris Dirie
Born place: Galkacyo, Somalia
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“Ne nevere mo ne lakked hire pite;
Tendre-herted, slydynge of corage;
But trewely, I kan nat telle hire age.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, quote from Troilus and Criseyde
“I am relaxed. It's just buried under layers of incredulity and panic. But underneath those I'm very relaxed.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from As She Climbed Across the Table
“Alexis was at that age, seventeen, when mothers come into view as tyrants or imbeciles or both.”
― Jonathan Miles, quote from Want Not
“She tucks my hair behind my ear. Now I know where her son gets it. “Thank you,” she sniffs, struggling to hold herself together. “Thank you for coming into our lives, for loving us the way you do, and for making my son and the rest of us incredibly happy.”
― J.L. Drake, quote from Mended
“Many people in the West who stereotype all Muslims as terrorists don’t know about the side of Islam that reflects love and mercy. It cares for the poor, widows, and orphans. It facilitates education and welfare. It unites and strengthens. This is the side of Islam that motivated those early leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, there is also the other side, the one that calls all Muslims to jihad, to struggle and contend with the world until they establish a global caliphate, led by one holy man who rules and speaks for Allah.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, quote from Son of Hamas
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