In 2009, a women's biographical film was released in more than 30 countries around the world, setting off global attention to "female circumcision".
The film is called Desert Flower and is based on the autobiography of supermodel Waris Dirie. Without Wallis's story, I wouldn't even know there would be such a cruel circumcision in the world, this cruel torture of young girls, just to get a man to open the S with a blade on the wedding night and guarantee that he will marry a CN!
Like many African women, Wallis doesn't even know what her birthday is, except that she was born in 1965 in a nomadic tribe in the Somali desert. When she was four years old, a good friend of Wallis Diri's father, who said he was going to herd sheep with her, took the opportunity to rape her.
At the age of five, Wallis was forced to undergo female circumcision. There is no anesthesia and disinfection during the circumcision process, and the wound is sewn up, leaving only a small mouth for urination and menstrual circulation. Both of Wallis's sisters died of circumcision, and even if they did not die, the woman would have no sexual desire in her life and would be reduced to a man's reproductive tool. In order to rationalize this torture, it is said that only circumcised women are good women, because they are clean, and those who have not been circumcised cannot marry, but can only be sent to be prostitutes. Wallis Diri was in a coma for two days before waking up after circumcision, but not everyone can live so long, one of her sisters died of excessive blood loss during circumcision, and another sister died of dystocia when she was pregnant because of circumcision.
In her autobiography, Wallis recalls this painful experience: on the eve of the circumcision, I was so nervous that I couldn't sleep, when I suddenly saw my mother standing in front of me and gestured to me up. At this time the sky was still dark, and I grabbed the little blanket, sleepy-eyed, and dangled and followed her into the grove. She reached out and pointed to a flat-topped stone, and my mother placed me on the stone, and then she sat down behind me herself, pulled my head against her chest, and reached forward with her legs to grab me. I wrapped my arms around my mother's legs, and she tucked an old tree root between my two rows of teeth. I looked between my legs at the gypsy woman. The old woman looked at me, her eyes dull, her face like an iron plate. She rummaged through an old travel tote bag and removed a broken blade with blood on it. She spat on the blade and dried it with the clothes on her body. Then my mother tied me with an eyefold and I couldn't see anything. Then I felt my flesh being cut off, and then I heard the sound of the blade cutting my flesh back and forth, a feeling that was terrifying beyond words. I was motionless, knowing in my heart that the more I moved, the longer the torture would be. But unfortunately, my legs gradually stopped calling and trembled.
I prayed in my heart, Lord, please, finish it quickly. Sure enough, it was done quickly, because I lost consciousness. When she woke up again, the gypsy pierced a hole in her skin with a locust and then sewed her pussy up with a tough white thread through the hole. My legs were completely numb, but I felt the pain between my legs and I wanted to die. I passed out again, and when I opened my eyes again, the woman was gone. My legs were tied with strips of cloth, from my ankles to my hips, and I couldn't move. I turned my head to look at the stone, only to see a large pool of blood on the right, and pieces of flesh cut from me, which were about to dry out of the sun.
This was the brutal practice of african circumcision, where bacteria-stained blades and rough stitching made Wallis' wound infected, with a 42-degree fever that nearly killed her. Since then, Valisa's urethra has been closed, and when she is relieved, she can only let a drop of urine flow out, and it takes ten minutes to urinate each time, and the advent of the menstrual holiday makes her worse than dead.
Physical torture is on the one hand, in Africa, women are inferior, and they have no way to freely dominate their lives. When Wallis was 13 years old, her father sold her to a 61-year-old man named Mohammed Gallar for 5 camels as a fourth wife, but Wallis did not give in this time, she felt that her life could not be broken in the hands of this old man, so in order to get rid of the mercy of fate, after consulting with her mother, she decided to run away from home. She traveled from Somalia to Mogadishu, through the dunes, through the bush jungle, in a panic, to escape, all the way to the road, covered in scars.
In the endless dry land, in the wild sand flying in the sky, Wallis dragged her small body, endured hunger and thirst and walked hard, and there was only one belief in her heart: if she went down, there was hope for life, and if she went down, she could gain freedom!
On the way to escape, she encountered a lion, which frightened her into not moving, and the lion stared at her quietly and then turned to leave. She called this deathly escape called Allah's will. Eventually she walked to her grandmother's house in the capital, Mogadi, where she was completely gray-headed and skinny and turned into a complete refugee.
Grandma believes that Wallis was able to successfully cross the desert because she was blessed by Allah. So she went to her aunt, who was the wife of the Somali ambassador to England at the time, and at first Wallis worked as a servant in her aunt's house, but she was not satisfied, until the news came that an uncle was going to go to London, and she realized that it would change her fate, so she fought hard and became a servant in her entourage. Before leaving, she silently turned around and saluted the sky: "God's will is for you to go further and go farther, so don't come back." ”
Hua Shali, who came to the big city, was extremely curious about everything, and she cherished the days of living in London, and when her aunt and uncle were out, she secretly turned on the TV and learned English. Fate did not go so smoothly, and the choice of life came to her once again: the Somali civil war, and her aunt and uncle were to be called back to China. Valisa sneaked out and became an illegal resident of london's streets.
To survive, Valisa had to rummage through the trash can to eat and sleep on the road at night. Later, with the help of friends, he also found a job at McDonald's, but he was still often hungry, and could only steal the food left by customers.
Until one day, this stubborn little girl finally got the mercy of God. When photographer Terrence Donovan, who had taken a photo of Princess Diana, came to the hamburger shop, he quickly noticed Wallis, who had extraordinary bones, and invited her to be his model. Through Donovan's lens, Wallace recognized her beauty for the first time, and for the first time raised her head and smiled confidently.
Valisa's beauty is as breathtaking as her destiny, and it wasn't long before she became a shining "black pearl" in the fashion world. On the runway, Wallis was confident and became the first black female model to appear on the cover of Vogue.
Shoot commercials for Chanel, Levi's, L'Oréal, and other top big names. In 1987, she also became the "Bang Girl" in the "007 Series: Dawn Killing Machine", which was known to more people.
However, just when her career was in full swing, she gave up her modeling career in 1997 and devoted herself to the feminist public welfare cause.
Because she can't forget the pain of her childhood, and she can't forget that in her hometown, hundreds of millions of girls are suffering the same suffering.
In 1998, Wallis decided to write about her encounter in a book called Desert Flower, an autobiography that quickly became an international bestseller. In 2009, the film of the same name, "Desert Flower", was released.
UN Secretary-General Annan personally awarded Wallis the title of UN Special Envoy against Circumcision! She has declared war on more than 4,000 years of customs, actively advocating for women's dignity, and under her efforts, more than 30 countries, including Tanzania, Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, have passed legislation prohibiting female circumcision.
In 2010, Wallis was appointed Ambassador for Peace by the African Union
From the shepherd girl in the Somali desert to the world's top supermodel, the biggest red suddenly quit the catwalk, as the United Nations ambassador to resist female circumcision, into charity, write autobiography about the pain of circumcision, set up a number of charity groups, arouse the world's attention to the suffering of Somali girls, raise funds for compatriots to build schools and hospitals.
Wallis's life was entangled in countless sufferings and great glory. The intimate matter of being circumcised at an early age, unknown even to those closest to her, wanted to make her painful personal secrets known to the public in the hope that it would help break a custom that had already maimed countless women.
At one point, she was embarrassed to say her privacy in public, but in the end she decided to bravely stand up and say all this, and when asked why she did so, she said: First of all, it caused me to suffer. Not only did circumcision cause my health problems and I still haven't healed, I felt incomplete and I knew I was powerless to reverse it.
The second is that I want you to know that the practice still exists today. Not only do I have to seek justice for myself, but I also speak out for the millions of girls who have suffered and even died because of it.
She became the first woman to discuss circumcision in public, recounting her most painful and intimate memories one after the other with speeches, so that more people could understand the ordeal experienced by African women.
When she followed God's instructions and crossed the desert to get a new life, Grandma told her, "You have suffered so much, you must be for something worthwhile." When she saw that the girl in her homeland, because of her own efforts, no longer had to endure the pain she had suffered, she felt that this was what her grandmother said was worth it.
There were friends who feared she would be killed by radicals. She said, "From the moment I escaped from the lion's mouth, I felt that God had another arrangement for me, to let me survive and do something." I was well aware of the dangers of my mission. I admit I was scared, but decided to try my luck, and my personality has always been the same. ”
The existence of backward ideas has led to the fact that such inhumane circumcision is still practised in some countries in the Middle East and Africa. Fresh, fragile lives become mutilated or even disappear. How can such violations of human rights be addressed? When will this nightmare stop appearing? It is worth more people to ponder.
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