Desert Flower (21 page)

“My God, let’s get on with it,” I mumbled, worried that he’d keel over again. I held on to my beloved’s arm with an iron grip until we finished the ceremony. Back on the sidewalk, Mr. O’Sullivan asked for the one hundred fifty pounds, and I got his address, just in case I had any problems. He lunged off down the street singing a little ditty with the last of my money in his pocket.

One week later Harold Wheeler himself called to say my passport was ready; I gleefully rushed down to his office to pick it up. He handed me the document: an Irish passport with a photograph of my black face and the name Waris O’Sullivan. I was no expert on passports, but it looked a little weird. No, it looked really weird. Rinky-dink, as if somebody had made it in the basement. “This is

it? I mean, this is a legal passport? I can travel with this?”

“Oh, yes.” Wheeler nodded his head emphatically. “Irish, you see. It’s an Irish passport.”

“Ummm.” I turned it over and examined the back cover, flipped through the pages. “Well. So long as it does the job, who cares how it looks?”

I didn’t wait long to put it to the test. My agency set up bookings for me in Paris and Milan and I applied for my travel visas. But a couple of days later, I received a letter. When I glanced at the return address, I felt ill. The letter was from the immigration office, saying they wanted to see me right away. I considered all kinds of wild options, but in the end I knew there was nothing to be done, except go see them. I also knew they had the power to deport me immediately or send me to jail. Goodbye, London. Goodbye, Paris. Goodbye, Milan. Goodbye, modeling. Hello, camels.

The day after I received the letter, I took the tube from Frankie’s house to the immigration office, and wandering through the huge government building, I felt like I was walking into a tomb. When I found the right office, I was met by the most deadly serious faces I’d ever seen. “Sit

here,” ordered a stone-faced man. They put me in a completely isolated room and began asking me questions. “What is your name? What was your name before you married? Where are you from? How did you get this passport? What was his name? How much money did you pay?” I knew one little wrong answer and they would be putting handcuffs on old Waris. Meanwhile, the immigration officials were recording every word I said. So I trusted my instincts and didn’t tell them much. When I needed to stall and think of an answer, I relied on my perfectly natural talent, pretending to be confused by the language barrier.

Immigration kept my passport and told me that in order to get it back I had to bring my husband in for an interview not what I was hoping to hear. In the end, though, I was able to get out of their office without telling them about Harold Wheeler. I figured to get my money back from this thief before the government picked him up, or that would be the end of my two thousand pounds.

I left immigration, marched straight to his swanky office, and rang the intercom. When his secretary answered, I said it was Waris Dirie to see Mr. Wheeler and it was urgent. But surprisingly, Mr. Wheeler was not in, so she refused to open the

door. Day after day I came to his office and called on the phone screaming, but his loyal secretary protected the rat. Playing private detective, I hid outside his building all day long, waiting to pounce on him when he walked by. But he had disappeared.

In the meantime, I had to produce Mr. O’Sullivan for the immigration board. His address was in Croydon, south London, an immigrant neighborhood where a lot of Somalis live. I took the train as far as I could, then had to take a cab the rest of the way, because trains don’t go there. Walking down the street alone, I kept looking over my shoulder, really not happy to be there. I found the address, a broken-down tenement, and knocked on the door. No answer. I walked around the side of the house and strained to look in the window, but couldn’t see anything. Where could he be where would he go in the daytime? I wondered. Ah the pub. I started walking, and when I came to the closest pub, I went inside and found Mr. O’Sullivan sitting at the bar. “Remember me?” I asked. The old man looked over his shoulder, then quickly resumed his position staring straight ahead at the bottles of liquor behind the bar. Think fast, Waris. I had to tell him the bad news, and beg him to come to immigration with me; I

knew he wouldn’t go for it. “Here’s the story, Mr. O’Sullivan. Immigration took my passport away. They want to talk to you, just ask you a couple of quick questions before they’ll give it back. Make sure we’re really married, you know. I can’t find this damn attorney he’s disappeared, so I’ve got nobody to help me.” Still staring straight ahead, he took a swig of whiskey and shook his head. “Look, I gave you two thousand pounds to help me get my passport!”

This got his attention. He turned to stare at me, his mouth open in amazement. “You gave me one fifty, love. I never had two thousand pounds in me life, or I wouldn’t be hanging around the likes of Croydon.”

“I gave Harold Wheeler two thousand pounds for you to marry me!”

“Well, he didn’t give it to me. If you’re foolish enough to give that man two thousand quid that’s your problem not mine.” I kept begging, pleading with him to help me, but he wasn’t interested. I promised I’d take him in a cab, he wouldn’t even have to take the train to the immigration office. But he wouldn’t budge from his bar stool.

Searching for the right approach to motivate him, I offered, “Look, I’ll pay you. I’ll give you

more money. After we visit immigration, we’ll go to the pub, and you can drink all you want.” This offer received skeptical interest, as he turned to me and raised his eyebrows. Push it home, Waris. “Whiskey, lots and lots of whiskeys, shots lined up all the way down the bar. Okay? I’ll come to your house tomorrow, and we’ll take a taxi to London. It will only take a few minutes, a couple of quick questions and then we’ll head straight for the pub. Right?” He nodded his head and went back to staring at the bottles of spirits behind the counter.

The next morning, I returned to Croydon and knocked on the old man’s door. But there was no answer. I walked down the deserted street to the pub and went inside, but the only person there was the barkeep, wearing a white apron and drinking a cup of coffee while he read the paper. “Have you seen Mr. O’Sullivan today?”

He shook his head. “Too early for him, love.” I walked quickly back to the lying bum’s house and pounded on the door. Still no answer, so I sat down on the front steps, which reeked of piss, and I put my hand over my nose. While I sat there trying to decide what to do next, two tough-looking guys in their twenties walked up and stopped in front of me.

“Who’ve you?” one of them grunted at me. “And why are ya sittin’ on me old man’s stoop?”

“Oh, hi,” I said pleasantly. “I don’t know if you know, but I’m married to your father.”

They both glared at me, and the bigger of the two shouted, “What! What the luck are ya talking about?”

“Look, you know, I’m in a complete mess and I need your father’s help. All I want is for him to come with me to this office in the city, and answer a couple of questions. They took my passport away, and I need to get it back, so please…” “Piss off, you fucking cunt!”

“Hey, look! I gave that old man all my money,” I said, pointing to his front door, ‘and I’m not leaving without him.” However, his son had other ideas. He jerked a club out of his coat and pulled it back menacingly, like he was going to break my skull.

“Oh, yeah? Well, we’re going to luck you up. We’ll teach you to come around here telling your lies’ His brother laughed and grinned, and I stared at his smile, missing a few teeth. That was enough for me. I knew these guys had nothing to lose. They could beat me to death right here on the doorstep, and nobody would know or care. I jumped up and ran. They chased me for a couple

of blocks; then, satisfied that they’d scared me away, they stopped.

But when I got home that day, I decided to go back to Croydon again, and keep going back until I found the old man. I had no other choice. By this point, Frankie was not only letting me live with him without paying rent, but he was buying my food, too. Added to that, I was borrowing money from my other friends for expenses, and that situation couldn’t go on much longer. I’d thrown away all my money on that crook posing as an immigration attorney, and without a passport, I couldn’t work. So what did I have to lose? A few teeth if I wasn’t careful, but I decided I had to be smarter than those punks, and that didn’t seem too difficult.

I went back the next afternoon and quietly circled the neighborhood, making sure not to stop in front of the old man’s house. I found a little park and sat down on a bench, and in a few minutes Mr. O’Sullivan himself came strolling past. For some unknown reason, he was in a jolly mood and happy to see me. He quickly agreed to get in a taxi with me and head to London. “You’re going to pay me, yeah?” I nodded. “And then you’ll buy us a drink, lass?”

I’ll buy you all the drinks you need when we’re

finished. But first you have to be a little bit normal when you talk to these immigration people. They’re complete bastards, you know. Then afterwards we’ll go to the pub…”

When we walked into immigration the agent took one look at Mr. O’Sullivan and, with a very grim face, said, “This is your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Mrs. O’Sullivan, let’s stop playing these games. What’s the story?” I sighed, realizing that there was no point going on with this charade. I poured my heart out, and told them the whole business, about modeling, about Harold Wheeler, about my so-called marriage. They were quite interested in Mr. Wheeler; I provided all the information I had about him, including his address. “We’ll contact you about your passport in a few days after we finish our investigation.” And that was it; they dismissed us.

Now, out on the street, Mr. O’Sullivan was raring to go to the pub. “Okay, you want money? Here…” I reached in my bag, pulled out my last twenty pounds and handed it to him. “Now get out of my sight. I can’t stand to look at you anymore.”

“This is it?” Mr. O’Sullivan shook the note at me. “This is all I get?” I turned and started walking down the street. “WHORE!” he screamed. He bent double at the waist. “YA FUCKIN’ WHORE!” People walking past on the sidewalk turned to stare at me. They probably wondered why, if I was the whore, I was paying him.

In a few days immigration called and requested I come back to their office. They said they were investigating Harold Wheeler, but so far they hadn’t learned much. His secretary said he’d gone to India, and it was unclear when he’d be returning. However, in the meantime, they gave me a temporary passport that was good for two months. Here was my first break in this whole ugly mess, and I vowed to make the most of those two months.

I decided to travel to Italy first, since I spoke a little of the language, having lived in a former Italian colony. True, most of my Italian consisted of Mama’s cuss words but they might come in handy. I went to Milan and loved it, doing runway work in the fashion shows. During this time I met another model, named Julie. Julie was tall, with blond shoulder-length hair and a great body; she did a lot of lingerie work. We had such a great time exploring Milan that when the shows

finished there, we decided to move on and try our luck in Paris together.

These two months were fabulous for me, traveling to new places, meeting new people, eating new foods. And even though I didn’t make any serious money, I still made enough to get by while I was touring Europe. Then, when the work ran out in Paris, Julie and I returned to London together.

When we got back, I met an agent from New York, who had come to England searching for new talent. He urged me to come to the States, saying he could get me lots of modeling jobs there. Of course, I was anxious for that, because everyone agreed that New York was the most lucrative market of all, especially for a black model. My agency made the arrangements, and I applied for a visa to the States.

The American Embassy reviewed my papers, then immediately contacted the British government. The upshot of that communication was a letter announcing I was being deported from England in thirty days and sent back to Somalia. In tears, I called my friend Julie, who was staying with her brother in Wales.

“I’m in trouble big trouble. It’s over for me, girl. I have to go back to Somalia.”

“Oh, no, Waris. Well, why don’t you come here for a few days and relax? You can take the train. It’s not too far from London, and it’s beautiful here. It’ll do you good to get out in the country for a while, and maybe we can figure something out.”

When I arrived, Julie picked me up at the station and drove through the velvet green countryside to the house, we sat down in the living room and her brother, Nigel, came in. He was short and very pale, with long fine red hair, and his front teeth and fingertips were stained with nicotine. He looked older than I expected, probably early fifties. He brought us tea on a tray, then sat there chain-smoking while I told my nightmare story of the passport dilemma, and how it was all coming to a sad end.

Leaning back in the chair with his arms folded, Nigel suddenly said, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”

Shocked at this statement from a guy I’d known only about thirty minutes, I said, “How are you going to do that? How are you gonna help me?” I’ll marry you.”

I shook my head. “Oh, no. No. I’ve been through all that. And that’s what got me into this mess. I’m not going through that again. Enough. I can’t deal with this shit. I want to go back to Africa, be

happy; my family’s there, and everything I know. I don’t know nothing about this crazy country. Everything here is just madness and confusion. I’m going home.”

Nigel jumped to his feet and ran upstairs. When he came back, he was holding up The Sunday Times with my picture on the cover which had come out over a year ago, long before I ever knew Julie. “What are you doing with that?”

“I saved it because I knew one day I was going to meet you.” He pointed at my eye in the photograph. “The day I saw this picture, I saw a tear here in your eye, water running down your cheek. When I looked at your face, I saw you crying and I knew you needed help. Then Allah told me Allah said it was my duty to save you.”