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Kam Williams Interviews Kola Boof
Author of The Diary of a Lost Girl
The Best Black Book of
2006
Kola Boof --
Egyptian/Sudanese-American writer -- is the
author of seven books published in eight countries. Her
autobiography, Diary of a Lost Girl (Door of Kush,
ISBN: 0-9712019-8-6) was this critic’s #1 pick on the 10
Best Black Books List for 2006.
Born Naima Bint Harith in
Omdurman, Sudan, Kola was adopted by African-Americans,
Marvin and Claudine Johnson in 1979 and became an
American citizen in 1993. The next year, she returned
to North Africa and became a “paid party girl” at
government functions in Egypt and Libya. She also
appeared in more than 40 Arabian films before meeting
Osama Bin Laden who reportedly took her as his mistress
for six months in 1996.
However, Boof was later
kicked out of Morocco for the publication of an
inflammatory anti-Arabic, anti-Muslim poetry collection
called “Nile River Woman,” and for carrying out
undercover missions for the Sudanese People’s Liberation
Army (SPLA). In April 2003, a U.N. commissioned human
rights report identified her as one of several Sudanese
journalists tried in absentia by a court in Khartoum,
which issued a fatwa on Kola, sentencing her to
beheading after finding her guilty of blasphemy and
treason.
* *
* * *
KW: Who do you believe is behind the fatwa (death
sentence) declared on you?
KB: I know who it
was. It was Gamal Ibraheim and Hasan al-Turabi. Gamal
wrote an article threatening me in a London newspaper,
and even the portions of it which appeared in the New
York Times were calling for me to be assassinated if
it’s interpreted by anyone with half a brain. In
private, Hasan al-Turabi telephoned me and told me that
a fatwa was put on my head, and in April 2003, the
United Nations had a report saying that a court in
Khartoum had ordered me to be beheaded for blasphemy and
for being a traitor to Sudan. Theo Van Gogh, who was a
friend of mine and was eventually slain by the Muslim
fundamentalists told me this—that it was all over
Amsterdam for he, Ayann Hirsi Ali and Kola Boof to be
killed.
KW: Do
you live in fear for your life? Do you look over your
shoulder when you walk down the street? Are you in
hiding like Salman Rushdie was for so long?
KB:I have much
more power and protection than Salman Rushdie, because
I’m an American citizen, but yes, I live in terrible
fear for my life and for the lives of my children. My
whole family has been threatened, my adoptive parents
had to sell their house and move out of Washington, D.C.
because of death threats caused by my work and activism.
I suffer chronic nightmares and can’t sleep at night,
but what can I do? Everything between Osama and me is
now public, and he is alive and indeed could have me
killed at any time. His men would love to carry it
out—and before that, everything that I was called to say
about the Arab world has been said and said loudly. I
live on a whim now.
KW:
Where do you live?
KB:Well, for
security reasons, it’s best if people think I live in
California, and that’s the story I’m sticking to.
KW:
While I loved your autobiography, some say it’s pure
fabrication. How much of it is fiction?
KB: None of it is
fiction. My autobiography is one of the truest, most
frankly written books ever published in the western
hemisphere. Perhaps someone who was mentioned in the
book remembers events differently, and in some cases I
wasn’t allowed to use people’s real names, such as my
siblings and my children’s father, but there’s nothing
fabricated or untrue in my autobiography. I wrote about
my life just as I remembered it. I named names and it’s
very detailed. Hundreds of Sudanese refugees and people
from Africa say that my journey is very similar to
theirs.
KW:
Specifically, people seem to doubt your claim of being
Osama bin Laden’s mistress. What do you have to say to
convince them that you’re telling the truth?
KB:What makes me
angry…is that it wasn’t me who revealed that I had been
with Osama Bin Laden. I originally denied being involved
with Osama when the London Guardian threatened to “out”
me. I was terrified to be branded “Hitler’s Girlfriend”
and I refused to cooperate with a story they were doing.
Anyone can look that up. But once the United States
became aware of it and placed me on a suspected
terrorist list and threatened to take away my
citizenship—I really didn’t have any choice but to admit
to it and to tell my side of what happened. But, you
know, I laugh when Americans claim that it can’t
possibly be true, because it just goes to show why the
Americans will never capture Osama. They can only think
in English. They have this homogenized textbook view of
what the Arab world is like. When they speak of Osama,
they use cartoonish terms like “sex slave” and “cave.”
As Westerners, they assume Osama would be chasing
blondes rather than his preference—women whose vaginas
are infibulated.
KW:
Peter Bergen, who is widely regarded as a Bin Laden
expert, has called your claims delusional and says that
Bin Laden has never set foot in Morocco.
KB: Peter Bergen
is your typical two-cent Bin Laden groupie—he’s made
several comments about me that have been proven
untrue—for instance his claim that Ayman al Zawahiri was
in prison during the time I met him in my book. Peter’s
dates were a year off; he was proven wrong. His claim
that Osama never went to Morocco is nothing less than
lunacy—Osama’s been to Morocco dozens of times. Peter
Bergen’s only credibility in this whole affair is that
he’s a white man and I’m a black woman who looks black,
so he is automatically trustworthy and I am
automatically a bed wench with an accent. But like I’ve
said in the past—in any mansion it’s the whores and the
maids who know the most about any man, and Peter
Bergen’s real problem with me is that he’s jealous that
he didn’t get to be Osama’s mistress. The more he
attacks me, the more he will look like a fool down the
road, and I’m just the bitch to bite his shrimp off and
eat it. I’m tired, quite frankly, of being picked on by
that smug half-a-shilling, guttersnipe punk from
Picadilly. He’s a bitch, but I’m a better one.
KW:
How do you feel about the mainstream media’s handling of
your story?
KB: The media has
outright lied on me. They reported that I called myself
Osama’s “sex slave,” apparently unaware that sex slaves
aren’t allowed to look their master in the eye, write
poetry with him or go on hunting excursions with him.
They reported that I claimed to have been “raped
repeatedly” by Osama, which is untrue. They’ve called me
an “African Priestess.” And I’m sure you’ve heard the
jokes about my name. The press doesn’t like me, because
I am a weirdo to them, so they do everything to create
their own fictional Kola Boof. I have been completely
disrespected, lied on and misrepresented by these
cynical know-it-alls who call themselves journalists.
They keep calling me the Diana Ross of the publishing
industry, whatever that means, and calling me a
“bitch”…but they make me a bitch! They write that I was
a “prostitute”—but I have never in my life been a
prostitute. When I was a “paid party girl” in Egypt, we
were paid to come to the party and be hallway dressing.
I met rich men and they became my boyfriends. When I was
a kept woman—it was a relationship. For the Sudanese
People’s Liberation Army [SPLA], it was war tactics. I
have never turned a trick in my life, and I just resent
the American definitions of “sex slave” and “prostitute”
so much. I was a mistress!
KW: So
what was your involvement in the SPLA?
KB: In 1998, I was
trained by the SPLA in London how to pretend to be a
geologist, I went by the name Katrina Wexler and slept
with men at Talisman Oil in Port Colborne, Canada, at
Ludin Oil in Sweden, and at China National Petroleum
company in Nairobi, Kenya, so that I could attain
information that allowed the SPLA to bomb oil fields in
South Sudan, specifically Operation Miuokda a few years
later, where they bombed oil refineries using my
blueprint. In 2004, I went to Israel and gave a speech
that resulted in guns and ammunition being given to the
South Sudanese rebels, specifically Commanders Athol’s
and Yaka's armies. I have never received full credit
from the SPLA, because the men are very sexist and feel
that I'm acting out of place, bringing too much
attention to myself--but for the funeral of our leader
John Garang, they had me write the poem "Chol Apieth" to
eulogize him, and that was their way of acknowledging my
contributions.
KW:
Why are you so anti-Muslim and so pro-Israel?
KB: I’m not so
Pro-Israel…I’m Pro-Africa. Africa’s greatest enemy of
all time is the Arab Muslim Empire—they enslaved us for
one thousand years and have committed untold atrocities
and genocides against the East African people. Though
the white man is a kind of Satan, and though the black
man is Satan for selling his own children into bondage
and assassinating the image of his own mother, because
he himself wants to be white…I can assure you that
Africa has known no greater Satan than the twins, Arab
and Islam. I was born to an Arab father and I was born
Islamic, and on behalf of the people of Sudan and as a
black African woman—that is what I have to say. By any
means necessary, I am for Africa.
KW:
Did your parents being murdered by Muslims shape your
attitudes at all?
KB: Oh,
absolutely. But one of my brothers in my adopted family
converted to Islam and I love him with all my heart. I
have Muslim women who understand my pain and they give
me lots of love and support. But what Black Americans
never think about is that the African version of Islam
is totally different from American Islam. They’ve never
seen mothers doused in gasoline and set on fire for
“religious” reasons. So they don’t know what I’m talking
about.
KW: As
an irrepressible feminist, do you see Islam as a too
restrictive religion?
KB: While I love
Mohammed and Jesus Christ…I reject all men’s religions,
not just Islam, but Christianity, Judaism and whatever
else the men use for a whip. I believe that
Christianity trains black people, especially black
women, to think like slaves, and I believe that Islam is
mainly fueled by its hatred for women. As for feminism,
I am a womanist more than I’m a feminist. I love cooking
for men and making love with them—not just reproductive
lovemaking but I like sex for the sake of freaking out
with men. I value men and I don’t necessarily want to
adopt the man’s role, but I do want to see women’s
humanity honored and respected. I do feel it’s crucial
that women’s opinions be taken equally with men’s. But
still…I have not been accepted by the American white
feminist writers and activists, and frankly I don’t care
to be, so I am a womanist. I am feisty and I am given to
womanish behavior.
KW:
Why do you appear topless on both your book and on your
website? To sell books? To generate books? Or are you
just an exhibitionist?
KB: I appear
topless as a way of holding on to my Nilotic culture,
and I also do it to taunt those Africans who are ashamed
of our original cultural beliefs. Africans believed that
the woman’s bare breast represented God, the circle of
life and the moral cleanliness of human beings. Right
now, there are more than 100 million African women who
go topless at some point in the day, each and every day,
to honor both God and our ancestors. So being in a
country like America where nothing is hated more than
the image of the black woman, even by black
people—because her womb produces the black man and makes
us black—I find it of grave importance to implement
African images, and especially to produce media images
that acknowledge the sexual power and fertility of black
women.
KW: Do
you deliberately try to be controversial?
KB: Absolutely
not. I long to be accepted as myself. I’m too good for
assimilation.
KW: Do
you feel alienated from or supported by black America?
KB: Alienated.
KW: Do
you regret making the rounds of the TV talk shows, or do
you think they treated you fairly?
KB: I don’t regret
it, but I find it very insulting how they always try to
focus on the most “gossipy” meaningless questions like
“Did Osama want Whitney Houston?” and that crap rather
than the invasive political, religious and cultural
aspects of my experience with Osama. People don’t want
truth, they just want trash.
KW:
What I appreciated about your book was your brutal
honesty and your engaging way of telling a story. Where
did you get that ability to be so blunt?
KB: It started
when my birth parents were murdered and I stayed
outdoors all night with the bodies. Years later in
America, around fourteen, my psychiatrist explained to
me that staying with the bodies that night made me
fearless. He said that it made me an ‘emotional
exhibitionist’ and told me never to let people convince
me that I was weird for speaking with clarity and
passion.
KW: Do
you ever regret going so public with your personal life?
KB: No, I had to.
There are millions of little black girls out there who
really need me to do that.
KW:
What is the one skeleton you’ve shared with the world
that you’d like to put back in your closet?
KB: I never wanted
anyone to know about me and Osama. I wanted that to be a
secret that I carried to my grave, and since I wasn’t
the one who revealed it—it’s definitely something that I
wish was in the closet. It’s destroyed my career.
KW:
There was a lot in the news recently about Madonna
adopting a boy from Malawi and you were adopted from
Sudan by African-Americans. What are your thoughts on
this sort of adoption?
KB: I’m not at all
against white people adopting black children, because
we’re all human beings who need to give love and be
nurtured in safety, but I do think it’s better to be
adopted by blacks. I happen to know at least a hundred
Sudanese refugees in the United States, all of whom were
taken in by white families and white churches, and they
all tell me—“Naima, you were blessed to be raised by
Black Americans.” And because I was in psychiatric
treatment for most of my childhood and had to learn
English and had to adjust to a white-dominated society,
I truly know what they mean. It’s not something that you
can explain in the confines of an interview, but there
is an immediate comfort, a connection between black
phenotypes that is natural. Even though I couldn’t
speak English, there were many times that my
black-American parents could read my mind and I could
read theirs. It was because we shared the bloodberry,
African tribal blood, and I would not have had that with
whites, not even African whites, no matter how much they
loved and wanted me. Race means family and all black
people whether they like it or not, are family. This is
why I warn black Americans—don’t get too mixed. A little
is fine, but not to the point where you’re out of the
family.
KW:
How is it that you’ve been able to make so many sage
insights about the African-American condition?
KB: I don’t see a
huge difference between the African condition and the
black American condition. The only real difference is
that black Americans live in the richest country on
Earth surrounded by a majority white population and are
almost entirely disconnected from their original culture
and their God-given identity. But in my case, because I
was adopted my black Americans, I feel that I’m a
“Hybrid”. When I’m around Africans—I suddenly feel very
black American. And when I’m around black Americans—I
feel very North African. North Africa and black America
are both the creators of Kola Boof.
KW:
And where did you develop your writing style? Were you
assisted by a ghostwriter?
KB: A ghostwriter!
How dare you! Nobody’s ever written any of my work but
me. But as for developing a writing style—I would say
that I tried to copy the pacing of the old movies I
loved as a kid. When I couldn’t speak English, I loved
silent films circa 1914-1929, Abel Gance being my
favorite director. And then later, I loved 1930’s
women’s pictures…films by Josef Von Sternberg or William
Wyler. So, I fashioned a style out of that. The
integrity and ethos of what I would write, however, came
from the films of Ousmane Sembene and from reading
Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Alice
Walker.
KW:
How old are your sons, and what do they think of their
mom?
KB: My sons are
both younger than eleven. They’re very protective and
loving towards me, but I don’t know what’s in their
secret minds about me. They are in the state of Cuoiingo,
a stage between 5-16 where black boys are raised more by
the father than the mother, though both parents are in
the house, so right now they feel that their father is
the strict one and that I’m some kind of magical safe
harbor.
KW:
Are you married or in a relationship now? How would your
man describe what being in a relationship with you is
like?
KB: Men always
liked me, because I was very damaged and
unpredictable—my children’s father claims that I have
multiple personalities, but I don’t. I seem to go for
very dominant men. Right now, I’ve been separated from
my children’s father for two years—he’s moved on to a
younger woman from his own culture, Belize, but we’re
still very close and we raise our sons together. He
monitors the boys daily and lives here on the weekends
so they can hunt, fish and bond. I would love to have a
new man in my life since he’s found someone, but I feel
as if I’m going through a mid-life crisis right now. I
don’t feel very attractive and it’s like I’m frigid or
something. I’m aging and it makes me very sad.
KW: Is
there any truth to the recent rumors romantically
linking you to certain celebrities?
KB: I’m glad you
brought that up, because the rumors about me being with
Jamal Lewis, Adam Carolla and Tiki Barber are absolutely
false. I’ve never even met Adam or Tiki Barber in
person—we did phone interviews. What happens is that a
lot of high-profile men saw topless photos of me. They
heard I was a “sex slave”—you have men who want to hit
what Osama hit. I’m not talking about Adam, Tiki or
Jamal Lewis, but none of the rumors about me are true.
I’m not a cannibal, I don’t have sex with other women.
I’m not told what to say by any Republicans and I’ve
never done a personal appearance topless.
KW:
While this persona Kola Boof you’ve created is certainly
intriguing, that’s not your real name. Is there a part
of you that you’ve managed to keep private despite
baring your soul?
KB: Definitely.
There’s a whole world about me that no one knows.
KW:
Who is the real Naima Bint Harith, and how is she
different from Kola Boof?
KB: I’m not a
“strong warrior queen” like people think. I spend most
of my day cooking and doing things with my sons. I like
to be alone and very quiet at night, and I have this
problem where it’s like…I can never stop thinking. For
instance, I find myself obsessing over the treatment of
black women and girls by black men—the fact that black
men have a special prejudice against black women and
generally don’t protect them or attempt to understand
them, and I cry an awful lot about that. And no, I’m not
talking about my children’s father—he’s a wonderful
black man, the hero of my life, and he’s never
disrespected or betrayed me. But I’m talking about what
I see in the streets and in the media, this naked hatred
that black men have towards the authentic black
woman—which is really an indication of black men’s
hatred for blackness itself. Those women who can make
them whiter, they seek out, celebrate and protect. But
the mother of our race…they demonize and disallow, they
make excuses for why they can’t honor the image of their
own mother. God would agree with me that the majority of
black Americans are white supremacists—they think that
bitch in New York Harbor is their real mother, or at
least, they want her to be. And because I’m an African
woman, I suppose these thoughts torture me more than
they do black American people, because it’s like
watching my own children trapped in a car that’s sinking
to the bottom of a lake and being impotent to save
them—the black Americans have their own holocaust going
on. They whine about Michael Richards calling us
niggers, but what are we if not niggerstock? You see the
black man erasing black children from the landscape, you
see black women desperately trying to get the black
man’s attention by wearing blonde hair and fake blue
eyes, 500 years after he sold her and their children
across the ocean, and she’s still an idiot and a
weakling just like she was back in Africa—she can’t
stand up for herself, for her womb, only for him—so you
see this total holocaust devouring the black Americans,
who are not my cousins as they like to claim, but are my
children—yes, not Lena Horne, not that bitch in New York
Harbor, but me, I’m their real mother! I am!—so in
Naima’s private life, as an African mother, this is the
demon that rides my back each and everyday.
KW:
Are you working on another book or some other project?
KB: Oh, I’m
working on tons of projects. Novels, poems, movie
scripts that I’d like to direct—someday my own cooking
show. I’m currently serving as a “ghost consultant” on
one of daytime’s top rated soap operas and that’s always
fun, because I learned English by watching soaps as a
kid, and since I don’t have any formal education and
can’t teach at the universities like other literary
writers do. Writing for the soaps helps me to supplement
things. Fans should look for two Kola Boof novels coming
out in 2007—“Virgins In the Beehive” and “The Sexy Part
of the Bible,” and a new poetry collection, “The White
Man’s Mother,” meaning Africa, plus, at last—a book
tour.
KW:
Thanks for the time, Kola.
KB: You know, Kam,
I was really a bitch towards you when we first met, and
I’d already pre-judged you with such venomous
prejudice—I feel very bad about that, because I’ve now
come to like you so much, and though I’ve said this
before, I just want to say again that I’m very sorry I
was so vicious towards you. You’re an absolutely
splendid brother. Thanks for all your consideration and
support.
For More Kola Boof:
http://www.kolaboof.com
posted 27 December 2007 |
