Infidel

Grandmother: “It is her fault; Ayaan is as dumb as a date palm. Any child who’s lived five
by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
seasons should know better. You can curse the boy as much as you like, but Ayaan is stupid.”
I told my father I didn't want to be a girl. Abeh would protest, and quote the Quran: "Paradise
is at the feet of your mother!" But when I looked down at them, our mother's bare feet were Mahad had done wrong, but I had been unforgivably trusting, which meant I was fatally dense.
cracked from washing the floor every day, and Abeh's were clad in expensive Italian leather I had failed to be suspicious. I was not allowed to talk back to Grandma, and Ma said nothing
shoes… in every sense of the word, Paradise was not at her feet but at his. to defend me.

The decision to write this book didn't come to me easily. Why would I expose such private Not long after that, Grandma made the arrangements for us to undergo circumcision. The
memories to the world? Why am I not in Kenya, squatting under a tree weaving a mat? entire purification procedure was torture. It was not discussed at all. It was just something that
had happened, had had to happen. Everyone was cut.
Intro
Mahad began primary school and I began my own little war …on Grandma. Sometimes I
I am Ayaan, the daughter of Hirsi, the son of Magan, son of Ali. I have managed to count my climbed the talal tree as she sat underneath it, and then spat down. Not on Grandma, for I
forefathers back for three hundred years… wasn't allowed to do that, but next to her, on the sand. Grandma would complain to Ma; then
an endless discussion followed on whether the spitting was on Grandma or near her. This
Grandmother: “Get it right! The names will make you strong. They are your bloodline. If your resulted in a general forbidding of all spitting.
honor them they will keep you alive. If you dishonor them you will be forsaken. You will be
nothing.” Other girls were content to accept the rules of our religion at face value, but I felt compelled to
understand them. One day Grandma turned to the verses on how women were supposed to
But my grandmother's desert nomad world wasn't our world. I was entirely useless at manual behave with their husbands…
crafts and herding, I couldn’t even milk a goat without getting kicked over. Grandma used to
tell my brother that he was the man of the house. Free to roam because he was a boy. Gran: ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE: this is the rule in Islam.

Once it was time for the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. I had a shiny new dress with a Ayaan: Must our husbands obey us too?
big blue bow. Mahad called for me from outside. He was at the entrance of the toilet. “Look”
he said. I climbed up and looked down the deep, dark hole of the latrine. The smell was vile, Gran: Certainly not! You may not question Allah’s word! His mind is hidden. Satan is
and large flies zoomed about. Suddenly, Mahad ran behind me and pushed me in. I screamed speaking to you, girl! Sit down instantly!
as I never had before. The latrine was truly disgusting and when Ma fished me out I was in an
unspeakable condition.
The Quran says on almost every page that Allah is just, but this is not just. I thought that I didn’t want to go and live the life that was preordained for me from the time I was born a girl.
perhaps he had translated the Quran poorly. I bought my own English edition and read it so I Another kind of life was possible. I could almost see it, smell it in the air around me: the kind of
could understand it better. But I found that everything the Imam said was in there. Women life I had always wanted…to become an individual, with a life of my own.
should obey their husbands. Women were worth half a man. Infidels should be killed.

The spark of will inside me grew even as I practiced to submit. It was Friday, July 24, 1992,
A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If when I stepped on the train. Every year I think of it. I see it as my real birthday: the birth of me
you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. as a person, making decisions about my life on my own—the day that I bolted—into the
unknown.
My brother’s friend Abshir was dark-skinned and handsome, very polite, and civilized and
bright. Abshir was intensely devout—like me, he sought explanations. Whenever we were When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at
alone together we would have discussions of religion. He was nothing like anyone I had ever reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn't so.
met.
The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that… women in Islam are oppressed
Abshir would kiss me, and he could really kiss. It was long and gentle and thrilling and and it would be better for everyone—for Muslims, above all if this situation could change. If
therefore sinful? Abshir would say, “If we were married, then it wouldn’t be sinful. We must we face up to the terrible reality we are in, we can change our destiny.
exercise willpower and not do it anymore” So for a day or so we would steel ourselves and
refrain, and then the next day we would look at each other and just kiss again.
NOTE: Green Text is direct focus (monologue) to the audience and in the present tense.

One afternoon, my father came straight from the mosque to our flat, and when he arrived he
was completely excited.

Abeh: “Ayaan, my daughter, I have good news for you, the best news, my prayers are
answered. Today in the mosque a blessed man came to me with a proposal of marriage, and I
offered him your hand!”

I felt my heels sinking into the ground. My father had given me away to a man he had met in
the mosque barely two hours before.

Ayaan: “I’m not going to do it” (reaction)Nobody tied me up. I was not shackled. I was not
forced at gunpoint. But I had no realistic way out.