Cosima Muller

3G Laml

08.06.2010

Desert Flower

Summary :

The book Desert Flower was published in 1998 an it´s the autobiography of Waris Dirie, a Somalian girl who becomes a supermodel per chance.

Waris was born in a nomadic family in the desert of Somalia and was one of twelve children. She is a hardworking girl and does everything his father orders. She has for example to walk for miles alone in the desert in search of water or she had to pay attention of the animal while they were drinking or grazing. At the age of five her life changes completely; she becomes subject of female circumcision without any anesthetic or antiseptic, this procedure was very painful for her but she wanted to have it because after the circumcision she becomes a very women and is appreciated. Seven years later, at the age of twelve, her father has some news for his daughter. He arranged for her a marriage to a sixty-year old man for the price of five camels. Warris was afraid about this news and she absolutely doesn´t want to marry such an old man, so she decided to ran away in direction op Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia , to find her major sister. She walked for days through the desert and on her way she was nearly violated by a trucker but she achieves to hit him and runs away. When she arrived in the capital, she has no idea where her sister lives but with the help of a “mama” she attains the house of her sister and stays with her any months and helped her with the kids. After a while Waris decides to leave her sister because they had quarrel. After she lives a while with her aunt and there she gets the chance to leave Somalia and stay with her uncle, who is an ambassador, in London. She discovers a completely new world

She manages to work as a house help in his uncle´s house until he wants to return with his family to Somalia. Waris refuses to go with them so she stays in London and works at Mc Donald's where a stranger wants to make photos from her and he