Detailed plot synopsis reviews of GoneDesert Flower |
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She also frequently showed up at the wrong addresses since she was illiterate. But illiterate or not, ignorant or not, she became a semi-famous fashion model.
Waris enjoys whoring herself for the cameras. The shy girl who didn't want to take off her shirt for a photo shoot is gone. She agrees to lie naked on a bull and spread her legs, just like a whore.
Waris got famous enough for the BBC to do a documentary on her. As part of the documentary, the BBC had to locate her mother. The problem is that her mother was a wandering nomad with no set address. In addition, many women said they were Waris's mother in the hopes of getting money for it. This kind of dishonesty is very common in Somalia.
Click here to see the rest of this reviewWaris's pretend husband, Nigel, refused to release her passport to let her go to Africa unless he could go with her. She got him to release the passport by promising to take a private trip with him afterwards--a lie, but Waris has lied ever since she came to London, so it doesn't bother her much.
After interviewing a series of false-Mommas, Waris finds her real mother and has a touching reunion. Waris offers to take her mother back to London with her, but her mother refuses, saying she has to help Waris's father and her junior co-wife wandering around in the desert. At this point Waris could make their life much easier by giving them some money. Even $100 would be like a princely sum in Somalia, but Waris gives her mother nothing and lets her return to her life of poverty while Waris enjoys her life as a rich fashion model.
Later, Waris meets a musician she is sexually attracted to and tells the man that she plans to have him inseminate her. Waris of course doesn't know a complex word like "inseminate" but you know what I'm saying.
The man looks at Waris like she's crazy. But Waris pursues, seduces, and beds him. Now that her v_gina is unplugged she is open for business down there. After knowing him for only two week she moved in with him. What a slut!
Waris forces the musician to impregnate her. Then Waris wants to marry him but the problem is that she is married to Nigel in a sham-marriage. Nigel wanted 40,000 pounds to let her out of the sham-marriage, but Waris refused to pay him. Nigel pushes Waris to the ground, out of his car.
We never find out what happens to their marriage and how or even if Waris is able to divorce Nigel.
We do learn that Waris gives birth to her first child. Waris relates the scene where the child, still covered in the slick juices from her uterus, is put on her chest and gets it all sticky.
Then Waris becomes a social activist, speaking out against the practice of cutting of women's' v_ginas and sewing them up like they were Thanksgiving turkeys. It's done to millions of women, all of them Muslim. Waris says however that it is not an Islamic practice even though it is only done by Muslims.
And this is where Waris's story starts to get crazy. Waris ends the book by saying how proud she is to be a Somali. She's just spent the entire book describing repeated rape attempts, how her mother sewed up her v_gina and her father tried to sell her for camels, and Waris is saying how proud she is to be Somali. It makes absolutely zero sense. Waris says that except for having her v_gina sewn up, she wouldn't trade being a Somali for anything. Really? Being poor, illiterate, and wandering in the desert, without even shoes? Totally ridiculous.
Waris says that Somalis appreciate simple things in life like water. That's because Somalis are dying of thirst. Waris criticizes people in America for eating too much. She seems to prefer living in a country where people are starving rather than one where people are well fed.
And yet, Waris did not go back to life in Somalia. She says how great it was there but she doesn't live there anymore. I wonder why?
Somalia is also in a constant state of civil war, with people killing each other like savages. But Waris blames the war not on the Somali culture but on the "egos of men". She says that there might not be war if men had their "balls cut off". Right, it's all men's fault. What about the Somali culture? Waris doesn't address this.
Waris also doesn't even blame her mother for cutting off her v_gina, saying that her mother was just acting out of ignorance. Women not to blame. It's men! Men bad!
At this point, by the end of the book, I have lost whatever sympathy I had for Waris. She makes excuses for the barbarism of her own country. After telling us her terrible story she ends it by saying how great it is there. And yet she lied and cheated repeatedly so she would not have to go back living there. What a lying, nudist hypocrite.
Criticism:
I started out feeling very sympathetic to Waris in this book. She is treated terribly and lives in such poverty. But then when she comes to Britain she starts feeling entitled to break the law. She forges a passport and then enters into two sham marriages just to be able to stay there. She feels no remorse about her law breaking. It is hard to feel sympathetic for her at that point.
It is also hard to feel sympathetic to the people of Somalia. The society is filled with rapists Waris's aunts and uncles treated her like a slave. Her own mother cut off her v_gina, and her father tried to sell her to an old man for camels. The entire country is filled with nasty people, and yet, after telling us this nasty story, Waris tries to tell us how proud she is being from Somalia. I wouldn't be proud if I were from Somalia; it's an awful place filled with the worst kind of people.
