by Dirie, Waris
Within two or three weeks I was back to normal. Well, not exactly normal, but more like a woman who hadn’t been circumcised. Waris was a new woman. I could sit down on the toilet and pee whoosh There’s no way to explain what a new freedom that was.
Passport Dilemma
When I returned from my movie debut as a Bond Girl, I told the driver to take me straight to Marilyn Monroe’s house. Like a coward, I hadn’t called my friend after I’d left for Morocco, but instead had decided to let her cool off until I returned. Standing on her stoop with a sack full of presents, I nervously rang the bell. She opened the front door, grinned from ear to ear, then rushed forward to hug me. “You did it! You crazy bitch, you did it!” Marilyn forgave me for stealing the fraudulent passport; she said she was so impressed that I had the guts to pull the whole caper off that she couldn’t stay mad. But I agreed never to put either one of us through the danger of using her passport again, especially after my torture passing through customs at Heathrow.
I was glad that Marilyn forgave me, because she was indeed a good friend. And once again, I had to call on that friendship. When I returned home to London, I thought my modeling career was just beginning especially after the back-to-back successes’ of working with Terence Donovan and being in a James Bond movie. But as if by magic, my modeling career vanished overnight, disappearing as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun. No more working at McDonald’s for me, but also no more living at the YMCA. With no work, I couldn’t afford to keep my room there, and was forced to move into the house with Marilyn and her mother. This arrangement pleased me much more in many ways living in a real home, and being part of their family. I wound up staying with them for seven months, and even though they didn’t complain, I knew I’d outstayed my welcome. I got a few little modeling jobs here and there, but still was not making enough money to support myself. I moved in with another friend, a Chinese man named Frankie, who was a friend of my hairdresser. Frankie owned a big house well, to me it was big because it had two bedrooms. He generously offered to let me stay there while I tried to get my career going.
In 1987, shortly after I moved in with Frankie, The Living Daylights came out. A couple of weeks later, another friend took me out on Christmas Eve; everyone in London was celebrating, and caught up in the mood, I came home very late. As soon as my head touched the pillow, I was asleep. But a steady tapping on my bedroom window woke me. Looking outside I saw the friend who’d just dropped me off, holding a newspaper. He was trying to say something, but I couldn’t understand him, so I opened the window.
“Waris! You’re on the cover of The Sunday Times!”
“Oh…” I rubbed my eyes. “Honestly I am?” “Yeah! Take a look.” He held up the paper and there was a three-quarter shot of my face filling the whole cover. It was larger than life-size, with my blond hair ablaze and a determined look on my face.
“That’s nice… I’m going back to bed now… sleep,” and I stumbled to my bed. By noon, however, I’d realized the possibilities of that publicity. Surely being on the cover of The Sunday Times of London would generate some action. In the meantime, I hustled. I ran all over London going to castings, pestered my booker, and finally switched modeling agencies, but nothing improved.
My new agency said, “Well, Waris, there’s simply not much of a market for a black model in London. You have to travel for jobs Paris, Milan, New York.” I was all for traveling, except for the same old problem: my passport dilemma. The agency said they’d heard of an attorney, Harold Wheeler, who had been able to help several immigrants with their passports. Why didn’t I talk to him
I went to this Harold Wheeler’s office and discovered that he wanted an extortionate amount of money to help me two thousand pounds. Still, I reasoned, since I would be able to travel and work, I could make that money back in no time. As it stood now, I was quickly going nowhere. I scraped together the money from every possible source, eventually raising the two-thousand-pound fee. But I was concerned about giving him all my borrowed cash, then finding out he was a crook.
Making sure to leave my cash at home, I made my second appointment, and took Marilyn with me for her opinion. I rang the intercom and Wheeler’s secretary answered, then buzzed us into the building. My friend waited in the lobby while I met with Wheeler in his office.
I spoke bluntly: “Tell me the truth. I just want to know if this passport I’m getting is going to be worth two thousand pounds. Am I going to be able to travel all over the world legally? I don’t want to wind up stranded in some godforsaken place and get deported. And where are you getting this thing from?”
“No, no, no, I’m afraid I can’t talk about my sources. You must leave that to me. If you want a passport, my dear, I can certainly get you a passport. And you have my word, it will be perfectly legal. After we begin the process it will take two weeks. My secretary will give you a ring when it’s ready.” Great! That means two weeks from now I can just bugger off anyplace I like, anytime.
“Well, okay, that sounds good,” I said. “What do we do next?” Wheeler explained how I would marry an Irish national, and he just happened to have such an individual in mind. The two thousand pounds would go to the Irishman in return for his services. Wheeler would keep only a small fee for himself. He wrote down the date and time of my appointment; I was to meet my new husband at the registry office, and bring one hundred and fifty pounds in cash for additional expenses.
“You’ll be meeting a Mr. O’Sullivan,” Wheeler advised in his proper British accent. He continued to write as he talked. “He is the gentleman you’ll be marrying. Oh, and by the way congratulations.” He glanced up and gave me a slight smile.
Later, I asked Marilyn if she thought I should trust this guy. She said, “Well, he has a nice office in a nice building in a nice neighborhood. He has his name on the door. He has a professional secretary. He looks legitimate enough to me.”
My trusted friend Marilyn also came with me as a witness on my wedding day. Waiting outside the registry office, we watched an old man with a withered red face, unruly white hair, and ragged clothes zigzag down the sidewalk. We were laughing until he started up the registry steps. Marilyn and I looked at each other in shock, then back at him. “Are you Mr. O’Sullivan?” I ventured.
“In the flesh. That’s me name.” He lowered his voice. “Are you the one?” I nodded. “You got the money, lass did you bring the money?”
“Yes.”
“One hundred fifty quid?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Well, then, hurry up, hurry up. Let’s go. Time’s a-wastin’.” My new husband reeked of whiskey, and was obviously completely and thoroughly soused.
As we followed him inside, I muttered to Marilyn, “Is he going to live long enough for me to get my passport?”
The registrar began performing the ceremony, but I was having a hard time concentrating. I was constantly being distracted by Mr. O’Sullivan weaving unsteadily on his feet; and sure enough, as the registrar said, “Do you, Waris, take this man’ he collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud. At first I thought he’d died till I realized he was breathing heavily through his open mouth. I knelt down and started shaking him, yelling, “Mr. O’Sullivan, wake up!” But he refused.
I rolled my eyes at Marilyn and cried, “Oh, great, my wedding day!” and she fell against the wall laughing, holding her stomach. “Just my luck! My dear husband-to-be passes out on me at the altar.” Presented with such a ridiculous situation, I figured we might as well have some fun, and I twisted it for all I could get.
The registrar put both hands on her knees and bent down to examine my fiance, peering over the top of her tiny half glasses. “Is he going to be all right?”
I wanted to shout at her, “How the fuck should
I know?” but realized that would be giving away the game. “Wake up, come on, WAKE UP!” I had resorted to slapping his face fairly soundly by now. “Please somebody get me some water. Somebody do s
omething!” I pleaded with a laugh. The registrar brought a cup of water and I threw it in the old man’s face.
“Ugh…” He began snorting and grunting and finally his eyes flickered open. With some serious tugging and pushing we were able to get him to his feet.
“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 sc
ared 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.