'A piece of sheep fat in the sun'

Islamic dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali has lived the low life apportioned to Muslim women. Now she describes it in a new bestselling autobiography and an interview with WORLD | Priya Abraham

Apart from the melt-away bodyguard who points her to the restaurant's entrance, little about Ayaan Hirsi Ali reveals that she is a woman facing death threats all day long. At 37, slim, and beautiful, she seems at ease letting the world see her at a window table, where she relaxes in warming winter rays and fusses like a mother over how little her lunch companion eats.

WORLD met Hirsi Ali on a cold February afternoon in Washington's Penn Quarter in the midst of her juggling many press interviews—from Vogue to National Public Radio—about her new autobiography, Infidel (Free Press, 2007). In Western eyes, this Somali girl in pearl earrings is both heroine and curiosity—a self-described nonbeliever with much to say about religion, a political conservative with feminist angst.