Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for

you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. It does not get better than the

guests we have for you this week. She's an author, activist and scholar. I am Herculee. Welcome to

Trigonometry. Thank you very much for having me on. I am it's a great pleasure for us to have

you on the show. Listen, we were talking just before the show started about the fact that there's

now a whole generation of young people who may not even be familiar with the entirety of your journey.

They might be familiar with your later work, but not with with the whole journey that you've had

through life. So for those people, give everybody an overview of how are you where you are sitting

here talking to us? So, well, my name is Ayan Herculee and I was born in Somalia. I'm a very old woman.

I think if you hit 50, then that's when age sort of comes after you. I was born in 1969. My

father was a politician and we left Somalia when I was about 708 years old and we moved around.

I lived in Saudi Arabia. I lived in Ethiopia. I lived in Kenya. And in 1992, when I was 22 years

old, my father decided that it was time for me to get married and he picked a husband for me.

I didn't agree with that arrangement, but I also have to make it very clear that that's just

how it works in our culture. He was trying to do what's best for his daughter and I think he had

a sense of guilt because he had been gone for 10 years. So he left when I was about 11 years old

and came back when I was 22 years old. And at that time, I thought he had no business arranging

anything for me. Aside from me, not liking the man that he selected for me, I was then sent to

Germany to stay with a relative who was going to help us figure out the immigration process from

Germany to Canada. The man that my father married me off to was a Canadian Somali.

But instead of going to Canada, I slipped into the Netherlands and I asked for asylum and I

lived there for 10 happy years and then 9, 11, 2001 happened. And I took a position in that debate

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