@kinglimaa<\/a>) make the sign she\u2019s holding in the picture seem eerily prophetic. On it she\u2019d written, \u201cI was born \u20182\u2019 stand out!\u201d<\/p>\nAnd stand out she has. A year ago, she was elected the first Muslim homecoming queen in her high school\u2019s\u2014and St. Cloud\u2019s\u2014history. \u201cI saw how even something as small as that brought my community and my school together, how it encouraged other girls like me to join student government and clubs,\u201d she says over lunch at a food court popular with high-schoolers. A mauve head scarf frames her expressive black eyes and full lips that cover a mouthful of braces. A black\u00a0abaya<\/em>\u2014a long-sleeved, floor-length robe\u2014flows over the spiky, three-and-a-half-inch heels in which she moves about easily. Other girls in head scarves, she recalls, \u201cwere coming up to me and saying, \u2018Oh, I want to go to prom\u2019 or \u2018How do I get into orchestra?\u2019 Stuff that I had no idea about, but they were still coming to me for advice.\u201d<\/p>\nSo she became more daring. Beauty pageants are not traditionally part of her culture (even though supermodels Iman and Waris Dirie also hail from Somalia). But in the fall of 2016, while newly enrolled at St. Cloud State University, Halima competed, wearing a hijab, for the title of Miss Minnesota USA. No one had ever done so before. She made it to the semifinals, donning for the swimsuit portion of the pageant a burkini: a loosely cut, two-part wetsuit designed to respect Islamic codes of modesty.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
It was big news. Pictures of Halima in competition, covered up but radiating an infectious joy and self-assurance, appeared in the press and online, catching the eye of Ivan Bart, head of IMG Models. Within weeks she was in discussions with the agency, which now represents her, and Mario Sorrenti was shooting her, wrapped in a navy hijab, for the cover of the Paris-based\u00a0CR Fashion Book<\/em>. \u201cThe power really came from her eyes and her presence,\u201d says Sorrenti. \u201cI think there\u2019s a modern quality about her, being of her faith and expressing her femininity and beauty with confidence.\u201d<\/p>\nGenerations of Halima\u2019s family kept camels, goats, and sheep in a small town on the outskirts of Kismayo. That city, a strategic port on the Indian Ocean, became a flashpoint in the civil war that has raged in Somalia, on and off, since the early 1990s. To escape the escalating violence, in 1993 her parents joined other refugees making their way across the border by foot (an eleven-day journey) to Kakuma, a camp of thatched-roof huts, tents, and mud cabins perched on the arid plains of northwestern Kenya. Halima was born there in 1997; her brother followed three years later.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife in Kakuma didn\u2019t seem so hard to me,\u201d she now says. \u201cI guess I didn\u2019t know \u2018easy.\u2019 \u201d She does remember times when there was not enough food, though her mother grew tomatoes and made incense, selling both to help guard her family against hunger. Water was scarce, and fights would break out between adults waiting in long lines at the well.<\/p>\n
Among the children, however, Halima received an ad hoc education in tolerance and diversity. The camp\u2019s inhabitants came from all over Africa, sometimes mingling with children of local Turkana tribespeople. The Turkana are nomadic herders, like the Maasai. They expose much of their skin and worship Akuj, a god they associate with the sky. \u201cWe intermixed religions,\u201d Halima recalls. \u201cFor Christmas Eve, we didn\u2019t have lots of presents, but my mom\u2019s friends were Ethiopian Christians, so they\u2019d cook and make sure all the kids were fed. The same thing when it was Eid\u2014the Muslim families would cook. And I believed in Akuj, because Turkana kids warned me about him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, perhaps as a consequence, she\u2019s as likely to defend a friend\u2019s choice of \u201creally short shorts\u201d as she is to champion her own modest forms of dress. \u201cI have a friend who dons the most revealing clothes,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like, Girl, if that\u2019s what makes you feel happy and beautiful\u2014go ahead. I\u2019m willing to stand up for her. But it\u2019s ironic because people will slut-shame her, but then apparently they think I\u2019m oppressed because I choose to do the opposite and cover my body.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2005, after an application process lasting years, Halima, her mother, and brother immigrated to this country, arriving first in St. Louis and settling a year later in St. Cloud, where her mother had friends among the city\u2019s sizable Somali community. That was when Halima first put on the hijab, she says, \u201cbecause I\u2019d seen my mom wearing it, and I wanted to be like her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Middle school was difficult. On the school bus or between classes, \u201ckids would tease me about having no hair,\u201d she recalls. \u201cSome Somali students would teach the non-Somali students curse words, so they would curse me in my own language. In sixth grade, one boy used to call me \u2018Smellian\u2019 rather than \u2018Somalian,\u2019 and other kids picked up on it,\u201d she says. \u201cBut we outgrew it, and now he and I are really close.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s poignancy in the fact that Halima\u2019s rising success has coincided with a\u00a0resistance to welcoming refugees\u00a0from President Trump, who suspended immigration from six Muslim-majority countries\u2014including Somalia\u2014last March. \u201cI<\/em>\u00a0was a refugee,\u201d she says, \u201cand I\u2019m glad the door opened for my family to come to the United States, to find a new life and have opportunities. In my experience, refugees are among the people most fearful of, and most fed up with, violence. My mom has so much respect for the government and authority.\u201d Of President Trump she says, \u201cYou can say, I don\u2019t agree with all that he says. But you have to be respectful.\u201d<\/p>\nAfter lunch we wander through the crowded aisles of the Karmel Square Somali Mall, an unassuming four-story building a ten-minute drive from downtown Minneapolis. Here about 200 stalls offer a seemingly infinite variety of clothing for observant Muslims: from simple pull-on hijabs for little girls to waist-cinching, floral-printed or fancy lace\u00a0abayas<\/em>, and sparkling\u00a0diracs<\/em>\u2014semitransparent, jewel-toned shawls embroidered in gold and worn at Somali weddings.<\/p>\nHalima is constantly interrupted by eager schoolgirls wanting selfies with her, and older women who pull their veils closer while volunteering advice. A pair of feisty, elderly shopkeepers corner her for a long time, their rapid-fire Somali punctuated with emphatic declarations of \u201cInshallah!\u201d (\u201cGod willing!\u201d) That evening, over dinner in a Somali restaurant, I ask Halima what the women were saying. \u201cThey told me, \u2018We know you are doing something good now,\u2019 \u201d she recalls. \u201c \u2018But the longer you spend in that industry, first they\u2019ll want you to wear pants, then tighter and more revealing clothes, and before you know it, no more hijab!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
She sighs. \u201cI understand because it\u2019s their daughters, too, whom I\u2019m affecting. But no one in fashion is pressuring me.\u201d Halima travels with a chaperone and doesn\u2019t allow male stylists to dress her. \u201cI\u2019m signed to one of the top agencies in the world,\u201d she continues. \u201cThey already have models who are willing to bare all, but there is only one right now who is wearing the hijab.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearby, a little girl in a head scarf stares at our table, starstruck, while her mother and aunts chat distractedly. \u201cI want girls like that to be able to flip through a magazine and see someone who looks like them,\u201d Halima says. \u201cSo why would I take my hijab off?\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, at least, the fashion world isn\u2019t looking to change her. This past February, she walked for\u00a0Yeezy in New York\u00a0and\u00a0Max Mara\u00a0and\u00a0Alberta Ferretti\u00a0in Milan, modeling coats while wearing coordinating head scarves.\u00a0Ferretti\u00a0met Halima during the fitting process and was struck by the model\u2019s combination of strength and sweetness. The designer, who has spent time in the United Arab Emirates (where, most recently, she created a bridal gown for one of its princesses), has met numerous women in the region \u201cwho wore the veil, traveled and worked, and had wonderfully compelling lives,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAnd I thought, Why not give Halima the opportunity to walk in the show like any other modern woman?\u201d<\/p>\n
For Ian Griffiths, creative director of\u00a0Max Mara, \u201cHalima has such a strong personality that it shines through on the runway. She comes across as an intelligent, confident, ambitious, courageous woman even when she\u2019s just walking along. So we absolutely wanted to cast her.\u201d Market considerations, he says, were also a factor. \u201cIf you walk down a top-end shopping street in any major city, you wouldn\u2019t be surprised to see a Max Mara coat worn with a hijab,\u201d Griffiths notes. \u201cSo why shouldn\u2019t our runway reflect that too?\u201d<\/p>\n
I catch up with Halima a week after seeing her in Minneapolis on a photo shoot for The Modist on Long Island. During a break, Halima reflects on some long-term goals. She\u2019d love to be involved with UNICEF, she says. She\u2019d like to see Somalia rebuilt, its schools, museums, and a major sports stadium recover from the devastation of war. \u201cMy grandmother, who lives there, thinks it\u2019s wishful thinking,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I believe it can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s still coming to grips with the platform modeling has given her. \u201cI see how powerful it is,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m able to reach people who may never have met a Muslim person before, but they hear my story, and they get to know something about Somali-Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Somali-American women are making inroads in politics as well as fashion. Last November, 34-year-old Ilhan Omar was elected to the Minnesota state legislature, making her the first Somali-American\u2014and hijab-wearing\u2014lawmaker in the nation. Speaking on the phone, Omar points out that the image that both she and Halima project has influence far beyond the Muslim-American community. \u201cIt\u2019s about conformity,\u201d she says, \u201cin my own case, the idea that you don\u2019t have to conform to a particular ideal of what a woman in politics looks like in order to be elected. For young women, whether they are Muslim or not, and whether they wear the hijab or not, they can look at Halima and think, Wow, she made it on her own terms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Omar, clearly an astute politician, drives home her point. \u201cIf she was accepted while being true to herself,\u201d she observes, \u201cthen they understand that all they need to work toward is being the best version of themselves. They don\u2019t have to try to be someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fashion Editor: Phyllis Posnick.
Makeup: Siddhartha Simone.
Tailor: Della George.
Produced by Emma Turpin at Rosco Productions.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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