What does freedom mean if the price is so high for the writer and columnist for this newspaper? When she goes outside, she puts on a hat and large sunglasses to blend in as little as possible. Since her debut novel I’m going to live published in 2021, she receives threats from extremist Islamic groups because she distances herself from her faith.
Emergency bell over threats from writers: ‘I have no idea how bad the situation is with freedom of expression’
The threat has not diminished and in 2025 it is still protected. That does something to a person. She misses having a partner. “I am 27. It is difficult if you want to go on a date. You have to let us know at least a week in advance, then you will arrive with six security men. Sit close to me, you can listen to all conversations. When you are kissing, you see those men with ears and muscles looking ‘is it safe to kiss?'”
Don’t saddle your child with such a life
It gets in the way more. She would like to have a child like this. “You must have tasted that, but don’t saddle a child with the fact that I have such a life. You can’t saddle a child with that, I have given up my desire to have children. You can’t have everything.”
Reflecting: “I don’t know if it’s worth it. But I think my mission is important enough.” However, she can never be really proud of what she has achieved. “I have made a lot of people sad and angry. My parents are told that they did not raise me well. I do everything wrong. My family pukes on me. Then you can never be completely proud. Then I find it difficult to say: I am proud. I don’t know the answer to the question of whether this was worth it. I can’t say that.”
Kicked in the shins by mother
The camera, which follows her a year, accompanies her performance during the Zwarte Cross where she tells an audience of young people about the meeting with her mother on the street where she was hit with a shoe on her neck and kicked in the shins. She puts her situation into perspective: ‘there are people who have it worse’.
During the intimate opening scene, she gets ready in front of a mirror. “I didn’t learn how to do make-up from home, I got it from Nikki de Jager’s videos, you make your cheekbones higher. You pretend to blush as if you are in love.” She had her lips done, she says. There are also so many opinions about this: “It does not behoove a serious writer to get lip fillers, people hate that.”
Even when she gets her lips done, she gets hate. © De Huizen/BNN-VARA
She became part of the election campaign
In Jeroen Pauw’s talk show she tells what happened after her book came out. She received death threats and had to go into hiding after threats. She became part of the election campaign at the time. For example, Geert Wilders praised the brave Turkish woman ‘who is being hunted and has to go into hiding’.
It’s not all doom and gloom. For example, she is named Dutchman of the Year by Elsevier Weekblad and becomes the winner of the NS audience award, but the higher she climbs, the more she is exposed to. The 19-year-old man who threatened her with death is sentenced to one year in prison. The court speaks of very serious threats.
Decapitation films with her head edited in
Jeroen Pauw hopes that the writer will be able to stroll around the country a bit to promote her book. That is now an illusion. She emailed a folder to the police with threats. An anthology; ‘do a Pim Fortuyn.’ You see a bloodied person lying on the street in the accompanying photo. She gets videos of people being beheaded. Her head is mounted in it.
The images are interesting when she goes back to her old University where she entered as a young student wearing a headscarf and, after hearing about trailblazers like Multatuli, one day underwent a total metamorphosis and showed her long black hair. “A headscarf doesn’t make me happy. It takes away your identity, that is the function of the headscarf,” she says during the college tour, which she opens wearing a headscarf and closes like the Lale she has become.
The writer went through life with a headscarf for years: ‘It takes away your identity’. © De Huizen/BNN-VARA
Boys decorate with headscarves
At the age of eighteen she had already decided that she no longer believed. “I wore it for another four years, while I secretly stopped fasting and celebrated Ramadan. And then I had to seduce boys with that headscarf on. Blonde boys, because that’s where I stood out. But they also thought: ‘What do you want from me?’. Then I expected them to be able to see through it, but of course they couldn’t.”
She finds it difficult to be vulnerable because of everything she has been through. She learned from the psychiatrist that she has an “avoidant attachment style. Then you are suspicious of life. Then you develop a personality that does not allow you to accept easy people.”
We need to give a damn about these medieval, misogynistic practices
Halsema sees herself as ‘a kind of aunt’ to her
After a column in De Telegraaf about Femke Halsema, the two women clash violently and the Amsterdam mayor feels compelled to write a counter column. Lale Gül drops by with cake after Halsema asks her to make up, but remains of the opinion that a little polemic should be allowed. “When I was still living at home, she (Halsema, ed) sent an app with her private number, which I used because I was looking for a safe place to sleep. I was very pleased that she welcomed me with open arms.” Halsema: “You were made into a kind of symbol. Why did I stand behind you? I think it is important that young women are free, whatever their faith.”
The two have a confidential relationship. Halsema, who describes herself as ‘a kind of aunt’ to the young writer: “And now the most important thing… how is your love life going?”
Only in her holiday home does she feel truly free. © De Huizen/BNN-VARA
Only truly free abroad
She only feels free in her second home abroad. When she goes to the plane, security is still on the ride. “In the Netherlands, problems feel much bigger.” For safety reasons, the images were shot at a different location than where her home is. It feels vulnerable.
You can stroll there, wearing your heels and enjoy a nice meal. With himself, yes. In the last images she goes with a friend Holland sings Hazes and André Hazes gigglingly confesses backstage that she was in love with him and later sings along at the top of her lungs. His father Dre’s music has gotten her through difficult times. “When I’m having a hard time, I can turn on his music. I have the feeling that he understands me as a singer.”
Can be seen from Sunday on BNN-VARA.