KOLA BOOF : FIVE YEARS KEPT BY EFREM NELKIN

Miss Fire Safety August 1988 of Lake Fairfax, Virginia, Naima Bint Harith, was chosen by White men for her beauty.  One of them was a married 43 year old businessman, Efrem Nelkin.  He gave her a start - as his mistress.

"At just 17, he got me my own apartment in Virginia." (page 143)

She didn't contact her parents until she was 18 and then lied that she had gotten a good job and a room mate.

Nelkin also bought her a used Volvo and she drove unlicensed. He also, respecting her literary bent, bought her loads of books. (Poet and writer Maya Angelou had become her idol.) He also bought her exotic cooking ingredients.  He wasn't an incredibly wealthy man but he showed that he cared for her with these presents.

Kola says other Black women had warned her that White men were rapists.  She knew that the slave trade had begun with the sale of women by Black Kings. She was not bothered to be with a man who was married, of another race, culture, or religion?  Kola says she felt it was wrong to be with him and felt she had betrayed another woman who was a loving mother and bearer of good will in her community.  Yet she'd had hot sex with him in the couple's marital bed while his wife was in the hospital having a hysterectomy.  (Page 153)

"So this was pure evil, you see. I had betrayed the principals of womanism.  Because a man had picked me from the tree of life and made me any pie that he liked." (Page 153)

The relationship went on for five years.

She turned 21 in March of 1993 and was feeling the need to be and do more.  She was now a citizen of the United States.  Having won the beauty contest, she thought about modeling and acting.  She was over 6 feet tall.  She thought she would go to Cairo, Egypt, the land of her father's family and could "outrun the racism of Hollywood and the American Nigger Media" (Page 131).  Few dark black women got work in America.  

Being in the Middle East lead to more pain for Naima Bint Harith (Kola Boof).