April 30, 2005 -- Sudan's top woman writer, former Muslim Kola Boof, has written a new poem to honor her friend, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by Islamic radicals for what Kola Boof calls "telling the truth". The poem is called "I Still Hear the Lion" (Click here to read:  http://poetwomen.50megs.com/catalog.html) and will be published in her 2006 poetry collection, "My Dearest/My Dearest of All". Kola Boof, who is the former mistress of Osama Bin Laden and was ordered to death by Sudanese officials in 2002 will also see the release of her autobiography, "Diary of a Lost Girl" in August of 2005.

Kola Boof explained her poem today:

"Theo Van Gogh contacted me in 2002 after Sudanese officials threatened my life and issued an illegal fatwa. He contacted me a second time, in 2003, when my publisher in Morocco was firebombed. At this time I was living in hiding and he said that he wanted to get some film footage of Ayan Hirsi and me. It never came to anything, but he was a very kind, generous man. He told me to ignore the cruel treatment that I was receiving by the U.S. media and he wanted to know if my sons were alright and if I needed any money to feed my children while I was in hiding. He thought it was terrible that people could be killed or beaten just because they didn't agree with Islam. I thought he was a very smart man, and after they murdered him...I cried for days, because it made me realize just how much trouble people like him and I have gotten ourselves into and that at any moment, we can end up silenced by these terrorists and this fanaticism that grips the Islamic religion. I wrote "I Still Hear the Lion" as an affirmation of the tremendous risk Theo took in simply telling the truth and standing up for what is right. He was a hero, a lion."

Kola Boof is the author of six books published in eight countries, including the bestsellers "Nile River Woman" and "Flesh and the Devil" and is the mother of two sons. Boof is a member of the SPLA and lives in the United States.