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sociology at the University of Nairobi. He worked part-time as a model to pay for his education. If asked, he and Bella wouldn’t agree on which of them fell for the other first, each claiming to be the one to do so, such was their immediate attraction.
    Her appreciation for sculpture persisted, and it was at a gallery show that she met Humboldt on a visit to her mother and brother in Toronto. A successful Brazilian sculptor of African descent, Humboldt was based in Rio and traveled the world as Bella did. He became her second lover, and the sex was great. In those days, nothing else mattered much, and neither of them had the desire to enter into a long-term relationship. Since then, they meet as their schedules permit, in hotels in various cities, for a week, for a day.
    Five years into this second relationship, on a day when she was in New York, she attended a lecture by Cisse Drahme, a Malian philosopher of note. He was speaking on “The Wonders of Dogon Astronomy,” and after the lecture, she was invited to join a group at a bar, which led to a dinner for two and then a meeting of the minds that has blossomed for more than ten years. And thus Bella fulfilled her fantasy of three lovers.
    Within reason, any of them would drop what he is doing and go where she chooses to meet up with her. She has keys to their houses or apartments, and she can come and go as she pleases, while none of them even has her exact address. All they know is that she lives in Rome. Thearrangement has served Bella very well. She has had to curb neither her love life nor her professional ambitions. But now?
    â€”
    A journalist for an Italian daily newspaper once asked Bella, “What makes you think that a nervous subject makes a more interesting photo than a calm one?” And Bella replied, “As a child, when I had to get a shot, I feared the jab of the needle, just as I hated the nurse saying not to think about the pain. I mean to wait until the person photographed no longer thinks of what I am doing. That way, I am in charge. And I like being in charge, in total control.”
    The journalist asked, “Do you believe that photography is a matter of power, with the photographer lording it over the subject? Is this what you are trying to say?”
    That was indeed how Bella felt. “I like to think that my subjects are as powerless as a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.”
    â€œIsn’t that an unhealthy attitude to hold?”
    â€œI am a woman,” Bella explained, “and a Somali one at that.”
    â€œHow do you mean?” the journalist asked.
    Bella found it difficult to explain, but she tried. She talked about how the colonized Asians, Africans, North American Indians, and Australian aboriginals had been eroticized and trivialized by their colonizers. And just as American photographers produced naked portraits of Native Americans or Africans for the tourist trade, women photographed in the nude were put to similar service. Bella asked, “If that is not power that allows the mighty to lord over the weak, I don’t know what is.”
    But lately, the journalist observed, Bella had been photographing children more and more, especially Somali children. Why was that?
    Bella pointed out that she had never photographed anyone in thenude or eroticized any of her subjects. “Please note,” she said, “that I make sure they look straight into the camera. I let them laugh and gesticulate naturally instead of shaping their bodies into objects of desire.”
    â€œWhen does photography become art?” the journalist asked.
    The photographer achieved the status of artist by virtue of his lenses, his choice of paper, his mastery of printing and tone, Bella said. And she spoke of her favorite photographers, many of whom were also painters, and the works she regarded as their masterpieces, such as Stieglitz’s
The Terminal
and the nude portraits he’d made of his