I met her on a Friday afternoon. Early in May I visit a woman in Manhattan who has spoken and written much about the threat of radical Islam. Through Twan Huys, a correspondent for Dutch Public Television, she was able to get in touch with me and insisted that I visit her at some point. At that moment, I know only of her forceful condemnation of radical Islam.

When I ring the doorbell and the door opens, I am let in by a woman who is extremely fragile physically. She is very small, very thin, pale. She greets me by saying "Darling, I don’t have long to live, but it is wonderful that you’re visiting me. I have cancer." On the way up, on the staircase, she continues to speak and says "The Muslims could not beat me. Mussolini’s fascists could not beat me." She talks to me of an incident in Latin-America, during a shooting round where she was lumped together with dead bodies and someone accidentally discovered her. She tells me about the lawsuit that was filed against her in Italy, in a bid to silence her. "All those devilish forces could not beat me. But cancer, cancer, the cancer that’s eating my brain…"

In her living room she insists that we drink champagne, to celebrate that I'm with her. "And you're so young," she says. Hesitantly, I offer to get the bottle and to open it, but she says "No, I can still do this, I still have to do this." When I see how much her hands tremble and how tiny she is in proportion to the large champagne bottle, I insist on helping her. "No," she says. "I still want to do this, because I'm able to."

Then she begins to speak. And as fragile as her physical body is, so strong and resilient is her spirit. I listen, and after a discussion of her life travels through Italy, through the Middle East, and now in the U.S., she arrives at what brought our life paths together: the threat of radical Islam.

Suddenly she changes the subject. "You must have a child," she says. "I only regret one thing in my life, and that is that I do not have children. I wanted them, tried to have them, but I tried too late, and I failed." "Darling," she says, "it hurts to be alone. Life is lonely. It must be, sometimes. Still I would very much have liked to have a child. I would have liked to pass on life."

She hands me her books, in Italian. Then many life lessons follow. "Darling, don't let life pass you by." She refuses to let me say goodbye and invites me to visit her again. This morning I still wanted to visit her again, when I heard, on the radio, that the life of this greatness was over. "Darling, when the cancer kills me, many will celebrate." I will mourn her.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a resident fellow at AEI.