Sahel Rosa

Sahel Rosa was originally from a Kurdish village in Iran, near the Iraq border.[1] Her birth date is not clearly known and has been listed as either October 21 or October 23, 1985.[2] At age four she was the only survivor of an air-raid attack on her house, in which her parents and ten siblings were killed. Her village was attacked by the Iraqi army even though there was supposed to be a cease-fire in place, and the Iran-Iraq War had officially ended more than a year earlier. She survived under rubble for four days until being discovered by a volunteer nurse named Flora.[1][2]

After some time in an orphanage, Sahel appeared in a televised commercial at age six, describing her experiences and those of other war orphans. This commercial was seen by Flora, the same nurse who had rescued her about two years earlier.[2] Flora adopted Sahel, but later fell on hard times when her own family disowned her due to her non-traditional views. Flora had a Japanese fiance and decided to move to Japan with him and her adopted daughter.[4]

As a teen, Sahel entered the acting and modelling fields to help her adopted mother, who struggled financially to support herself and her daughter after being turned out by her fiance shortly after their arrival in Japan.[5] In 2009 she published her autobiography From the War Zone to (the Life of) an Actress.[6] She frequently appears in anti-war documentaries,[7] and in works dedicated to Japan's immigrant community and the Iranian diaspora.[8]