It Isn't Easy Being the Sexy Bin Laden

Osama's Niece Wafah Dufour

On a hot August afternoon, hopeful pop star Wafah Dufour walks into the media lunch hub Michael's, in Midtown Manhattan. Accompanied by her publicist, Richard Valvo, the slim, foreign young woman with long dark hair in a high pigtail à la I Dream of Jeannie is dressed in a white tank top, green love beads, lacy miniskirt, and backless pumps. Chats go on as heads look up to check her out.

Ms. Dufour passes by Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, who is taking lunch with designer Isaac Mizrahi, then stops at the next table to meet ex- Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola and NBC head Jeff Zucker.

"Do you know Wafah bin Ladin?" Valvo asks the men loudly.

"Wafah Dufour," she snaps, shooting him a look that's more importunate than aggressive.

The niece of the man who arranged the demolition of the World Trade Center seventy-eight blocks to the south has a point. After September 11, the name bin Laden (which is how it's spelled when referring to Osama) turned radioactive, medium satanic-by-connection. It made her feel bothered, assumed guilty—made her wonder if it might keep her from ever getting a record deal. So she took her mother's maiden name, Dufour, which makes for a better first notion, even though the bin Laden stain is always there.

Ms. Dufour, who's indistinct about her age but almost surely younger than 30, sits down at a good corner table and thanks me for helping her tell her story. "It's really significant for me," she says with a French pronunciation. "I was born in the States, and I want people to know I'm American, and I want people here to realize that I'm like anyone in New York. For me, it's home.”