When I was all of five, I remember my mom calling me to her room for a discussion. It should have indicated that something was amiss, because in our home, bedroom talks were reserved for serious discussions only. Family discussion usually took place out in the open, in the living room. From relationship issues to financial crises, those walls had heard it all.
“I need to talk to you about something important. Tell your friends to wait,” she told me. Well at five, no one really used the word important for anything they had to tell me. Intrigued I stepped into the bedroom where my mother proceeded to tell me about a ‘ritual.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s just a matter of cleaning you up. The lady will prick at your lady parts and in no time you will be clean and ready to worship Allah,’ she told me as I, wide eyed, heard out her description of what I now know as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
This was in 2000, the millennium era and the conversation was taking place in a bustling suburb of Mumbai.
A culture of silence and submission to age-old barbaric practices led me to a small house in the bylanes of Mumbai’s Bhindi Bazaar, the city’s most populated Bohri area. A middle-aged woman welcomed me and my mother in, offering us a glass of roohafza.
‘Don’t worry, it won’t take more than a minute,’ she told me, drawing me closer and running her fingers through my hair. I nodded, not too sure of what she was referring to.
Today, 15 years later, I know that I should have probably shrieked, pushed her away and ran out. Because that ‘small cut’ that she referred to is what has led to a life of excruciating pain and shame for me.
She led to me a dingy looking bed, pushed me onto it and pulled the curtains. She called out to three women from the living room who then proceeded to hold my hands and legs. She opened her cupboard and pulled out a small knife, rather a blade, so small I could barely see it.
I gave out an ear-piercing scream when that blade touched my genitals.
At the time, I had no idea that the ‘small cut’ was going to hurt the most sensitive part of my body; it was a cut that I’d never forget. I squeezed my eyes shut at the same time as a hand covered my mouth. It was over as soon as it began but I took home days of extreme pain. I had to send my friends away, lying that I had homework to do, because I could barely walk, forget run around because of the pain between my legs.
Simple things like peeing were a horror. I remember my mom holding my hand each time I had to use the loo, gently reminding me, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this. It’s a part of Islam. None of your friends need to know.’ And me sobbing and nodding my head.
Today, 15 years later, I know all about what FGM really is. My mother’s silence and my father’s total lack of interest towards this meant that for weeks I felt ashamed to be with my friends. My mother kept telling me that I was now ‘clean’ and ‘pure’ but each time I drank a glass of water I couldn’t stop myself from anticipating the pain that was soon to follow. Why was I chosen to be the clean one, I often wondered?
Extensively reading on this revealed to me that FGM is shoved down our throats labeled as a Muslim ritual. This barbaric ritual still exists in parts of Africa and Egypt, but any talks of it here in Mumbai, just leaves people stunned.
‘They did this to you in 2000? Where was your mother?,’ they ask me.
Well, she was right there coaxing me to never talk about it and rejoice about being ‘pure.’ I don’t really blame my mother or father for putting me through this; no parent would really wish to scar their child, would they? I blame an ignorant, god-fearing, submissive society that takes age-old rituals and follows them blindly without a single question.
Even today most girls are too scared to even talk about it for fear of what would happen to them and their families. I am also one of them. I dread growing up and being in a relationship. Sex, I’ve read, is excruciatingly painful and many a woman has lost her life during childbirth because of excessive bleeding spurned by FGM.
I don’t know what the future holds for me. I just know that I am going to hate some of life’s most pleasurable feelings. And I know that I won’t be alone.
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