Desert Flower

by Dirie, Waris

  As a result, all young girls in Somalia anxiously await the ceremony that will mark their transformation from being a little girl to becoming a woman. Originally the process occurred when the girls reached puberty, and the ritual had some meaning, as the girl became fertile and capable of bearing her own children. But through time, female circumcision has been performed on younger and younger girls, partially due to pressure from the girls themselves, since they eagerly await their ‘special time’ as a child in the West might await her birthday party, or Santa Claus’s arrival on Christmas Eve. When I heard the old gypsy was coming to circumcise Aman, I wanted to be circumcised, too. Aman was my beautiful older sister, my idol, and anything she wanted or had, I wanted, too. The day before the big event, I begged my mother, tugging at her arm, “Mama, do both of us at the same time. Come on, Mama, do both of us tomorrow!”

  Mother pushed me away. “Just hush, little girl.” However, Aman was not so eager. I remember her muttering, “I just hope I don’t wind up like Halemo.” But at the time I was too young to know what that meant, and when I asked Aman to explain she just changed the subject.

  Very early the next morning my mother and her friend took Aman to meet the woman who would perform the circumcision. As usual, I pleaded to go, too, but Mama told me to stay home with the younger children. But using the same sneaky techniques I used the day I followed my mother to meet her friends, I followed along, hiding behind bushes and trees, staying a safe distance behind the group of women.

  The gypsy woman arrived. She is considered an important person in our community, not only because she has specialized knowledge, but because she earns a great deal of money from performing circumcisions. Paying for this procedure is one of the greatest expenses a household will undergo, but is still considered a good investment, since without it, the daughters will not make it onto the marriage market. With their genitals intact, they are considered unfit for marriage, unclean sluts whom no man would consider taking as a wife. So the gypsy woman, as some call her, is an important member of our society, but I call her the Killer Woman because of all the little girls who have died at her hand.

  Peering from behind a tree, I watched my sister sit on the ground. Then my mother and her friend both grabbed Aman’s shoulders and held her down. The gypsy started doing something between my sister’s legs, and I saw a look of pain flash across Aman’s face. My sister was a big girl, and very powerful, and suddenly -phoom! She raised her foot and shoved against the gypsy’s chest, knocking her over on her back. Then my sister struggled free from the women holding her down, and leaped to her feet. To my horror, I saw blood pouring down her legs and onto the sand, leaving a trail as she ran. They all ran after her, but Aman was far ahead of them until she collapsed and fell to the ground. The women rolled her over on the spot where she had fallen, and continued their work. I felt sick and couldn’t watch anymore, so I ran home. Now I knew something I really wished I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what had happened, but was terrified at the thought of going through it myself. I couldn’t very well ask my mother about it, because I wasn’t supposed to have witnessed it. They kept Aman separated from the rest of the children while she healed, and two days later I took her some water. I knelt beside her and asked quietly, “What was it like?”

  “Oh, it was horrible…” she began. But I guess she thought better of telling me the truth, knowing that I would have to be circumcised, and then I’d be frightened, instead of looking forward to it. “Anyway, you’re not far from it; they will do it to you soon enough.” And that’s all she would say.

  From then on, I dreaded the ritual that I would pass through on the way to womanhood. I tried to put the horror of it out of my mind, and as time passed, so did my memory of the agony I had witnessed on my sister’s face. Finally, I foolishly convinced myself that I wanted to become a woman, too, and join my older sisters.

  A friend of my father’s and his family always traveled with us. He was a grouchy old man, and anytime my younger sister or I pestered him, he would wave us away as if shooing flies, and tease us by saying, “Get away from me, you two unsanitary little girls you dirty little girls. You haven’t even been circumcised yet!” He always spat the words out as if the fact we weren’t circumcised made us so disgusting that he could barely stand to look at us. These insults agitated me until I vowed to find a way to make him shut his stupid mouth.

  This man had a teenage son named Jamah, and I developed a crush on this boy, even though he always ignored me. Instead of me, Jamah was interested in Aman. Through time I got the idea that his preference for my older sister revolved around the fact she was superior to me since she’d been circumcised. Like his father, Jamah probably didn’t want to associate with dirty, uncircumcised little girls. When I was about five years old, I went to my mother and nagged, “Mama, just find me this woman. Come on, when are you going to do it?” I thought, I have to get it over with get this mysterious thing done. As my luck would have it, only a few days passed until the gypsy woman showed up again.

  One evening my mother said to me, “By the way, your father ran into the gypsy woman. We’re waiting for her; she should be here any day now.” The night before my circumcision, Mama told me not to drink too much water or milk, so I wouldn’t have to pee-pee much. I didn’t know what that meant, but didn’t question her, only nodded my head. I was nervous but resolved to get it over with. That evening the family made a special fuss over me and I got extra food at dinner. This was the tradition I’d witnessed through the years that made me envious of my older sisters. Just before I went to sleep, my mother said, I’ll wake you up in the morning when the time comes.” How she knew when the woman was coming I have no idea, but Mama always knew these things. She simply sensed intuitively when someone was coming, or the time was right for something to happen.

  I lay awake with excitement that night until suddenly Mama was standing over me. The sky was still dark, that time before dawn when the black has lightened imperceptibly to gray. She motioned for me to be silent and took my hand. I grabbed my little blanket, and still half asleep stumbled along after her. Now I know the reason they take the girls so early in the morning. They want to cut them before anybody wakes up, so nobody else will hear them scream. But at the time, even though I was confused, I simply did as I was told. We walked away from our hut, out into the brush. “We’ll wait here,” Mama said, and we sat down on the cold ground. The day was growing faintly lighter; I could barely distinguish shapes, and soon I heard the click-click of the gypsy woman’s sandals. My mother called out the woman’s name, then added, “Is that you?”

  “Yes, over here,” came a voice, although I still could see no one. Then, without my seeing her approach, she was right beside me. “Sit over there.” She motioned toward a flat rock. There was no conversation, no hello. No “How are you?” No “What’s going to happen today is going to be very painful, so you must be a brave girl.” No. The Killer Woman was strictly business.

  Mama grabbed a piece of root from an old tree, then positioned me on the rock. She sat behind me, and pulled my head back against her chest, her legs straddling my body. I circled my arms around her thighs. My mother placed the root between my teeth. “Bite on this.”

  I was frozen with fear as the memory of Aman’s tortured face suddenly flooded back before me. “This is going to hurt!” I mumbled over the root.

  Mama leaned over and whispered to me, “You know I can’t hold you. I’m on my own here. So try to be a good girl, baby. Be brave for Mama, and it’ll go fast.” I peered between my legs and saw the gypsy woman getting ready. She looked like any other old Somali woman with a colorful scarf wrapped around her head and a bright cotton dress except there was no smile on her face. She looked at me sternly, a dead look in her eyes, then foraged through an old carpet bag. My eyes were fixed on her, because I wanted to know what she was going to cut me with. I expected a big knife, but instead, out of the bag she pulled a tiny cotton sack. She reached in
side with her long fingers, and fished out a broken razor blade. Turning it from side to side, she examined it. The sun was barely up now; it was light enough to see colors but no details. However, I saw dried blood on the jagged edge of the blade. She spat on it and wiped it against her dress. While she was scrubbing, my world went dark as my mother tied a scarf around my eyes as a blindfold.

  The next thing I felt was my flesh, my genitals, being cut away. I heard the sound of the dull blade sawing back and forth through my skin. When I think back, I honestly can’t believe that this happened to me. I feel as if I were talking about somebody else. There’s no way in the world I can explain what it feels like. It’s like somebody is slicing through the meat of your thigh, or cutting off your arm, except this is the most sensitive part of your body. However, I didn’t move an inch, because I remembered Aman and knew there was no escape. And I wanted Mama to be proud of me. I just sat there as if I were made of stone, telling myself the more I moved around, the longer the torture would take. Unfortunately, my legs began to quiver of their own accord, and shake uncontrollably, and I prayed, Please, God, let it be over quickly. Soon ir was, because I passed out.

  When I woke up, I thought we were finished, but now the worst of it had just begun. My blindfold was off and I saw the Killer Woman had piled next to her a stack of thorns from an acacia tree. She used these to puncture holes in my skin, then poked a strong white thread through the holes to sew me up. My legs were completely numb, but the pain between them was so intense that I wished I would die. I felt myself floating up, away from the ground, leaving my pain behind, and I hovered some feet above the scene looking down, watching this woman sew my body back together while my poor mother held me in her arms. At this moment I felt complete peace; I was no longer worried or afraid.

  My memory ends at that instant, until I opened my eyes and the woman was gone. They had moved me, and I was lying on the ground close to the rock. My legs had been tied together with strips of cloth binding me from my ankles to my hips so I couldn’t move. I looked around for my mother, but she was gone, too, so I lay there alone, wondering what would happen next. I turned my head toward the rock; it was drenched with blood as if an animal had been slaughtered there. Pieces of my meat, my sex, lay on top, drying undisturbed in the sun.

  I lay there, watching the sun climb directly overhead. There was no shade around me and the waves of heat beat down on my face, until my mother and sister returned. They dragged me into the shade of a bush while they finished preparing my tree. This was the tradition; a special little hut was prepared under a tree, where I would rest and recuperate alone for the next few weeks until I was well. When Mama and Aman had finished working, they carried me inside.

  I thought the agony was over until I had to pee, then I understood my mother’s advice not to drink too much milk or water. After hours of waiting, I was dying to go, but with my legs tied together I couldn’t move. Mama had warned me not to walk, so that I wouldn’t rip myself open, because if the wound is ripped open, then the sewing has to be done again. Believe me, that was the last thing I wanted.

  “I have to pee-pee,” I called to my sister. The look on her face told me this was not good news. She came and rolled me over on my side and scooped out a little hole in the sand.

  “Go ahead.”

  The first drop came out and stung as if my skin were being eaten by acid. After the gypsy sewed me up, the only opening left for urine and menstrual blood was a minuscule hole the diameter of a matchstick. This brilliant strategy ensured that I could never have sex until I was married, and my husband would be guaranteed he was getting a virgin. As the urine collected in my bloody wound and slowly trickled down my legs onto the sand one drop at a time I began to sob. Even when the Killer Woman was cutting me to pieces I had never cried, but now it burned so badly I couldn’t take any more.

  In the evening, as it grew dark, my mother and Aman returned home to the family and I stayed in the hut by myself. But this time, I wasn’t scared of the dark, or the lions or the snakes, even though I was lying there helpless, unable to run. Since the moment when I floated out of my body and watched that old woman sewing my sex together, nothing could frighten me. I simply lay on the hard ground like a log, oblivious to fear, numb with pain, unconcerned whether I would live or die. I couldn’t care less that everyone else was at home laughing by the fire while I lay alone in the dark.

  As the days dragged on and I lay in my hut, my genitals became infected and I ran a high fever. I faded in and out of consciousness. Dreading the pain of urination, I had held back the urge to pee until my mother said, “Baby, if you don’t pee, then you’re going to die,” so I tried to force myself. If I had to go, and no one was around, then I scooted over an inch or so, rolled myself onto my side and prepared myself for the searing pain I knew was coming. But my wound became so infected for a time that I was unable to urinate at all. Mama brought me food and water for the next two weeks; other than that I lay there alone with my legs still tied together. And waited for the wound to heal. Feverish, bored, and listless, I could do nothing but wonder: Why? What was it all for? At that age I didn’t understand anything about sex. All I knew was that I had been butchered with my mother’s permission, and I couldn’t understand why.

  Finally, Mama came for me and I shuffled home, my legs still bound together. The first night back at my family’s hut, my father asked, “How does it feel?” I assume he was referring to my new state of womanhood, but all I could think about was the pain between my legs. Since I was all of five years old, I simply smiled and didn’t say anything. What did I know about being a woman? Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I knew a lot about being an African woman: 1 knew how to live quietly with suffering in the passive, helpless manner of a child.

  For over a month my legs were tied together so my wound would heal. My mother constantly admonished me not to run or jump, so I shuffled along gingerly. Considering I had always been energetic and active, running like a cheetah, climbing trees, jumping over rocks, this was another kind of agony for a young girl sitting around while all my siblings were playing. But I was so terrified of having to go through the whole process again that I barely moved an inch. Each week Mama checked me to see if I was healing properly. When the ties that bound me were removed from my legs, I was able to look at myself for the first time. I discovered a patch of skin completely smooth except for a scar down the middle like a zipper. And that zipper was definitely closed. My genitals were sealed up like a brick wall that no man would be able to penetrate until my wedding night, when my husband would either cut me open with a knife or force his way in.

  As soon as I could walk again, I had a mission. I’d been thinking about it every day as I lay there, for all those weeks, ever since the day that old woman butchered me. My mission was to go back to the rock where I’d been sacrificed and search to see if my genitals were still lying there. But they were gone no doubt eaten by a vulture or hyena, scavengers who are part of the life cycle of Africa. Their role is to clear away carrion, the morbid evidence of our harsh desert existence.

  Even though I suffered as a result of my circumcision, I was lucky. Things could have been much worse, as they frequently were for other girls. As we traveled throughout Somalia, we met families and I played with their daughters. When we visited them again, the girls were missing. No one spoke the truth about their absence, or even spoke of them at all. They had died as a result of their mutilation from bleeding to death, shock, infection, or tetanus. Considering the conditions in which the procedure is performed, that isn’t surprising. What’s surprising is that any of us survived.

  I barely remember my sister Halemo. I was around three, and I remember her being there, then she wasn’t there anymore, but I didn’t understand what had happened to her. Later I learned that when her ‘special time’ came, and the old gypsy woman circumcised her, she bled to death.

  When I was around ten, I heard the story of my younger cousin’s e
xperience. At the age of six she was circumcised, and afterward one of her brothers came to stay with our family and told us what had happened. A woman came and cut his sister, then she was placed in her hut to recuperate. But her ‘thingy,” as he called it, began to swell, and the stench coming from her hut was unbearable. At the time he told this story, I didn’t believe him. Why should she smell bad, as this had never happened to me or Aman? Now I realize he was telling the truth: as a result of the filthy conditions the practice is performed in, hacking girls up in the bush, her wound became infected. The awful smell is a symptom of gangrene. One morning, their mother came in to check on her daughter who, as usual, had spent the night alone in her hut. She found the little girl lying dead, her body cold and blue. But before the scavengers could clear away the morbid evidence, her family buried her.

  The Marriage Contract

  One morning I woke to the sound of people talking. I stood up from my mat and saw no one, so I decided to investigate. Through the early stillness I tracked the voices, jogging about half a mile to where my mother and father were waving goodbye to a group of people walking away. “Who is that, Mama?” I asked, pointing at the back of a slight woman with a scarf wrapped around her head.