Desert Flower

by Dirie, Waris

  The Doctors

  While I was still living at the YMCA, I spent an afternoon in the pool downstairs, swimming laps. After I finished, I dressed in the locker room, and was heading back upstairs when I heard someone calling my name from the Y’s little card. It was a guy I knew who also lived in the building. His name was William and he motioned for me to come in. “Waris, have a seat. Would you like something to eat?”

  William was eating a cheese sandwich, and I said, ‘geah, I’ll have one of those, please.” My English was still pretty weak, but I could make out the gist of what he was saying. While we ate, he asked me if I’d like to go to the movies. This was not the first time he’d asked me out. William was young, handsome, white, and always very sweet. But as he talked, I stopped hearing what he was saying. Instead I sat staring at him, watching his lips move, and my mind began running like a computer:

  Go to the movies with him

  If only he knew about me

  Oh, imagine what it would be like to have a boyfriend

  It might be nice Someone to talk to Someone to love me

  But if I go to the movies

  He’ll want to kiss me

  Then he’ll want to have sex

  And if I agree

  He’ll find out I’m not like other girls I’m damaged Or if I disagree

  He’ll be angry and we’ll have a fight

  Don’t go

  It’s not worth the heartache

  Say no

  If only he knew about me, he’d realize it has nothing to do with him.

  I smiled and shook my head. “No, thanks. I have too much work.” The hurt look that I knew would come, came, and I shrugged, saying to both of us: There’s nothing I can do.

  This problem began when I moved to the Y. When I lived with my family, I was normally never around strange men unchaperoned. A man who came to my parents, or Auntie Sahru’s, or Uncle Mohammed’s, would either know our culture and not attempt to ask me on a date, or would be dealt with by the family. But since I left my uncle’s house, I had been alone. And for the first time I was forced to cope with these situations by myself. The Y was a building chock-full of young, single men. Going to clubs with Halwu I met more men. Modeling I met more men still.

  But I was interested in none of them. The thought of having sex with a man never crossed my mind, but unfortunately, after some of my awful experiences, I knew it crossed theirs. Although I’ve always wondered, I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I hadn’t been circumcised. I like men and I’m a very emotional, loving person. At that time, it had been six years since I ran away from my father, and the loneliness had been hard for me; I missed my family. And someday I hoped to have a husband and family of my own. But as long as I was sewn up, I was very much closed to the idea of a relationship, shut away into myself. It was as if the stitches prevented any man from entering me physically or emotionally.

  The other problem that prevented me from having a relationship with a man came up when I realized I was different from other women, particularly Englishwomen. After I arrived in London, it gradually dawned on me that not all girls had -had done to them what had been done to me. When I lived with my cousins at Uncle Mohammed’s house, sometimes I would be in the bathroom with the other girls. I was amazed when they peed quickly in a heavy stream, whereas it took me about ten minutes to urinate. The tiny hole the circumciser had left me only permitted the urine to escape one drop at a time. “Waris, why do you pee like that what’s wrong with you?” I didn’t want to tell them because I assumed when they got back to Somalia they would be circumcised, too, so I just laughed it off.

  my periods were no laughing matter. From the very beginning, when I was around eleven Or twelve years old, they were a nightmare. They began one day when I was alone out tending my sheep and goats. The day was unbearably hot, and I sat weakly under a tree, feeling even more uncomfortable because my stomach hurt. I wondered, What is this pain? Maybe I’m pregnant? Maybe I’m going to have a baby? But I haven’t been with a man, so how can I be pregnant? The pressure grew and grew, and so did my fear. About an hour later I went to pee and saw blood. I thought I was dying.

  Leaving the animals grazing in the bush, I flew home, and ran to my mother crying and screaming, “I’m dying! Oh, Mama, I’m dying!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m bleeding, Mama I’m going to die!”

  She stared at me hard. “No, you’re not going to die. It’s all right. It’s your period.” I had never heard of periods knew nothing about any of it.

  “Can you please explain this to me tell me what you’re talking about?” My mother explained the process as I writhed around in misery, holding my abdomen. “But how do I stop this pain? Because, you know, it feels like I’m dying!”

  “Waris, you can’t stop it. You just have to let it go. Wait until it’s ready to leave.”

  However, I wasn’t prepared to accept that solution. Looking for something that would bring me relief, I went back into the desert and started digging a hole under a tree. The motion felt good and gave me something to take my mind off my pain. I dug and dug with a stick until I had a spot deep enough to bury the bottom half of my body. Then I climbed in, packing the dirt in around me; the underground hole was cooler, sort of like an ice pack, and I would rest there during the heat of the day.

  Digging a hole in the ground became the method I would use for coping with my period each month. Oddly enough, later I found out that my sister Aman had done the same thing. But this treatment had its drawbacks. One day my father came walking by and saw his daughter half buried under a tree. Viewed from a distance, I looked like I’d been cut off at the waist and had been sat on the sand. “What the hell are you doing?” On hearing his voice, I automatically tried to jump out of the hole, but since the dirt was packed tightly around me, I didn’t get very far. Struggling out, I clawed with my hands to get my legs free. Papa started laughing hysterically. I was too shy to explain why I did it, and afterward he kept making jokes about it. “If you want to bury yourself alive, do it properly. I mean, come on, what was that halfway business?” Later, he asked my mother about my strange behavior. He worried his daughter was turning into some kind of burrowing animal a mole obsessed with tunneling underground but Mama explained the situation.

  However, as my mother had predicted, there was nothing I could do to stop the pain. Although I didn’t understand it at the time, the menstrual blood backed up in my body the same way the urine did. But since it was continuously flowing or trying to for several days, the pressure of the blockage was excruciating. The blood came out one drop at a time; as a result, my periods usually lasted for at least ten days.

  This problem reached a crisis while I was living with my uncle Mohammed. Early one morning, I prepared his breakfast as usual. Then carrying the tray from the kitchen to the dining room table where he waited, I suddenly blacked out, and the dishes crashed to the floor around me. Uncle ran to me and started slapping my face, trying to bring me around. I began to regain consciousness and, as if he were far away, I heard him crying, “Maruim! Maruim! She’s fainted!”

  When I came to, Aunt Maruim asked me what was wrong, and I told her I’d gotten my period that morning. “Well, this is not right, we have to take you to the doctor. I’ll make an appointment with my doctor this afternoon.”

  I told Auntie’s doctor that my periods were very bad, and whenever I got them, I started passing out. The pain paralyzed me, and I didn’t know what to do about it. “Can you help me? Please is there something you can do? Because I can’t stand it anymore.” However, I didn’t mention to him that I’d been circumcised. I didn’t even know how to begin a discussion of that topic. Back then I was still a girl, and all the issues associated with my physical condition were mixed with ignorance, confusion, and shame. And I wasn’t sure my Circumcision was the source of the problem, since I still thought what happened to me happened to all girls. My moth
er hadn’t thought my pain unusual, because all the women she had ever known had been circumcised, and they all went through this agony. It’s considered part of the burden of being a woman.

  Since the doctor didn’t examine me, he didn’t find out my secret. “The only thing I can give you for pain is birth control pills. That will stop the pain because it will stop your periods.”

  Hallelujah! I began taking the pills, even though I didn’t really like the idea. I’d heard from my cousin Basma that they were bad for you. But within the month, the pain stopped and so did much of my bleeding. Because the drug tricked my body into thinking it was pregnant, other unexpected things happened also. My breasts grew; my ass grew; my face filled out, and my weight exploded. These drastic changes in my body seemed extremely weird and unnatural. Deciding I’d rather deal with the pain, I stopped taking the pills. And deal with the pain I did, because it all came right back again, fiercer than ever.

  Later, I visited a second doctor to see if he could help. But that experience was a repeat of the first; he wanted to give me birth control pills as well. I explained that I had tried that option, but I didn’t like the side effects. However, without the pills I couldn’t function for several days each month; I simply went to bed and wanted to die so the suffering would stop. Did he know of another solution? The doctor said, “Well, what do you expect? When women take birth control pills, for the most part their periods stop. When women have periods, they have pain. Take your pick.” When the third doctor repeated this same advice, I realized I needed to do something besides visit new doctors.

  I said to Auntie, “Maybe I need to see a special kind of doctor?”

  She looked at me sharply. “No,” she said emphatically. “And by the way what are you telling these men?”

  “Nothing. That I just want to stop the pain, that’s all.” I knew the unspoken message of her comment: circumcision is our African custom and not something you discuss with these white men.

  I began to understand, however, that this was exactly what I was going to have to do. Or suffer and live like an invalid for one third of each month. I also understood that this action would never be accepted by my family. My next step became clear: I would have to secretly go back to the doctor, and tell him I’d been circumcised. Perhaps then one of them could help me.

  I chose the first doctor, Dr. Macrae, because he was located in a big hospital and, I reasoned, would have the facilities if I needed surgery. When I called for an appointment, I had to wait a whole agonizing month before I could get in. When the day came, I made some excuse to Auntie for my absence, and went to Dr. Macrae’s office. I said to him, “There’s something I haven’t told you. I’m from Somalia and I - I -” It was terrible for me to try to explain this horrible secret in my broken English. “I been circumcised.”

  He didn’t even let me finish the sentence. “Go get changed. I want to examine you.” He saw the look of terror on my face. “It’s okay.” He called in his nurse, and she showed me where to change, how to put the gown on.

  When we went back into the examining room, I really questioned what I’d gotten myself into this time. The thought that a girl from my country would sit in this strange place, spread her legs, and let a white man look in there… well, it was the most shameful thing I could imagine. The doctor kept trying to get my knees apart. “Relax. It’s all right I’m a doctor. The nurse is right here she’s standing right there.” I craned my neck around to look in the direction his finger was pointing. She smiled reassuringly at me and I finally gave in. I forced myself to think about something else, pretend I wasn’t here, but was back walking in the desert with my goats on a beautiful day.

  When he finished, he asked the nurse if there was someone in the hospital who could speak Somali; she said yes, there was a Somali woman working downstairs. But when she came back, she brought a Somali man instead, because she couldn’t find the woman. I thought, Oh, beautiful Here’s the rotten luck, to discuss this horrible business using a Somali man to translate. How much worse could it get?

  Dr. Macrae said, “Explain to her that she’s closed up way too much I don’t even know how she’s made it this far. We need to operate on her as soon as possible.” Right away, I could see the Somali man wasn’t happy. He pursed his lips and glared at the doctor. Between the fact that I did understand some English, and the Somali man’s attitude, I sensed that something was not right.

  He said to me, “Well, if you really want it, they can open you up.” I just stared at him. “But do you know this is against your culture? Does your family know you’re doing this?”

  “No. To tell you the truth, no.”

  “Who do you live with?”

  “My aunt and uncle.”

  “Do they know you’re doing this?”

  “NO.”

  “Well, the first thing I’d do is discuss it with them.” I nodded, thinking: That’s the response of a typical African man. Thanks for your good advice, brother. That will put an end to the whole business. Dr. Macrae added that he couldn’t do the operation right away; I’d need to make an appointment. I realized then that I couldn’t do it, because Auntie would find out. “Yeah. I’ll do that I’ll call for an appointment.” Of course, over a year went by and I never called.

  Immediately after my family returned to Somalia, I called and made an appointment, but the soonest I could get was two months. As the two months ticked by, I remembered the horror of my circumcision. I thought the surgery would be a repeat of that process, and the more I thought about it, I decided I couldn’t go through that again. When the day came, I simply never went to the hospital and never called.

  By this point I was living at the Y. The problems with my periods hadn’t decreased, but now I was having to earn my living outside the home. You couldn’t just miss a week of work each month and hope to keep a job. I struggled along, but my friends at the Y saw I was in bad shape. Marilyn kept asking me what was wrong. I explained to her that I’d been circumcised as a girl in Somalia.

  But Marilyn was raised in London, and she couldn’t fathom what I was talking about. “Why don’t you show me, Waris? I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Did they cut you here? This? That? What did they do?”

  Finally one day I pulled my pants down and showed her. I’ll never forget the look on her face.

  Tears poured down her cheeks as she turned away. I felt so desperate, because I thought: Oh, my God, is it really that bad? The first words out of her mouth were “Waris, do you feel anything?” “What are you talking about?”

  She just shook her head. “You know, do you remember how you looked when you were a little girl? Before they did this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s how I am now. You’re not the same.” Now I knew for sure. No longer did I need to wonder or maybe even hope that all women had been mutilated the way I had. Now I knew for certain that I was different. I didn’t wish my suffering on anyone else, but I didn’t want to be on my own. “So this hasn’t happened to you, to you and your mother?”

  She shook her head and began crying again. “It’s horrible, Waris. I can’t believe that anybody would do this to you.”

  “Oh, come on, please don’t make me feel sad.” “I feel sad. Sad and angry. I’m crying in a way because I can’t believe there are people in the world who would do this to a little girl.”

  We sat there in silence for a few moments, and while Marilyn continued to sob quietly I couldn’t look at her. Then I decided I’d had enough.

  “Well, fuck it. I’m going to have this surgery. I’m going to call this doctor tomorrow. At least I can enjoy going to the bathroom. That’s all I can enjoy, but at least that much.”

  I’ll go with you, Waris. I’ll be right there. I promise.”

  Marilyn called the doctor’s office and made the appointment for me; this time I had to wait a month. During that time, I kept saying, “Girl, you sure you’re coming with me?”


  “Don’t worry. I’m coming. I’ll be right there.” When the morning came for surgery, she got me up early and we went to the hospital. The nurse led me into the room. Ah, there it was: the table. When I saw the operating table, I nearly turned around and ran out of the building. It was better than a rock in the bush, but I had little hope the procedure would feel much better. However, Dr. Macrae gave me an anesthetic for pain something I wished I’d had when the Killer Woman butchered me. Marilyn held my hand while I went to sleep.

  When I woke up, they had moved me into a double room with a woman who had just given birth. This lady, along with all the people I’d meet at lunchtime in the cafeteria, kept asking me, “So, what are you here for?”

  What could I say? Confess, “Oh, I came to have surgery on my vagina. My pussy was just way too tight!” I never told anyone the truth. I said I had a stomach bug. And even though my recovery process was greatly improved over that of my circumcision, some of my worst memories of that time were repeated. Every time I had to pee, the same old thing: salt and hot water. But at least the nurses let me have a bath and I’d soak in the hot water. Ahhhh. They gave me painkillers, so it wasn’t so bad, but I was really glad when it was over.

  Dr. Macrae did a fine job, and I’ve always been grateful to him. He told me, “You know, you’re not alone. Let me tell you, I have women come in here with this same problem all the time. A lot of women from the Sudan, Egypt, Somalia. Some of them are pregnant and they’re terrified because trying to give birth while they’re sewn up is dangerous. There can be a lot of complications the baby can suffocate trying to exit the tight opening, or the mother can bleed to death. So, without the permission of their husbands or their family they come to me, and I do my bit. I do my best.”