by Hibo Wardere
‘You are clinical professionals,’ I told them. ‘But you need to remember that you’re also human and you’re dealing with other human beings. You need to talk to the women as you would a friend, ask them what happened to them – don’t ignore it.’
I think this was one of the first times that these midwives had been encouraged to communicate about FGM; it was as though I’d given them permission to talk to their patients, assuring them that a lot of these women would actually be pleased if they had someone to talk to. In those early days that was one of the most empowering talks I gave, knowing how much I’d suffered giving birth to my own children; it was an incredible feeling to think that I might make a difference to even just a few women who were about to go through pregnancy and birth having undergone FGM.
Each sector I engaged with would have their own important contribution to make, from the teachers who could look out for the warning signs at school, to the police who would realise that mothers are victims too, to the midwives who would see these women through one of the most personal moments of their lives and hold on to their hands a little tighter knowing what they’d been through. These developments and changes in attitude all stemmed from one thing: education. And as more and more secondary schools in the area started contacting me to ask if I would speak to their teachers, my determination to spread the message grew stronger.
But the reaction wasn’t all positive.
I’d met my friend Maryam when I’d moved into our first flat in London. She was Somalian too, around my age, and we both had young children. We’d take the kids to the park together, celebrate Eid together; we went to the cinema, and we chatted about almost everything. I knew she was cut, not because we spoke about it openly but because, when her husband left her, she wondered if it was because she couldn’t give him a satisfactory sex life.
‘It’s because of what was done to me as a child,’ Maryam said, cursing her parents for putting her through it, convinced that this was why her husband had been living as man and wife with another woman for a number of years. I could see how upset she was. ‘I’m here for you, whatever you decide to do,’ I told her, unsure as to whether she might consider taking him back at some point.
But when news of my activism spread, it seemed I couldn’t expect the same loyalty from her. I hadn’t told Maryam what I was doing at first, not even the little things like speaking at my school, but then I didn’t tell anyone. Perhaps, somewhere deep down inside, I knew that she would disapprove; perhaps I didn’t want her or anyone else pouring scorn on something that made me feel so alive, so engaged. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to be challenged about my decision to speak out, so I’d just kept it to myself, following my own heart. The biggest thing for me was that Yusuf was on my side, nobody else mattered.
My confidence grew as I saw the reaction of people inside the education system, and realised the level of support there was for me out there, so one day, as Maryam and I sat having coffee and biscuits in my house, I cleared my throat and decided it was now or never. Maryam and I shared everything together – we were similar, strong, outspoken women – so I took a deep breath and before I knew it the words had left my mouth.
‘I’ve been talking at my school about FGM,’ I said. ‘Telling the teaching staff exactly what it is and why it is done.’
Maryam stopped, her hot cup of coffee hovering somewhere between the table and her mouth. Her jaw hung open, her eyes wide, and I swallowed down my coffee, feeling it burn the back of my throat.
‘What?’ she said.
‘I’m telling them about gudnin, what they did to us.’
She put down her coffee cup.
‘But people will be against you,’ she said. ‘They won’t like what you’ve done.’
I looked at her then, my friend, and in that instant I felt betrayed. How could she immediately think of what others thought instead of how important this was?
‘I don’t care what people think of me. Teachers need to know the truth, pupils need to know. We need to stop this.’
Maryam was brushing down her skirt as if suddenly she was ready to get up and leave.
‘We should talk about this, Maryam,’ I said.
But she was muttering about all the things she needed to get on with at home and rounding up the children.
After I shut the door behind her, I felt disappointment reverberating in my chest.
‘What did you expect?’ Yusuf said when he came home and I told him about Maryam’s reaction. ‘Not everyone is going to feel the same as you, Hibo.’ But I expected that Maryam would. Or at the very least that she would have listened to and supported me. I didn’t see her for a few days after that. I invited her over, eager to talk, but she made excuses that she was busy. Then the weeks passed and even the replies to my text messages started to dwindle. We always used to go along to weddings together, but now if Maryam was invited, I would only know about it if I spotted her heading out, all dressed up in a colourful hijab. I got the message, but it still stung. I stopped trying to invite her for coffee; I told the children she was busy when they wanted to play with her kids.
Meanwhile, news of my activism was making its way around Walthamstow. National newspapers wanted to write about my talks; it was surreal to sit at the breakfast table with my children as they hungrily spooned cereal into their mouths while my face stared up at us all from the Guardian or the Telegraph.
‘You’re famous, Mum,’ Ikram grinned up at me. I could see I was making them proud and so I had to push thoughts of Maryam from my mind. My activism started to take on a life of its own and I was proud of myself too.
Many weeks now went by without Maryam and me setting eyes on each other, and, living as close as we did, that was no easy feat. But when I heard her daughter Naima was in hospital with pneumonia, I wanted to be there for my friend when she needed me most. Yusuf and I took our youngest two children to the hospital to see her, but the welcome wasn’t a warm one.
Maryam looked me up and down from her daughter’s bedside.
‘I was at a wedding the other day,’ she said. ‘Everyone was talking about you.’
I glanced down at Adam and Ikram, but she continued regardless.
‘They were cursing and saying things about you. They asked me, “Do you know this woman?” And I told them, “I’ve never met her in my life.”’
She laughed then, but her words had cut right through me, so I bent down and kissed Naima. ‘I hope you feel better soon, darling,’ I said, then hurried my two children from the room.
In the car, I burst into tears. I wished so much that I’d been able to tell her how disappointed I was, how hurt I was, but I wouldn’t have spoken like that to her in front of Naima. Not that it stopped her in front of my children.
‘That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,’ Ikram’s tiny voice said from the back of the car.
‘Just forget about it,’ I told her, as Yusuf put the car into gear and we snaked out of the hospital grounds.
I decided that day that I didn’t want anything more to do with Maryam. This was a woman I’d grown to know and love, I’d confided in, a woman with whom I’d shared the births of my children, and yet when I needed her most she’d looked the other way. What was most unbelievable to me was that even though she was thousands of miles away from Somalia, away from the life we’d grown up in, she still protected a cultural practice that I knew had taken its toll on her, just like it had done on me. She’d lost a husband, her children had lost their father, and yet she wouldn’t stand up and say that FGM was brutal and that it shouldn’t be carried out on little girls. Instead, she was more concerned about what other people thought of me – and, as a consequence, of her. She was part of this community that was determined to keep FGM shrouded in secrecy. She was no friend. We shared much less than I’d ever realised.
This was a situation I was forced to get used to and I developed a thick skin. I stopped going to the weddings of people in the Somalian community where I lived, knowing that I wo
uld meet with a frosty reception, that my hands wouldn’t be welcome to dip into the plates full of odka or halwa. I would instead be handed cynicism and criticism. Most Somalian people valued their traditions and they saw me as a threat to that. And yet it was frustrating because they were the very people I needed to get through to.
There was one wedding I ventured to attend a few months later. If I’d wanted to avoid drawing attention to myself, though, I went about it the wrong way. I arrived late and, when I walked in, everybody turned around thinking it was the bride making her entrance. I shuffled to my seat, embarrassed, and after the ceremony a woman I’d never met before came over to me.
‘Why do you talk about us?’ she said. ‘Why do you tarnish our culture?’
I looked away from her at first, wanting to disappear. But then I remembered my cause and I sat up straighter. I turned my face to her then, looking her square in the eyes.
‘Us?’ I asked. ‘I specifically remember talking about my vagina. Just mine. And using my name, not yours.’
Her eyes widened in shock. She sucked in air and puffed out her chest as people sitting around me sniggered into their napkins.
‘You are even crazier than I thought,’ she said, standing up and bustling away, weaving her exit between the tables.
The others at my table applauded.
‘Well done,’ they said.
But for every ten people who supported me, it was hard to ignore that one who didn’t, especially when they came from within my own family. I never spoke to my sister Hadsan about my work; instinct told me that we would never agree. I knew that she knew what I was doing, though, and my niece had told me that she kept cuttings of the newspaper articles that featured me, but she only ever acknowledged my talks once.
‘Hibo, why are you doing this?’ she asked as we made food together one weekend.
I stopped and turned to her, knowing exactly what she was referring to. ‘Do you really want to get into this?’
She paused for a moment and then looked away, continuing to chop vegetables into fine crescents. Here was another woman I’d grown up with, emancipated by our move to a different country, yet still determined to hold on to old cultural traditions. None of these people, or their reactions, would put me off. Not now that I had started. I’d had a taste of the difference I might be able to make and I knew I could do more.
Two months later, I was at a meeting chaired by our local Labour MP, Stella Creasy. I’d felt intimidated by all the women there; some ran schools and councils and others had been active campaigners for far longer than me. But I met a woman called Jenny who, after hearing my story, invited me to talk at her secondary school. It was my dream to speak to schoolchildren directly because educating them about FGM would give them a better chance of protecting themselves. I wanted to empower girls, so that they would not be pressured by their parents; I wanted to educate boys, so that they would tell their own parents that they didn’t want a girl who’d been cut; and I wanted to inform those outside of the community, so that they would be able to help and protect their friends at risk.
Just weeks later, as I walked into the grounds of Jenny’s school, I was shaking with nerves. Its tall frontage seemed so imposing, packed with three storeys of children. How on earth was I going to say what I needed to say? I felt on my shoulders, under the bright-purple hijab I was wearing, the heavy responsibility of the talk I was about to give them as I crossed the school’s forecourt and headed towards reception. I didn’t know how many of the children would even have heard of FGM. I didn’t know whether I’d be talking to pupils who had been victims themselves, or if they were at risk of becoming victims. I had no idea how they might feel if I described FGM as child abuse. But I knew that, as a teenager, I’d longed for someone to speak openly to me about what I’d been through. When you are a child who has suffered abuse you don’t see beauty in the world, you don’t see the flowers and trees and animals and people anymore, just your own loneliness. There isn’t a world that is tangible outside of your own hurt and pain. You look only inwards as your mind is swallowed up with a million whys that will never be answered unless someone offers you what I was about to offer these students. There could be girls inside this building who were going through that right now.
As a child I’d wanted honesty from the adults around me and the chance to have my voice heard. That’s exactly what I needed to give these children. I didn’t have to sugar-coat anything for them, I just needed to tell them the facts, and they didn’t even have to agree with me; what they decided to do with the information after I left was up to them. But, I reminded myself, knowledge is power, and I was being given the opportunity to empower 180 Year Nine students. Could I have imagined having that chance six months ago? Never. Things had changed so quickly and now here I was, on a mission to enlighten.
Half an hour later, Jenny was introducing me to the packed assembly hall. The students looked up at me from the floor with varying shades of curiosity painted across their faces. There was silence as Jenny began to speak.
‘I’m going to introduce you to this lady and in my book she is the most brave and honest person I have ever met,’ she said.
Every gaze was on me.
‘Today she is going to talk to you about something very dear to her heart which affects you and affects other children just like you. You need to listen very carefully.’
My heart was racing in my chest, the fullness of the responsibility pounding against my ribcage.
The room bristled with anticipation as I took Jenny’s place on the stage.
‘Hello, I’m Hibo,’ I said. My greeting was met by silence, broken only by a handful of muffled hellos.
I tried again, this time louder. ‘I can’t hear you!’ I cried across the hall. ‘Hello!’
And the school hall rang with their chorus. I had their attention now. I’d broken the tension between us and now we could all relax.
‘How many of you have heard of FGM?’ I asked the hall, watching as just a few hands made their way awkwardly into the air.
‘Well, I’m here to tell you what it is.’
I started, just like with the adults, with the descriptions of the different types. I told them that it happened to children just like them, often to toddlers, sometimes babies, and how it was carried out. I watched them wriggle as I spoke; some looked down into their laps, most eyes never left me.
‘But what is most important,’ I said, ‘what I really need you to know is that it is child abuse.’
During those forty minutes, I went through all the medical complications resulting from FGM, explained their human rights to them and told them what they needed to know to keep themselves safe. I drummed into them that should they feel in danger at home they should dial 999, or if they were abroad they should get a message to the British embassy and help would come. Then, finally, one young student put up her hand.
‘Has this happened to you, miss?’ her voice sounded small in the huge hall, but my reply was loud and confident.
‘Yes,’ I said.
A collective gasp went up in the hall, but rather than feeling small for confessing that I had been mutilated, rather than feeling like a freak like I’d done before, I left that stage feeling invigorated. Those children – boys and girls, black and white – connected with me on a very human level and it felt wonderful.
And from those very humble beginnings, my diary quickly filled with the scratches of different-coloured Biros as I added more and more talks in schools to my schedule. At each of them I’d look out and see the same recognition and empathy and sense of empowerment. I left behind at each school the excited chatter of children who were determined to stand up for their friends who might be at risk.
Of course, I never knew the stories behind the students I was addressing; I had no idea whether what I was saying would resonate with them, whether they’d go home and tell their parents, their community, whether it would save their lives. I could only hope, but as I packed away my slid
es after a talk at one local sixth-form college a few months later, I noticed that one student was lingering long after the others had left the hall. Her head was covered, like mine, but her eyes betrayed a real need to talk to me. I went over to her.
‘Hello,’ I said, and as I did, her eyes filled with tears. I took her hands. ‘Come and sit down here with me.’
She did as I asked, and as I talked softly to her, asking her what was wrong, she broke down further.
‘Your talk . . .’ she said, between sobs. ‘I knew what you were talking about . . . It’s happened to me.’
She put her head into her lap as I rubbed her back.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very brave to tell me.’
After a few moments, she looked up again.
‘Everything you said about how long it takes to go for a wee, how painful your periods are, it’s the same for me,’ she said. But there was something else, something that she wasn’t telling me. I sensed there was another reason she was reaching out to me.
‘You can tell me anything,’ I said, noticing her hands trembling in mine.
‘My sisters . . .’ she said, finally. ‘They’re younger than me and I think the same is going to happen to them.’
My eyes briefly flitted up to the college teacher who had arranged the talk, who had hovered close by ever since this girl had broken from the crowd of students to wait behind. What she’d just told me was a child-protection issue, and I was aware that after her hands left mine the relevant authorities would need to be involved, that she would have to give more details, that her parents would be contacted. But while her hands were in mine, all I could do was soothe her, and tell her over and over that she’d done the right thing.
