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At first it was very shameful to talk about and no one considered it to be an issue, not just in the community – even the staff in our school didn’t think it was a problem. They just saw it as a cultural practice; it wasn’t abuse to them. People genuinely felt uncomfortable discussing it, because all of a sudden you’re challenging something that’s been going on for centuries in our culture, and also remember that some of the girls I was discussing it with had gone through it themselves . . . Suddenly we were saying everything that happened to you is wrong. It’s already hard enough being a teenager, you’re going through so many different emotions and experiencing so many different things, and then you have this added on top.
We were really naive as young people, so I couldn’t blame the girls at school who had gone through it for being angry at me. I wasn’t just challenging her – I was challenging something that her family had let happen to her, something that had happened to her body. It wasn’t about saying your body is wrong and this is how it’s supposed to be; it was about empowering her and asking, would you do this to your child? It was about the future.
It didn’t mean that Muna didn’t face opposition. Some in the Somalian community in Bristol were outraged that she was discussing something so private – particularly when she and fellow campaigners decided to make a short drama about FGM, Silent Scream. The pressure from some in the community became very intense, to the point where Muna felt it was almost bullying. Rumours were spread by her peers at school about her and her co-campaigners – that they were taking drugs, that they were making a porn film, that they were showing their private parts on film – in an attempt to spur their parents into action, to demand that Muna pull out of the campaigning work. Muna also told me that ‘some men in the Somali community were really angry about it too.’
However, it was the positive reaction of Somalian mothers within the community that surprised and delighted Muna and her friends most of all. ‘All the mothers had to sign a permission slip before we could join the campaigning and their way of protesting and being really angry about what the men were doing was by signing those permission slips. I think for me that was the most empowering thing to see – your mum knows exactly what you are doing and she’s willing to stand up for you.’
It’s incredible to me to hear Muna’s story, because that group of four girls soon swelled to a campaigning cohort, made up of both boys and girls, of eighty-six within her school. Most importantly, their work was changing the opinions of their own parents, and making them think twice about FGM. Not that Muna needed to worry about that with her parents, but she was anxious about their reaction initially, and what they’d think in terms of a community backlash, but she received incredible support from both her mother and father. ‘My dad was so happy and so proud of me; he told me so much needed changing. And I thought to myself, if we can normalise this, if I can even speak to my parents about it, it’s not a hidden abuse anymore. That’s what we used to call it, the silent abuse, but it isn’t like that anymore . . . The likelihood of a girl going through FGM in this country is very high, and to say it doesn’t happen in the UK is us just lying to ourselves.’
Muna admits that it is hard to monitor change – she doesn’t know for sure if FGM will stop in her community as a result of her hard work. Stories such as hers feel like such a positive step forward compared to the girls I was at school with. Yes, these children are talking about FGM, but in a completely different way to when I was at school. All the young people in Muna’s school have now had peer sessions on FGM, and all the staff have been trained. People are no longer so uncomfortable when it comes to discussing the subject. ‘It’s really inspiring to see girls who have gone through the practice before they came to the country saying: “Yeah, I’ve gone through this. I can accept what’s happened to me.” And everyone in a room accepts it too. They say, “This has happened, but we can all move on together.”’
As Muna says, it’s about the future. However much we like to pretend or how much we claim it to be a cultural practice – and yes it is – it is still child abuse. Muna herself has noticed a shift, now, in the terminology that people use when they’re talking about FGM. ‘Just watching those young people be empowered enough to say, “No, I’m never going to let this happen to my daughter”, is enough. That’s when you know you’ve made a change.’
Epilogue
A few weeks ago I was sitting on the 257 bus, on my way home from work. It was late afternoon and, as autumn made its descent into winter, the sky was darkening deep blue earlier and earlier. People around me bustled on to the bus, bringing with them a rush of cold air and the odd rusty leaf that had stowed away with them on to the red double-decker, and then, through the crowds of people standing up, I spotted a woman heading towards me. She was wearing a full black abaya and a black niqab on her head; even her hands were hidden away in gloves, and just her eyes were visible. She was Somalian, clearly deeply religious judging by the way she was dressed, and she sat down beside me.
‘You are Hibo Wardere,’ she said. It wasn’t easy to read her expression, and I searched her eyes for a clue to what was going on in her thoughts, but they seemed cold and angry.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You did a talk at my daughter’s school. You told her about FGM, you told her everything about it!’
I looked down and saw that her gloved hands were gesticulating wildly. She was clearly really cross, and perhaps I would have felt a little anxious if I wasn’t on a crowded bus, and yet curiosity got the better of me – I wanted to know what her daughter had told her to make her so angry.
‘What did your daughter tell you?’ I asked.
‘She said that you told her that FGM is wrong, that it is child abuse, that if she is in trouble she should call 999 or tell a teacher.’
I smiled. ‘What else did she tell you?’
‘You told her that I could go to jail for fourteen years if she is cut. You told her about the medical problems. You told her she has human rights.’
She was getting angrier and angrier.
‘How dare you go into my daughter’s school and talk to her about these things!’
I looked at her then, trying so hard to wipe the smile from my face, but I wasn’t worried by what she was telling me. I was excited, because I’d done my job; I’d educated her daughter and then she’d gone home and educated her mother. She’d told her everything exactly as I’d said it. I had to keep the pride from bubbling over in my voice as I spoke.
‘You’re obviously a religious person,’ I said to her, lowering my voice to just above a whisper. ‘Do you think you are bigger than God?’
Her eyes widened. ‘No!’ she said.
‘So why do you think that He created your daughter imperfect? Why do you feel the need to change her body?’
Her eyes flashed furious then. She started ranting at me and, as she did, the bus driver had heard enough. He left his cabin and came to the back of the bus, then he opened the doors and told her to get off.
‘Me?’ she said.
He nodded. Then, when she’d left, he thanked me for not raising my voice back at her. But I didn’t need thanks, because that woman had given me the greatest gift she ever could and she didn’t even know it. That woman had taught me just how worthwhile my work was, just how much it was working. I needed no further proof than my words that she’d repeated back to me through her daughter. My message was getting through.
There is an old Somalian proverb which says: ‘You can’t hide a dead body from its grave’. Its meaning? You can’t hide from your problems. Abuse thrives in secrecy, whereas out in the open it wilts and dies. The more we can bring abuse of any kind out into the world, where we can examine it and talk about it, the more likely we are to see the back of it. FGM is nothing more than child abuse. You can dress it up in whatever cultural clothing you want, but it is that basic. It is wrong to take a child against her will and mutilate her for the sake of preserving her for a man. It is wrong to ris
k her life to save a tradition. It is wrong to condemn her to a lifetime of pain and suffering, to the possibility of infertility or a higher risk of death in childbirth.
FGM is wrong.
You can’t hide a body from its grave.
Once we all know about female genital mutilation, none of us can carry on pretending it isn’t our problem.
Acknowledgements
First I want to thank my children. They gave me the second chance to live the moments that I lost in my own childhood: they are my strength, my love and give me the will to fight to go on every day. This book is dedicated to them.
I’d also like to thank everyone who made this book possible: Anna Wharton for her collaboration; Abigail Bergstrom, Jo Whitford and everyone at my publisher Simon & Schuster; Robyn Drury and the team at Diane Banks Associates.
Thank you to the people who gave their time and expertise to talk to me and Anna for this book: Fatuma Farah, Abbas, Mohamed, Dr Comfort Momoh, Solomon Zewolde, the London Metropolitan Police, Zimran Samuel, Dexter Dias QC, Deborah Hodes, Amanda O’Donovan, Joy Clarke, Dr Marci Bowers, Pamela Okah-Bischof, Muna Hassan, Lisa Zimmerman, Hannah Weaver of Cricket Without Boundaries, Louise Robertson of 28 Too Many, Agnes Pareyio of the Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative, Nadine Gary and Brendan Wynne of Equality Now.
And thank you to the friends, colleagues and family members who have supported me and my work over the years, and to the amazing children I teach about FGM, who are so inspiring to me.
Endnotes
1. http://www.plan-uk.org/because-i-am-a-girl/female-genital-mutilation-fgm/
2. The definitions of FGM and medicalisation were first adopted in the document ‘Female genital mutilation: a joint WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA [World Health Organization/United Nations Children’s Fund/United Nations Population Fund] statement (1)’ published by WHO in 1997, and reaffirmed in 2008 by ten United Nations (UN) agencies in ‘Eliminating female genital mutilation: an interagency statement (2)’.
3. http://www.msmagazine.com/oct00/makingthecut.html
4. ‘Prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation in England and Wales: National and local estimates’, Alison Macfarlane, City University London/Equality Now, 2014.
5. ‘Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change’, UNICEF, 2013.
6. Between 1996 and 2012, identified in the 2014 City University/Equality Now report.
7. ‘Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change’, UNICEF, 2013.
8. ‘Prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation in England and Wales: National and local estimates’, Alison Macfarlane, City University London/Equality Now, 2014.
9. ‘Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) January 2015, experimental statistics’, Health and Social Care Information Centre, 27 February 2015.
10. Source: CPS via email.
11. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/diane-abott-calls-for-mandatory-checks-on-schoolgirls-to-secure-prosecutions-for-fgm-9184171.html
12. http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/jul/23/protect-students-female-genital-mutilation
13. ‘Female genital mutilation in children presenting to a London safeguarding clinic: a case series’, Deborah Hodes, Alice Armitage, Kerry Robinson and Sarah M. Creighton, BMJ, 18 May 2015.
14. ‘The Medicalization of Female “Circumcision”: harm reduction or promotion of a dangerous practice?’, Bettina Shell-Duncan, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, 2001.
15. ‘Global strategy to stop health-care providers from performing female genital mutilation’, WHO, 2010, p.3.
16. ‘Global strategy to stop health-care providers from performing female genital mutilation’, WHO, 2010, p.16.
17. ‘How experiences and attitudes relating to female circumcision vary according to age on arrival in Britain: a study among young Somalis in London’, Linda A. Morison, Ahmed Dirir, Sada Elmi, Jama Warsame and Shamis Dirir, 2004, p.85.
18. ‘Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change’, UNICEF, 2013, pp.10–11.
19. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jul/01/egypt.theobserver
20. ‘Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change’, UNICEF, 2013.
21. ‘Uncharted Territory: Violence against migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women in Wales’, Anne Hubbard, Joanne Payton and Dr Amanda Robinson, Wales Migration Partnership and Cardiff University, 2013.
22. ‘Female genital mutilation in children presenting to a London safeguarding clinic: a case series’, Deborah Hodes, Alice Armitage, Kerry Robinson and Sarah M. Creighton, BMJ, 18 May 2015.
23. ‘How experiences and attitudes relating to female circumcision vary according to age on arrival in Britain: a study among young Somalis in London’, Linda A. Morison, Ahmed Dirir, Sada Elmi, Jama Warsama and Shamis Dirir, 2004.
24. ‘A preliminary investigation of the psychological effects of female circumcision (FGM)’ (Dissertation), H. Lockhat, University of Manchester, 1999.
25. ‘Abusing female children by circumcision is continued in Egypt’, A.A. Zayed and A.A. Ali, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 19 (4), 2012, pp.196–200.
26. ‘Ritual female circumcision and its effects on female sexual function’, R. Brighouse, Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 1: 3–10, 1992.
27. ‘Female genital mutilation and its psychosexual impact’, M.H. El-Defrawi, G. Lofty, K.F. Dandash, A.H. Refaat and M. Eyada, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 27, 2001, pp.465–73.
28. ‘Female genital mutilation and obstetric outcome’, WHO study group, 2006.
29. ‘Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change’, UNICEF, 2013.
30. ‘Uncharted Territory: Violence against migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women in Wales’, Anne Hubbard, Joanne Payton and Dr Amanda Robinson, Wales Migration Partnership and Cardiff University, 2013.
31. ‘How experiences and attitudes relating to female circumcision vary according to age on arrival in Britain: a study among young Somalis in London’, Linda A. Morison, Ahmed Dirir, Sada Elmi, Jama Warsame and Shamis Dirir, 2004.
32. ‘Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change’, UNICEF, 2013.