La Tragedia De La Circuncisión Femenina

waris dirie was born in somalia and as a child underwent female circumcision, a custom that is also practiced in the sudan, saudi arabia, egypt, libya, and yemen. the following selection that describes her experience and later fame as a supermodel first appeared in marie claire magazzine in march 1996, in 1997, dirie became a united nations ambassador for the abolition of female genital mutilation (fgm). her autobiography Desert Flower: The Extraordinary journey of a deser nomad, writen with Cathleen Miller, was published in 1998. More recently, Dirie has written Desert Children with Corinna Milborn and traslated by Sheelagh Alabaster in 2007. Although many countries view female circumcision as a cultural belief that has been practiced for generations, in 2009, the Ugandan parliament (Uganda is a country located in West Africa) unanimously passed a bill banning female genial mutilation with penalties of possible imprisonment for those who continue to practice it.

before you read

what have you heard or what do you know about the practice of female circumcision?

In my profession as a model people sometimes tell me i´m beautiful, but they don´t know what lies beneath the surface. Let me tell you who I am and where I come from.

I was born in Somalia, East Africa, one of 12 children. I don´t really know how old I am. I´m around 28. In Africa, there is no time, no watch, no calendar. My family is nomadic. When I was a child, we moved around every day, looking for food and water. We slept on the ground in the open air. I spent my time running around barefoot, with the whole desert before me. There was nothing to plan, no tomorrow. We lived every day as it came.

I had never Heard anything about the western world, but somehow I knew there was something else outside Africa. I had never even seen a White person. But i always wanted to be different, so I asked my cousin, “where do you go o become White?” They said, “If you leave Africa, you become White because there is no sun.”

When I was about 5 years old, my father decided it was time for me to be circumcised. I remember it so clearly that if I think about it, I´ll throw up. The woman who did it called herself a “professional cutter,” but she was just an old gypsy who traveled around with her bag. My mother sat me down and said, “Be a good girl; don´t move. I don´t have the energy o hold you down.” “The old woman held a dirty razon blade, and I could see the dried blood on it from the person she had cut before me. I opened my legs, closed my eyes, and blocked my mind. I did it for my mother. The woman didn´t just cut the clítoris – she cut everything, including the labia.

She then sewed me up tightly with a needle. All I could feel was pain. After I had bee cut, I lay on the floor in agony. They tied my legs together o stop me from walking, so that I wouldn´t rip open. I was on my back for a month. I couldn´t eat, I couldn´t think, I could not do anything. I turned black, blue, and yellow. I couldn´t urinate- the pee just dripped out of me. After three weeks my mother found someone else to open me up a tiny bit to give me a space to pee because I was getting so sick. I bled for the next two, three months. I nearly died. I wanted to die at the time – i had given up on life.

One of my younger sisters and two of my counsins died from the procedure. My mother has had it done, like her mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers before her. You can´t escape it. They catch you, tie you down, and then do it. It´s done for men. They think if you haven´t been circumcised, you´re going to sleep around. They cut you so that you won´t be horny. It has nothing to do with religion. Neither the Bible nor the Koran talks about female cincumcision anywhere. Men invented the custom so that sexual pleasure is nonexistent for women –sex is just for men. When you marry, the man forces himself in or cuts you with a knife. When you give birth, they unsew you. Once the baby has come out, they sew you back up again. It continues like this. A woman who has ten children is sewn up and opened like a piece of material.

One day, when I was about 13, my father came to me on the sand. “I have found a man for you, “ he said. “You are getting married. Aren´t you happy?.” He had sold me for five camels to a 60-year-old man. I met this man the next day. He looked so old. I thought, “There has got to be more to life.” That was the second I decided to leave Africa. I told my mother. I was her favorite. “Do what you want, “ she said, “Be safe, be happy, and don´t forget me.” She gave me the biggest hug and cried.

I left that night for Mogadishu, the Somali capital, where I knew I had an aunt. I ran through the desert for about ten days, pushing myself to keep going until I was ready to drop. I had nothing on me, just a piece of cloth on my waist. When it was dark and tribesmen were asleep, I would drink milk from their camels. When I reached Mogadishu, I just stood there like a zombie, I was so scared. I told people I was looking foy my aunt, and eventually I found her. One day, one of mu uncles came to see her. He was the Somali ambassador in England and was looking for a girl to work at this residence in London. When I Heard this, I begged my aunt to convince him to take me. I had no idea where I would be going, but I knew it would be out of Africa. My uncle agreed.

I had never seen ana airplane before. Looking back, it was hilarious, because I remember that in the plane, I was desperate to go to the toilet. I only knew how to pee outside in the Bush. Eventually, I couldn´t hold it any longer. I had watched people go to the Little cabin at the back of the plane, so I did the same, but I was frightened that if I touched something, the plane would blow up. I didn´t know how to flush, so I filled the toilet withs cups of water so it wouldn´t look like I had just peed!

I arrived in London in December. I was about 14. I worked as a servant in my uncle´s residence for four years. Every day , I would get up at 6 a.m., then cook and clean without stopping until midnight. I never had a day off.

The culture shock for me in England was huge. I didn´t speack English. I couldn´t read or write. But I knew rigth from the start that. I was different from White women. I was a aware that what had been done to me when I was 5 doesn´t happen in western culture. I was angry and completely frustrated. I wanted to be the same as the girls around me.

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