The Day of Circumcision… A Memory That Does Not Belong to One Person Alone, and a Wound That Never Heals

By Shaimaa Jalhoum

Memories are a curse that never leaves their owners, no matter how far they go. In a time long past, women carried one shared memory, hiding it in the farthest corner of their minds. It came and went, evaded at times and resurfaced at others, but it never disappeared.

During summer school holidays, before the invention of activities, courses, trips, and seaside vacations, the break was an important occasion to complete the “arduous task”, to cut the tendon. Every summer, the memory of the day of “purification” was renewed.

Despite all that surrounds women in Egypt today, from harsh economic conditions to social and cultural constraints that hinder their progress, many women of my generation and I envy the millennium generation for the awareness for which we were the fuel.

We paid the price with our lives, our memories, and our bodies, so that this generation might enjoy greater freedom. We said many “yeses” so that they could say “no”.

In the 1990s, the terms we use today to describe rejected social phenomena had not yet appeared. There was no talk of bullying, harassment, or female circumcision, neither in popular circles nor beyond them. This was not ignorance so much as silence.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was never easy for a girl to tell her family that she had been harassed. “A girl is her reputation”, a phrase that summed everything up. The matter was buried, the girl punished with isolation and restriction, expected to obey or face consequences. In my case, I faced the punishment.

I was punished twice for something I did not understand. A hand dragged me into a back house, screaming followed, then I fled into my mother’s arms, only for my terror to be met with a slap on my face.

I did not understand why the victim was beaten while the perpetrator was left untouched. From that moment on, I believed every victim and condemned every perpetrator.

My mother covered up my “crime”, which I had not committed. I lost the army I used to hide behind. Two days later, a strange woman came. I later learned she was the second punishment.

Our home in Bulaq Abu El-Ela was always filled with the women of the neighborhood. My widowed mother was the center of their daily gatherings. But that woman’s face was unfamiliar. “Umm Shahata.”

Her sharp features remain vivid: tall, imposing in her black galabeya, dark-skinned, with a silver tooth that adorned her smile and terrified me. She sat beside my mother, her eyes moving between my sister and me.

A few words were exchanged, then she told my mother she would return the next day before sunset. As she was leaving, she brushed her cold hand across my face, and the coldness seeped into my heart.

The next morning, my friend Zizi, our neighbor, came over. We shared games, food, and innocence. But her face carried different news.“Do you know what’s going to happen today?”“No.” “They’re going to purify you.”

I did not understand. I was nine years old. I did not know what “purification” meant, nor where the “impurity” was that my mother had decided to remove without telling me. I learned from Zizi that the mothers had arranged everything with “the midwife, Umm Shahata”, that cold hand that has never left me to this day.

Evening came, and so did she. My mother prepared the room: clean sheets, incense, hot water, and bags of ice. Umm Shahata watched the terror on my face and laughed, saying, “Don’t be afraid… just ice, and I’ll come back tomorrow.”

I did not hear the rest. I ran toward the door, rushed outside, crying to my friend’s mother, “Hide me, please. ”She laughed and patted my shoulder. “Don’t be afraid… all girls go through this.”

Her laughter did not reassure a trembling child. She went to my mother, the women gathered, and I hid under my friend’s bed. They found me anyway and carried me away as I screamed.

I still remember my mother standing at the doorway, unable to approach the bed. I still remember the hands of four women holding me down, spreading me apart, while I screamed with all my strength. Then it was over.

Umm Shahata left, promising to return after two days. She wrapped what she had cut in a white cloth, added salt, tied it tightly, and placed it under the pillows of my sister and me. She instructed my mother to throw it into the Nile after a week. I do not know how much the Nile has carried of people’s thoughts and crimes.

Before leaving, she made sure we would be fed a whole rabbit “to compensate for the blood”, and instructed my mother that we should sit in hot water every day so the wound would heal faster.

Forty-five years have passed, and the wound has never healed.

Shaimaa Jalhoum is an Egyptian journalist, who has worked for many Egyptian and Arab outlets, and recipient of the Egyptian Press Award for Human-Interest Reporting.