Hassan says he is now convinced that FGM/C is wrong and will never perform it again
An interview by Tiziana Barrucci
Minya, June 2006: “Promise me that you will write under my pictures that I stopped. I am not doing it any more and I want people to know”.
We are in Minya in Upper Egypt. As I watched Hassan- a big man with lively eyes-, I could imagine a sort of glorious past in his life. Hassan used to be a “health barber” who performs circumcisions on boys, a well respected profession in his community. He began performing circumcisions on girls later on.
His chosen profession used to earn him a considerable income. But one day he heard about the Better Life Association for Comprehensive Development, a local NGO that is campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) with the support of UNICEF. It was the beginning of a change in heart which caused Hassan to regret some of his past practices.
- Why did you start circumcising girls? Well, actually at first I only circumcised boys. Then the nature of the job led to circumcising girls as well. Whenever I went to a house to circumcise a boy, and there was a girl in the family, they inevitably asked me to perform the same operation on her. At the beginning I didn’t want to because I didn’t think it was appropriate for a man to perform this kind of operation on a girl. But since I used anaesthetics in my work to decrease the pain and suffering of my male patients, families asked me to use the same techniques on their girls as well. I didn’t cut a lot, though. And again, frankly, I didn’t want to.
- So what made you do it? Mainly because of social pressure from friends and acquaintances. In Arabic we say “mogamalat”, or exchange of favours. I help you and you help me. And when that was the case, I couldn’t say no.
- What made you stop? I didn’t stop completely at once. I started to work sometimes with the daya (midwife), to check her work and help her. Then little by little I became aware that is not a good thing to circumcise girls.
- How come? Because I started to have doubts -- I felt that there was something wrong. Circumcised women don’t feel comfortable with their husbands. They don’t have desire, and so their husbands are not happy. Sometimes they are forced to go away and look for other women. Circumcised girls and women also suffer psychological problems. I used to feel very embarrassed when I performed the operation, and I could tell from the girl’s eyes that she was embarrassed as well. In the meantime, I got in contact with people of BLACD. They invited me to several of their meetings, where I met doctors and religious leaders who explained the dangers of girls’ circumcision. When I was finally convinced, I stopped doing operations on girls completely.
- Would you go back to circumcising girls again? I am completely convinced now that circumcising girls is wrong and I will never go back to it. Even if a neighbour asks me now, I refuse. Although I used to earn a lot of money with that job, that doesn’t matter now. I am done.
Watching the long, supple fingers of Rasheeda Sharawbim gesture as she speaks, it is hard to believe they could be so brutal.
“For over 25 years I circumcised all the girls in this village, including my four daughters and their children", Rasheeda says. "How many did I cut? I couldn't tell you: There were too many to count”.
Rashida is a daya -- or midwife -- in Nazlet Ebeid, a village in the governorate of Minya south of Cairo that relies on a sandstone quarry for its meagre income.
As a young girl, Rasheeda worked for the village doctor, and from her she learnt how to look after babies. Rasheeda was just 12 when one day, as she sat at home, a message reached her: a woman was in labour and the doctor could not be found. Could she help?
Proud and confident of her new skills, Rasheeda, went to the woman and delivered her first child. A few months later she performed her first circumcision.
Back then, she used a double-edged blade, just like the one men use to shave their beards each morning.
Rashida recalls the technique she used.
“While two women held the girl, I would stretch the skin with my fingers and then…” -- she moves the nail of her right forefinger down the side of her left finger in a quick slicing motion -- “I would cut.”
Rashida’s blade removed the clitoris and part or all of the labia minora. According to the classification of types of FGM/C defined by the World Health Organisation, this procedure is known as Type II circumcision; according to government health figures published in 2003 (Interim Demographic Health Survey), 97% of Egyptian women have been circumcised in this way.
To staunch the bleeding, Rasheeda would pour lemon juice on the wound or pack it with onions followed by ash from the stove.
In the 1980s, she attended government medical courses, became a state-licensed midwife and learnt to use a scalpel, antiseptic power and cotton wads.
Rasheeda stopped circumcising girls a few years ago when a doctor told her – wrongly -- that the operation was now forbidden by law and she faced 3 months in prison and a 3000 LE fine. Till now, no such law exists in Egypt, only a ministerial decree that bans FGM/C procedures from government hospitals and health care clinics, but which is not strictly enforced.
Some families still come and ask Rasheeda to circumcise their daughters – unaware perhaps that she is now a volunteer (or "positive deviant")working with the anti-FGM campaign led by a local NGO, the Better Life Association for Comprehensive Development, with the support of UNICEF. Since last year, Rasheeda has been attending regular community awareness-raising sessions on FGM/C, designed to convince other villagers to give up the practice.
Rasheeda says such sessions are starting to have an effect, because she receives fewer requests for her services as a circumciser nowadays. "Attitudes in the village are changing", she says. “More and more people are now against circumcision."
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