Debating female genital mutilation is still something of a taboo
issue in Kurdistan, but certain people, including Ms. Arif, and
some groups such as the German-based Association for Crisis Assistance
and Development Cooperation, or WADI, work hard to try to spread
awareness of this horrible practice despite meeting resistance
from many sides. Although focus on this topic in Kurdistan and
elsewhere has increased over the last 7-8 years, Ms. Arif’s
unfortunate introduction to this practice came much earlier.
The day
Ms. Arif’s father owned an ice cream shop and wished to
expand his business. He moved his family from Sulaymaniyah to
Raniya in order to set up a business there. She explains the
tragedy that would soon follow in her own words:
“I was nine and the women in the neighborhood had a great deal
of impact on my mother. They asked her if she’d circumcised
her daughters. ‘How could you not?’ they asked. ‘You
really have to. Badji Gole is going to circumcise our daughters
tomorrow.’ Two of my friends, two beautiful sisters,
were scheduled for Badji Gole’s ‘operation’ as
well.
“Another friend, Ala, was also facing the same fate as us, but
when her mother took her hand to take her to Badji Gole, her
older sisters refused to let her go. They shouted at their
mother, saying that Ala should not go through this. Ala was off the hook.
Our laundry room was used as the operation room. Without telling
us what would happen, they took us to the laundry room and
held a hand over our mouths. In the room, we saw an old wrinkly woman
with tattoos all over her face. We saw plastic covers on the
floor and a collection of razors. We were all so young, our
eyes were so full of life and joy and with those razors Badji Gole
took all that away. Our mother put us in the hands of an old,
tired woman with shaky hands to play with our bodies and mess
with what God had created. It’s only by the grace of
God we survived her cuts. My mother was illiterate, and so
were all
the other women. They kept us down with force. Every little
girl in there wanted the other girls to go first. The two sisters
who were my friends, Ajin and Jino were beside me. Ajin seemed
to know what was going to happen. She said her cousin had gone
through this a few weeks ago and she had said how much it hurts.
The first girl to be cut was three years old. I remember my
mother
asking Badji Gole not to cut me very deep. Badji Gole replied
that the more she cuts of my genitals, the more the blessing
(kheyir) there is.”
A big why arose in Ms. Arif’s heart that day. This question
still haunts her – a question for herself, her parents,
and Badji Gole. She says she knows on a factual level why parents
do this to their daughters, but the young child in her is not
satisfied with that as an answer.
They put Ms. Arif in bed and she recalls cursing at her mother
and the woman who mutilated her. “I was so devastated that
it made me hate my mother,” she said. “This pain
made me hate the most precious person in my life. At that moment,
everything was mother’s fault.”
Ms. Arif doubts that this particular phenomenon can be labeled
as purely the fault of men. “My father was not home when
they mutilated me,” she said. “When he came home
and found out what had been done to me, he got very angry with
my mother and called her irrational.”
Ms. Arif vividly remembers the rest of the day. “They surrounded
us with cookies, chocolate and potato chips as if that would
heal our unbelievable pain. They placed all us girls in the far
back room of our house. We were the shame of the neighborhood
and we had to be hidden away. No one ever spoke of our mutilation.
They were ashamed of us and our genitals. When my brothers were
circumcised, they received countless gifts and words of praise
and blessing from people. They had visitors and yet all they
did for us was some candy and a few mattresses on a cold floor. “
This, Ms. Arif claims, is why she will no longer keep quiet about
her genital mutilation. She is emerging from hiding, from that
back room, and into the light. She is doing it for Ajin, Jino
and every other girl who was mutilated and for those who will
unfortunately face genital mutilation. The world needs to hear
Ms. Arif’s story and now they finally are. This, she says,
will set her apart from the woman who circumcised her. If she
continues to hide and live in shame, she will keep Badji Gole’s
horrific actions alive and well.
As for the alleged religious nature of this mutilation, Ms. Arif
says, “There nothing in any religion claiming that women
should be circumcised. Yet we see that this practice exists among
different cultures belonging to different religions.”
Life after mutilation
When asking Ms. Arif about her life as a teenager and after,she
is very frank: “I enjoyed attention from boys, but I
never saw it as anything else than words. I never thought love
was anything other than words, it could not be physical.” When
Ms. Arif was eleven, she was in an accident that left her seriously
injured, and she had to go through 8 surgeries to recover fully.
That, in addition to her genital mutilation, made falling in
love and finding a suitable man difficult. When Ms. Arif was
nineteen, she befriended a man with a similar mindset and way
of thinking. Their friendship grew deeper, and she eventually
tried telling him about what had happened to her. He stopped
her in the middle of her sentence and said that anything she
had gone through did not matter to him because she was perfect.
Time went by and her friend moved abroad. From there he seemed
to change, and brought up what she had once tried to tell him.
She finished the story of the two incidents from her childhood
that had scarred her for life. He replied by saying that she
probably looks horrible. Many more incidents like these would
occur until Ms. Arif found the man who would be her husband.
Ms. Arif’s experience made her aware that members of the
opposite sex may not accept her for who she is, and be unable
to look past horrible things that had happened to her. Many men
would be captivated by her looks and immense charm and glow,
but as soon as Ms. Arif opened up about her past, they withdrew.
She said, “I believed in myself, and I knew what a good
person I was. I can’t do anything about it if other people
do not see that.”
There was a man that did not let Ms. Arif’s past overshadow
the magnificent person that she is. Ms. Arif calls him the very
definition of respect and love. “His love and respect for
women is mind-blowing. I want to tell the world how wonderful
he is. I owe him so much. There are many Kurdish women who never
experience or ask for an orgasm because of the taboos in our
culture. Luckily, I am with a man who understands and caters
to my mental and physical needs. He is the best friend and lover.
He is making up for the damages happened to me, he is my calmness
and safety.“
Laws and actions against FGM in KRG
Ms. Arif wants female genital mutilation to be outlawed in Kurdistan.
She also wants women who were subjected to FGM be treated physically
and mentally. They should have teams of support tending to their
needs. “I married a wonderful man who understands me. What
about all the women who do not have wonderful men and remain
incomplete?” she asks.
She says she begs every member of the new parliament to ignore
people who claim that genital mutilation is a thing of the past
or a dying practice. “The Minister of Religious Endowments
says female genital mutilation was a phase. How dare he? I challenge
him and anyone who claims the same. What they are doing is mocking
thousands of girls who are scarred for life. They put a sheet
over the wounds of these girls and pretend they were never hurt.
The [Kurdistan] government has a negative view of people who
wish to draw attention to female genital mutilation. When I lived
there, I was in a constant fight with people in power who disliked
my interest in this issue. Do they really think that by turning
a blind eye to this issue it will make our region look good?”
Wishes for the future
According to Ms. Arif, the numbers of mutilated women are higher
than published reports state as there are women who do not wish
to reveal that they have been circumcised: “I understand
why they wish to keep quiet, they do not want to put their family’s
name in shame. They have already lost a lot, and experienced
psychological damage. On top of all of this, they keep it inside.
It’s important to own our problems and be first in the
line to speak about them. Women in our Kurdish culture are still
too weak to speak about their own problems, and therefore, people
keep oppressing us. They have to start questioning, why do people
constantly hurt us? I proudly reveal my name and story in this
article because women need to stand up and say, ‘Yes we
have been genitally mutilated.’“
Ms. Arif says that her wish was to stay in Kurdistan for her
whole life, but her husband has a life in Norway and she wanted
to join him. In the cold Scandinavia, far from her homeland,
she is not as able to speak, write and campaign against female
genital mutilation. The language barrier and the difference in
work culture frustrate her and she wishes she could be as active
as she was in Kurdistan. Ironically, while many Kurdish women
wish they had Ms. Arif’s life in Norway, she longs to return “home” and
fight for her cause.
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