Cut (16 page)

Maryam looked me up and down from her daughter’s bedside.

‘I was at a wedding the other day,’ she said. ‘Everyone was talking about you.’

I glanced down at Adam and Ikram, but she continued regardless.

‘They were cursing and saying things about you. They asked me, “Do you know this woman?” And I told them, “I’ve never met her in my life.”’

She laughed then, but her words had cut right through me, so I bent down and kissed Naima. ‘I hope you feel better soon, darling,’ I said, then hurried my two children from the
room.

In the car, I burst into tears. I wished so much that I’d been able to tell her how disappointed I was, how hurt I was, but I wouldn’t have spoken like that to her in front of Naima.
Not that it stopped her in front of my children.

‘That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,’ Ikram’s tiny voice said from the back of the car.

‘Just forget about it,’ I told her, as Yusuf put the car into gear and we snaked out of the hospital grounds.

I decided that day that I didn’t want anything more to do with Maryam. This was a woman I’d grown to know and love, I’d confided in, a woman with whom I’d shared the
births of my children, and yet when I needed her most she’d looked the other way. What was most unbelievable to me was that even though she was thousands of miles away from Somalia, away from
the life we’d grown up in, she still protected a cultural practice that I knew had taken its toll on her, just like it had done on me. She’d lost a husband, her children had lost their
father, and yet she wouldn’t stand up and say that FGM was brutal and that it shouldn’t be carried out on little girls. Instead, she was more concerned about what other people thought
of me – and, as a consequence, of her. She was part of this community that was determined to keep FGM shrouded in secrecy. She was no friend. We shared much less than I’d ever
realised.

This was a situation I was forced to get used to and I developed a thick skin. I stopped going to the weddings of people in the Somalian community where I lived, knowing that I would meet with a
frosty reception, that my hands wouldn’t be welcome to dip into the plates full of
odka
or
halwa
. I would instead be handed cynicism and criticism. Most Somalian people
valued their traditions and they saw me as a threat to that. And yet it was frustrating because they were the very people I needed to get through to.

There was one wedding I ventured to attend a few months later. If I’d wanted to avoid drawing attention to myself, though, I went about it the wrong way. I arrived late and, when I walked
in, everybody turned around thinking it was the bride making her entrance. I shuffled to my seat, embarrassed, and after the ceremony a woman I’d never met before came over to me.

‘Why do you talk about us?’ she said. ‘Why do you tarnish our culture?’

I looked away from her at first, wanting to disappear. But then I remembered my cause and I sat up straighter. I turned my face to her then, looking her square in the eyes.

‘Us?’ I asked. ‘I specifically remember talking about
my
vagina. Just mine. And using
my
name, not yours.’

Her eyes widened in shock. She sucked in air and puffed out her chest as people sitting around me sniggered into their napkins.

‘You are even crazier than I thought,’ she said, standing up and bustling away, weaving her exit between the tables.

The others at my table applauded.

‘Well done,’ they said.

But for every ten people who supported me, it was hard to ignore that one who didn’t, especially when they came from within my own family. I never spoke to my sister Hadsan about my work;
instinct told me that we would never agree. I knew that she knew what I was doing, though, and my niece had told me that she kept cuttings of the newspaper articles that featured me, but she only
ever acknowledged my talks once.

‘Hibo, why are you doing this?’ she asked as we made food together one weekend.

I stopped and turned to her, knowing exactly what she was referring to. ‘Do you really want to get into this?’

She paused for a moment and then looked away, continuing to chop vegetables into fine crescents. Here was another woman I’d grown up with, emancipated by our move to a different country,
yet still determined to hold on to old cultural traditions. None of these people, or their reactions, would put me off. Not now that I had started. I’d had a taste of the difference I might
be able to make and I knew I could do more.

Two months later, I was at a meeting chaired by our local Labour MP, Stella Creasy. I’d felt intimidated by all the women there; some ran schools and councils and others had been active
campaigners for far longer than me. But I met a woman called Jenny who, after hearing my story, invited me to talk at her secondary school. It was my dream to speak to schoolchildren directly
because educating them about FGM would give them a better chance of protecting themselves. I wanted to empower girls, so that they would not be pressured by their parents; I wanted to educate boys,
so that they would tell their own parents that they didn’t want a girl who’d been cut; and I wanted to inform those outside of the community, so that they would be able to help and
protect their friends at risk.

Just weeks later, as I walked into the grounds of Jenny’s school, I was shaking with nerves. Its tall frontage seemed so imposing, packed with three storeys of children. How on earth was I
going to say what I needed to say? I felt on my shoulders, under the bright-purple
hijab
I was wearing, the heavy responsibility of the talk I was about to give them as I crossed the
school’s forecourt and headed towards reception. I didn’t know how many of the children would even have heard of FGM. I didn’t know whether I’d be talking to pupils who had
been victims themselves, or if they were at risk of becoming victims. I had no idea how they might feel if I described FGM as child abuse. But I knew that, as a teenager, I’d longed for
someone to speak openly to me about what I’d been through. When you are a child who has suffered abuse you don’t see beauty in the world, you don’t see the flowers and trees and
animals and people anymore, just your own loneliness. There isn’t a world that is tangible outside of your own hurt and pain. You look only inwards as your mind is swallowed up with a million
whys that will never be answered unless someone offers you what I was about to offer these students. There could be girls inside this building who were going through that right now.

As a child I’d wanted honesty from the adults around me and the chance to have my voice heard. That’s exactly what I needed to give these children. I didn’t have to sugar-coat
anything for them, I just needed to tell them the facts, and they didn’t even have to agree with me; what they decided to do with the information after I left was up to them. But, I reminded
myself, knowledge is power, and I was being given the opportunity to empower 180 Year Nine students. Could I have imagined having that chance six months ago? Never. Things had changed so quickly
and now here I was, on a mission to enlighten.

Half an hour later, Jenny was introducing me to the packed assembly hall. The students looked up at me from the floor with varying shades of curiosity painted across their faces. There was
silence as Jenny began to speak.

‘I’m going to introduce you to this lady and in my book she is the most brave and honest person I have ever met,’ she said.

Every gaze was on me.

‘Today she is going to talk to you about something very dear to her heart which affects you and affects other children just like you. You need to listen very carefully.’

My heart was racing in my chest, the fullness of the responsibility pounding against my ribcage.

The room bristled with anticipation as I took Jenny’s place on the stage.

‘Hello, I’m Hibo,’ I said. My greeting was met by silence, broken only by a handful of muffled hellos.

I tried again, this time louder. ‘I can’t hear you!’ I cried across the hall. ‘Hello!’

And the school hall rang with their chorus. I had their attention now. I’d broken the tension between us and now we could all relax.

‘How many of you have heard of FGM?’ I asked the hall, watching as just a few hands made their way awkwardly into the air.

‘Well, I’m here to tell you what it is.’

I started, just like with the adults, with the descriptions of the different types. I told them that it happened to children just like them, often to toddlers, sometimes babies, and how it was
carried out. I watched them wriggle as I spoke; some looked down into their laps, most eyes never left me.

‘But what is most important,’ I said, ‘what I really need you to know is that it is child abuse.’

During those forty minutes, I went through all the medical complications resulting from FGM, explained their human rights to them and told them what they needed to know to keep themselves safe.
I drummed into them that should they feel in danger at home they should dial 999, or if they were abroad they should get a message to the British embassy and help would come. Then, finally, one
young student put up her hand.

‘Has this happened to you, miss?’ her voice sounded small in the huge hall, but my reply was loud and confident.

‘Yes,’ I said.

A collective gasp went up in the hall, but rather than feeling small for confessing that I had been mutilated, rather than feeling like a freak like I’d done before, I left that stage
feeling invigorated. Those children – boys and girls, black and white – connected with me on a very human level and it felt wonderful.

And from those very humble beginnings, my diary quickly filled with the scratches of different-coloured Biros as I added more and more talks in schools to my schedule. At each of them I’d
look out and see the same recognition and empathy and sense of empowerment. I left behind at each school the excited chatter of children who were determined to stand up for their friends who might
be at risk.

Of course, I never knew the stories behind the students I was addressing; I had no idea whether what I was saying would resonate with them, whether they’d go home and tell their parents,
their community, whether it would save their lives. I could only hope, but as I packed away my slides after a talk at one local sixth-form college a few months later, I noticed that one student was
lingering long after the others had left the hall. Her head was covered, like mine, but her eyes betrayed a real need to talk to me. I went over to her.

‘Hello,’ I said, and as I did, her eyes filled with tears. I took her hands. ‘Come and sit down here with me.’

She did as I asked, and as I talked softly to her, asking her what was wrong, she broke down further.

‘Your talk . . .’ she said, between sobs. ‘I knew what you were talking about . . . It’s happened to me.’

She put her head into her lap as I rubbed her back.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very brave to tell me.’

After a few moments, she looked up again.

‘Everything you said about how long it takes to go for a wee, how painful your periods are, it’s the same for me,’ she said. But there was something else, something that she
wasn’t telling me. I sensed there was another reason she was reaching out to me.

‘You can tell me anything,’ I said, noticing her hands trembling in mine.

‘My sisters . . .’ she said, finally. ‘They’re younger than me and I think the same is going to happen to them.’

My eyes briefly flitted up to the college teacher who had arranged the talk, who had hovered close by ever since this girl had broken from the crowd of students to wait behind. What she’d
just told me was a child-protection issue, and I was aware that after her hands left mine the relevant authorities would need to be involved, that she would have to give more details, that her
parents would be contacted. But while her hands were in mine, all I could do was soothe her, and tell her over and over that she’d done the right thing.

‘Your sisters need protection,’ I told her. ‘And by speaking out, you’ve made sure they’ll get it.’

It took me weeks to get the image of her from my head. For days afterwards, each time I closed my eyes I could see her wide and worried eyes, I could feel her hands in mine.

‘The college will be looking after her now,’ Yusuf assured me. I had to accept there was nothing more I could do, confidentiality meant that I couldn’t even get any information
about her from the college.

It was a bittersweet victory for me in the early days of my campaigning, though, because these were precisely the girls I wanted to reach and yet, at the same time, it was painful to witness
that they were there at all. As my campaign gathered pace, I would stand in the doorway of my living room as my children sat cross-legged on the floor watching my appearances on the BBC or Sky TV,
glued to the screen. Afterwards they would turn around and applaud me, and I would laugh and bow to them.

Everyone was so supportive. One of the most amazing moments was speaking at Oxford University to a room crammed with hundreds of FGM and child-protection workers, doctors, psychologists and
academics from all over Europe. But nothing compared to the sense of connection I felt when I spoke to the children. They, after all, were the next generation, the ones who could really make a
difference. Many times after talks the children would come up to me at the end of lessons, saying they wanted to do more; and I was amazed by the number of students who would simply come over and
ask if they could give me a hug.

‘You’re so brave,’ they’d tell me. And being able to talk to them in a way I’d never been able to speak to my own mother, or my peers, was my way of healing too.
Just by telling my story made it feel less secretive; it made the wounds inside heal. It couldn’t change the past but it created a new future. It made me feel empowered by what had happened
to me, rather than a victim.

One of the ways I’d tried to communicate with younger kids was to sit with them afterwards as they created anti-FGM posters. No words were off limits, no images banned; they could draw and
express themselves however they liked. Afterwards, they’d pin them up in the school corridors. They were now doing my work for me! Each school I visited I left children engaged and ready for
action. I took photographs of each image they produced and, at home at night, I’d flick through them on my phone, my heart bursting with pride. Months rolled by, and then a year, and demand
for my talks was only growing. I started working with Project Azure, a unit of the Metropolitan Police set up to counter FGM in the city. It was exhausting work: I’d be up at 6am getting the
kids ready for school or college, and then do a full day’s work before taking the youngest children home and then heading out to give another talk.