THE CUT

Turning the steep bend around my grandma’s house, near that God-forsaken tree ,the gloominess is so strong I feel it even now. The suddenness of the vista and the impassive canopy bring back sounds and scents. For a split second, I consider how confronting this image is, how hard it is for it to vanish from my memory. Somehow with that one view, it all comes back, flooding my mind and overwhelming my heart. I’m engulfed by pain.

It happened when my mother was away and my sister and I were under the custody of our relatives. This very morning, my aunt showed up at school which was unusual. They had told my sister that it was ‘her time’, of which as a genius kid I put 2 and 2 together and figured out what they meant, that crushed me. I really loved my sister and couldn’t bring myself to believe that this was going to happen to her. It was my cousin’s time too, she was only eight years old. I had no choice but to follow them, I was pretty sure she couldn’t have handled the pain. It didn’t matter that the headmaster saw me leaving school, it was my sister after all.

The woman who was going to “cut” them was my grandmother’s sister and she was going to do her job at her usual spot since she was a renowned “cutter”. As I followed them from afar, I could hear screams, lots of horrible screams. The girls were crying. It was scaring, for a moment I wanted to leave but I just had to be there for my sis.The girls flowing out, all stumbling and with stretched foreheads caused by the pain. Then it happened, a scene that broke me, carried out by my auntie was my sister. Broken, tears all over her face. I could imagine the turmoil she was going through but I did nothing.

I imagined the emptiness of fear, that incompleteness of life they all go through. The lingering search for innocence that was taken from them. The memories of the painful cut. The fierce grip and tremble under their gaze as they watch what’s being done to them. The masking of their faces and soul knowing that they will live forever like that. Their pains never expressed and the scars forever inflicted.

Staring at her grave now makes me realize that the society will never change unless we did otherwise. While legislation and enforcements provide a solid basis for tackling the problem, additional measures are needed to encourage communities to abandon the practice. The people and societies should jointly support grassroots efforts that unite community leaders, schools, parents and local non-governmental organizations to protect girls from harm.

Let’s stop FGM.