Revisiting Some Old Words

This evening I will be interviewing an old friend. Hibo Wardere is the author of CUT: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today, a book that I ghosted back in 2016.

It was only the second book that I had ever written and it went on to receive critical acclaim and was nominated for The Orwell Prize — Britain’s biggest political writing prize.

(Don’t you think the cover looks very similar to Knife by Salman Rushdie?)

I will be interviewing Hibo during a talk online for a women’s rights group, if you are a member you will know about this talk this evening and I will see you there. And in preparation for this talk I decided to read CUT again, after all it has been eight years since I last read it.

I was cringing inwardly as I turned the first page, aware of the years between me and the words I had committed to paper then on Hibo’s behalf, aware that since then I have gone on to write many, many more books, I have done a master’s degree in creative writing, I have finished and published that damn novel. Would my writing now feel amateurish?

I know this is something a lot of writers feel when they look back at their early work, I remember reading Zadie Smith admitting somewhere that she couldn’t bear to read White Teeth anymore and cringed at the thought, in much the same way I expected to.

And yet, I didn’t. I didn’t cringe, instead I have to admit I found the prologue to the book compelling. I remember Eleanor Mills giving the book a stunning review in The Sunday Times Magazine and writing that it took her several attempts to dare to read the prologue, too scared of what she might come across in those opening pages, but she felt it was important to bear witness to FGM (for those who don’t know FGM stands for female genital mutilation and it is a cultural practice that involves cutting or removing the clitoris, outer and often inner labia — often without anaesthetic or a sterile environment).

My depiction of the morning that Hibo was woken by her mother, at six years old, and prepared for this procedure had stood the test of time. I was relieved.

This is one of the books I am most proud of, and in anticipation of my chat with Hibo this evening, I’m publishing the prologue here so you can judge for yourself.

Perhaps my advice to you is, don’t ever disregard anything you have written in the past, it may contain little gems of brilliance in writing or thought. Keep everything, never throw it away. You never know when you might need it.

And so, over to Hibo’s prologue…

The sky at the windows had turned from black to a midnight blue, as the sounds of a waking Mogadishu began filtering in through our curtains. The hungry bleating of the sheep and goats we kept tethered outside carried through the air, as the neighbours busied themselves with breakfast, clattering pots and pans as they fed families who, like us, slept fifteen to a villa; a hungry baby cried for milk after a long sleep, while the chickens clucked and scratched around in the dirt in the hope of finding one little grain left over from the day before. And, of course, there was the clockwork crow of the cockerel, puffing out his wings as he emerged from his own slumber and once again beating the imam in his minaret to his call to morning prayers. In the distance, the sound of engines stoked up, as the men set out to work or to mosque, after a breakfast cooked by their wives. And, further away, fishermen were getting ready to cast their lines out for another day in the Indian Ocean, determined to return with a bigger catch than yesterday, perhaps a fish so huge they wouldn’t have to work for the rest of the week.

I had been roused from my sleep by the light touch of Hoyo’s hand stroking my legs, her gentle voice calling to me in the darkness.

‘Hibo,’ my mother sang in a whisper. ‘Hibo . . . Wake up.’

And now, my bones still heavy with slumber, my hand in hers, she led me from the bedroom I shared with my cousins. I could just make out the sleeping silhouettes of Fatima, Amina and Saida in their single beds, just feet from me but far away in their dreams. My cotton nightdress had offered little relief from the heat of the Somali night, and now it flapped around my ankles as Hoyo led me through our silent villa.

It was not yet 5am, too early for the sunlight to have begun its creep through our windows and across the floors, but the warmth of the previous day – and every day before that – permeated each brick of our home. We lived with the heat, we were blind to it; the nights were hot in Somalia, the days even hotter.

Slivers of light shone out from under the doors of the rooms we passed, muted sounds of my aunties shuffling behind them, ready- ing themselves for another day of cooking and cleaning.

Except today was different.

Hoyo took me into the kitchen, where she’d lit the fire in the middle of the room and filled our tin bath. Slowly, she pulled my nightdress over my head and lifted me, still sleepy, into the warm water. She started to wash me, dipping the cloth into the water and rubbing it in the soap, then gently transferring the suds to my skin. Over and over she went, her touch much lighter than I’d ever known before. She sang softly, as she always did, folk songs that had soothed my ears as a baby, long before I’d understood any of the words.

‘My pretty girl . . . The prettiest in the world to me . . .’

Every so often she’d pull me towards her to kiss my temples and tell me how much she loved me. As my mind slowly surfaced to full consciousness, it didn’t occur to me to ask why I’d been woken at this hour or why I was having a bath this morning rather than at night; instead, I simply basked in the haze of tenderness.

‘Today is going to be a big day, Hibo,’ Hoyo said, planting a kiss on my soapy shoulders. ‘You’re going to be a brave girl, and I will be there with you. You’ll never forget it. And I will be there the whole time.’ I smiled to myself, sleepy and warm, as she pulled me in for another hug. ‘I love you,’ she said, kissing my face again and again.

If I had looked more closely at her face, would I have seen anxiety trace a path across it? Would I have noticed that her brown eyes twinkled less than usual this morning?

Finally, it was time to get out of the bath. Hoyo hooked her hands under my armpits, as she’d done a thousand times before, and lifted me out of the water, drying me as gently as she’d washed me. Yet when she was finished, she didn’t dress me in any of the beautiful clothes that I’d been given at my party – not the red-and- yellow dress with matching shoes, or even the blue one – instead, she put me in rags, an old dress that must have belonged to one of my cousins years before and now didn’t even look fit for playing hopscotch in. She forgot to put any underwear on me too, but that didn’t matter; once my cousins were awake, I’d rummage through the bedroom drawers for some cotton briefs.

‘Now come over here and eat some breakfast, Hibo,’ Hoyo said.

My eyes lit up at the sight of anjero. I watched as she poured the creamy batter into the pan, and how it bubbled and fizzed into sourdough pancakes over the flames of the fire. She fished one out with a flat knife – it was as big as a dinner plate – and doused it in more butter and sugar than she would ever let me put on myself.

‘Come and eat,’ she said, scooping me on to her lap, my long skinny legs dangling over the sides of each of hers. My little pot- belly still ached from all the wonderful food from the last two days, but I did as she said, because she was my Hoyo and pancakes were my favourite.

As I ate, she kissed the back of my neck, again telling me, ‘Every- thing is going to be fine today’, before placing me back down on my feet as she got up to make me another anjero. And another. By the third one even my eyes weren’t so greedy, and my stomach groaned inwardly.

‘If you love me you will eat this as well,’ Hoyo said.

And I ate it because I did – I loved my mother more than any- thing else in the whole wide world.

Hoyo was clutching a kettle of water as we stepped out of the kitchen and into our yard. The ground had already been swept and covered in water to stop the dust from wafting up as the day wore on. This process would be repeated as the sun made its way through the sky east to west, to save the wind blowing the dirt back into the villa that Hoyo and my aunties would spend the morning cleaning.

The water had turned the ground into a deep golden yellow, and the pink flowers that sprouted from it would soon be coaxed open by the rising sun. Outside of our compound, the smoke from neighbouring chimneys poured into the awakening sky, billowing light grey against the electric blue that was paling with the sun’s ascent.

Hoyo took my hand and held it more firmly than I had ever known her to, and together with my auntie, the three of us walked to the far end of our garden. There the boundaries were hidden by three or four huge trees that provided shade for us children to play under in the afternoons after school. The long branches that reached down and tickled the earth now camouflaged the hut that I’d watched go up in my honour over the last two days. I had, of course, seen the same light brown canvas erected in honour of my cousins so many times before – I was familiar with the sticks that Hoyo bought from the market and hammered into the orange earth, how she and my aunties bound them tightly together with twine that would hold fast for nearly a fortnight. But today it was me who was being led towards it.

‘You be brave,’ my mother said, as she gave my hand another squeeze in hers. ‘I’m right here . . .’

I didn’t think to ask what was going to happen in that hut, or why I needed to be brave. Why should I have worried when my mother was right there beside me? It had never occurred to me that anything bad could happen to me under her care. So as we approached the hut, moving aside the long branches of the tree like a leafy curtain, I felt only anticipation and the lingering sweetness of the anjero on my lips.

Three women were waiting outside the hut for us. They weren’t wearing brightly coloured dresses like the ladies who’d visited my party bearing gifts; they weren’t wearing the same happy smiles. Instead, they were covered from head to toe in the dark abaya, with a long shawl providing extra coverage for their heads. The two younger ladies addressed me and my mother.

‘Salaam alaikum,’ they said.

‘Alaikum salaam.’

‘Are you Hibo?’ one of them asked me, and she allowed her face

to wrinkle into a slight smile as I nodded.

Without letting go of my hand, Hoyo guided me into the hut.

It wasn’t yet day and already the heat in there was stifling. The ground was covered with a black cloth that crinkled when I walked on it. To the left a straw mattress that had been made by my aun- ties lay on the ground, the yellow grass dyed in brilliant reds and blues, and a pattern woven through it. I had sat at their knees many times as they’d made these mattresses for my cousins to lie on in one of these very same huts, so I knew with only a glance how many hours had gone into creating this one just for me, and in that moment I felt very special.

There wasn’t much room to sit or even stand alongside the mattress, and the hut was immediately crowded as the two other women and my auntie entered behind us with the third woman I’d yet to see properly. She was older than the other two –perhaps sixty, maybe even older – her skin darker, and her face wrinkled with lines. I noticed her hands were rough and ashen, starved – no doubt – of the rich cream we rubbed into our own. Yet she strode in with some authority, not shuffling or hunched over like other women of her age.

When she finally spoke, it was not in a soft tone like the other two ladies who had greeted us at the doorway, but in a bark that instantly silenced everyone else.

‘You,’ she said, pointing to one of the ladies. ‘Sit behind her with your legs open. Hold her in between.’

The grown-ups rearranged themselves in the tiny space to let her pass through, and as she sat down on the black cloth I took my place as I’d been instructed in front of her, facing forward. Hoyo, who was standing to my left, had let go of my hand, and my auntie, on my right, kept throwing me a tight yet brief smile. I looked to Hoyo, who was no longer smiling, then shuffled backwards until I felt my bottom nudge against the lady behind me. As soon as I did, I felt her arms clamp down on my own, holding me so tightly across my chest that I thought only of the anjeros in my tummy that must have been squashed fast.

Panicked, I quickly turned to my left, to search my mother’s face for reassurance, but there was none. Instead, she looked away from me.

‘Hoyo?’ I tried. She stared directly at the ground.

The old woman perched on a tiny stool in front of me, as my auntie and the other lady knelt down on either side. The old woman didn’t look at me once – instead, she rearranged her headscarf and washed her hands with water from the kettle that Hoyo had brought with us from the kitchen. Underneath the forearms of the woman behind me, my heart was beating so wildly in my chest that she surely must have felt it, and yet she didn’t relax her grip one bit, not even when I tried to wriggle.

The old woman busied herself, washing her hands with soap, then rinsing them slowly as if in some kind of ritual. The canvas above me was getting brighter, the sound of birds was starting to cut through the silence of the early day, and as I lay pinned down in this tiny hut, under the arms of a stranger, my heartbeat was pounding in my ears. I tried to remind myself what Hoyo had said, that I would be fine, that she would be there, but I didn’t know what was happening. What were they going to do to me?

And what if I had known? Would I have even entered the hut? Would I have let go of my mother’s hand before we’d even left the kitchen? Would I have run away, out of the compound, into the streets, and then to where? My safety was here, in this hut, with my mother . . . I didn’t know then that she was about to betray me in the most cruel of ways. Instead, I searched the faces of the women I loved for something, anything, to tell me I was OK. But I saw nothing.

‘You’re going to hold her leg,’ the woman – the ‘cutter’, I would later discover –barked at my auntie. To my left, the other lady grabbed one of my thighs, pulling on it so hard, I felt that my leg might pop clean out of its socket. My auntie took hold of my right leg, without any of the gentleness of touch I’d known from her my entire life.

‘Pull up her dress,’ the cutter ordered the woman sitting behind me.

For a split second I felt the respite of her hands released from my torso, just long enough to catch my breath, and in that moment she pulled at the sides of my dress, yanking it over my bottom in one swift movement. Even if there had been enough time to try to escape, I doubt my legs would have worked anyway. Instead, I remained paralysed by fear.

‘Hoyo?’ I tried again. But she kept her gaze down. ‘Hoyo?’ This time with more urgency. Nothing. My racing heart threatened to steal what little voice I could muster from beneath this woman’s grip.

I stared instead at the cutter sitting in front of me, searching her face for any trace of warmth. I watched as she slowly unzipped the leather bag that hung from a long strap around her neck and rested on her belly. As she did, I noticed the index finger and thumb on her right hand were each tipped with a long fingernail, longer than any I’d ever seen before, almost turning them into a pair of pincers. She dipped her gnarly hand into the leather bag and, as she did, the bag fell open to reveal dozens of razors. These weren’t like the ones I’d seen in our bathroom, though, they weren’t clean shiny silver razors. These were brown and rusty, and caked with dried blood.

As the old woman selected one and dipped it into the kettle of water, she glanced up at me just for a second. And then I saw them, those black eyes, within each iris was a terrifying cloudy circle of white. She looked like a monster.

I screamed.

But it was as if no one could hear my pleas at all.

• extract from CUT: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today by Hibo Wardere with Anna Wharton