In
The door of the room 331 It always remains closed. Nurses avoid serving a patient who has the bad habit of spreading their feces on the face of any person who is not part of the family. I open the door slowly and check that he is asleep. Next to her bed there is a girl who due to her appearance should not have more than 12 years. You saw a black hijab that has a bit long and when walking it is collected so as not to stumble.
I ask about the person responsible for the patient, the 53 years.
"I'm me," he answers.
- Are your daughter?
–No.
I get out of the room and come to nursing control. I remind you that a minor cannot be in the care of a patient. A nurse smiles and tells me that the girl is of legal age. They have not been able to verify it because it has no identity document, But she says she has 18 years.
The girl spends the day sitting in a chair next to her husband, that insults and shit on bed, and blasphemous, And he dies and spits
At night, thirteen members of his family arrive. They don't fit in the room, So they turn to enter. While waiting, chat animatedly in the hallway. I approach one of the women and ask him about the girl.
"She is not a girl," he says. ". It is my brother's wife.
-How old are you?
–On thirteen, "she answers proudly.
The girl has no chest, You probably don't have the period yet. He spends the day sitting in a chair next to her husband, that insults and shit on bed, and blasphemous, And he dies and spits, spit all the time.
"I'm afraid that Abdi will die," the girl confesses. ". It's very good with me, I'm lucky to be married to him.
Abdi died. The girl cried like a woman.
II
The women of the 622 They are also Somalís. They call me at night, When the rest of the patients sleep, And they invite me to sit with them. They are counters of experienced stories, philosophers, mothers, nomadic. Stories have no beginning, They are only threads of entangled life that all try to unravel in the present, In this hospital room. Iman complains about her husband's second wife.
- I repeat it a hundred times a day, Our husband is going to divorce from it if he does not change his attitude, But it seems not to matter.
- But that's good for you, ¿no? -asked-. Then you would be the only woman.
All laugh.
- There is nothing good to be the only one, Everything would be problems: More work, More load ... Imagine having to educate children alone!
I shut up and keep listening. I feel strange in a world completely different from mine. But, Everything ends up making sense.
Halima talks about a seven -year -old girl who has not yet gone through clitoris mutilation. It is the first time that I am among women who openly defend the practice of female genital mutilation. I move in an environment of activists against this practice, that in Somali society it is much more than the removal of the clitoris: The minor lips are also mutilated and the major lips are sewing, leaving only a small hole to pass the urine.
An old woman explains that if the clitoris is not removed during childhood grows with age and ends up looking for a penis
One of the oldest women explains that if the clitoris is not removed during childhood grows with age and ends up looking like a penis.
- Have you seen any case ever?- I ask him.
–¡Miles!- answer.
"The clitoris makes us look like men and act like them", a young woman tells me
One of the youngest women tells me that being mutilated is their pride, that it is a centenary tradition through which they want to pass.
–The clitoris makes us look like men and act like them. We do not want to be men - clarifies.
I decide to risk and ask you about the deaths, infections, The pain, The traumas, The difficulty to give birth in the future, The lack of pleasure in sexual relations.
All laugh.
- Do you see us with any trauma, niña?- An old woman asks me.
They change the subject quickly. It's late and I decide to go. The next room patient complains about the laughter.
- I don't know if I'm in a hospital or in a matatus station!- says angry.
III
Zahra was nine years old and all the happiness of the world at his feet. His family lived on the border of Kenya with Somalia and possessed dozens of camels. He lived with his mother and the other two wives of his father. I spent the afternoons playing with his brothers, stealing bits of bread from the kitchen and helping their mother prepare liquid soap to sell it in the market.
In the evenings, He sat down with his older cousins, that Henna's hands were filled as they talked about life. He felt older. I wanted to be older and beautiful as the young girls in the town. He was happy at school. One day, The teacher asked what he wanted to be when he grew up.
"I want to be a man," Zahra replied. ". I want to be a man to travel a lot and be the owner of the camels.
The teacher crossed her face before carrying her before her father, who also punished him.
When her mother immobilized her between her legs and the blade removed the clitoris, Zahra lost knowledge. He lost happiness
The village's women decided that the time had come to mutilar, of "purify", To the girl. They told him it was time for him to become older. Zahra won the morning of her mutilation. He washed in a hurry in a plastic sweep and imagined the freedom that he would entail "to be an adult". He imagined errance. He imagined the trip.
"I wanted to have a child. My daughter is going to suffer so much! Sorry, sorry, sorry…", He repeated his baby in tears
When her mother immobilized her between her legs and the blade removed the clitoris, Zahra lost knowledge. He lost happiness. Lost confidence in his family. He became serious and stopped playing. It was condemned to irrevocable boredom and Henna's flowers that adorned their hands stopped being dreams to become pure repentance.
At fourteen they married her and had to stop studying. At sixteen, She gave birth to a girl in a hospital in Nairobi. She wept inconsolably for days.
'I wanted to have a child- repeated tearfully. "My daughter will suffer so much! Sorry, sorry, sorry…", she told her baby.
