The Female Circumcision Controversy. Ellen Gruenbaum

invited to join her at a circumcision. “But isn’t it forbidden by the government?” I asked, wondering if that mattered to her.

      “Yes, but it’s what the people want. The health visitor [her supervisor] never told me not to do circumcisions. If she had, I wouldn’t have done it. But she didn’t.” Evidently, the relationship with the health visitor was positive; she had supplied Besaina with gauze and surgical thread, useful for both circumcisions and births, and was available to do deliveries and follow-ups when Besaina needed to be away for a few days. Abdal Galil village fit the pattern I had encountered elsewhere—there was no government enforcement of the ban on female circumcision.

      Besaina had done only about six circumcisions in the village that year. The West Africans (the Hausa, discussed again below) in the laborers’ quarter of the village do not circumcise (masheen sakit, zey intu, roughly, “they go untouched, like you foreigners”) and seldom summoned her for childbirth except for very difficult cases. Besaina was responsible for several villages, but one of the larger ones had sent off a young woman for training that year, so there would soon be more help.

      The day of the circumcision, Besaina sent for me early in the morning, around seven o’clock, and I joined her at the home of one of the farming families, near the edge of the village adjacent to the dirt road that ran along the canal on the north side of the village.

      “Sit right next to me so you can see everything,” she instructed me. I scooted my small stool, a bumber made of ropes woven on a wood frame, across the packed dirt floor to be closer to where she sat, next to a bed of similar construction placed near the window. The light was good. She prepared her instruments on a small table to one side, placing a new razor, hypodermic needle, a curved suture needle, suturing thread, and a small scissors in a large blue and white enameled metal bowl. A kettle of water was heating on a low charcoal stove outside so she could sterilize these instruments with boiling water when the time came.

      Meanwhile the other arrangements for the circumcisions progressed. The plan was to circumcise three children the same day, all members of one extended family (two sisters and their male cousin), thereby allowing the families to share the cost of the celebrations. The boy had been taken by car very early in the morning to the rural hospital about four kilometers away in the town of Mesellemiya to be circumcised by a doctor. He was back by around 8 A.M. Greeted with ululations, he walked slowly to a bed where he could recover. The girls stood nearby, able to see him arrive and lie down.

      Then it was their turn. Their mother brought both the girls to the door of the house. The two wore colorful new dresses for the occasion, and the special protective ornaments (jirtig) and the family’s gold jewelry were ready for them to wear during their recuperation. The girls looked recently bathed, and their hair was freshly plaited and dotted with a little henna paste. The henna and jirtig are commonly used in relation to mushahara customs intended to prevent excessive blood loss or the harm that may be caused by spirits (jinn). The mushahara beliefs and practices were not as ardently held in Abdal Galil as in the northern Nile Valley region of Sudan, where Janice Boddy did her research (see 1989, especially chapters 2 and 3), perhaps because the inhabitants of Abdal Galil had a stronger association with more orthodox Islamic institutions and longer experience with formal schooling and bureaucratic government institutions. Beliefs in zar spirits and the need for quasi-magical protections were very deeply held by many of the residents of Abdal Galil, however, and even for those less concerned, the use of jirtig was routine for circumcision.

      By the time of the boy’s arrival, about ten women—kinswomen and neighbors—had taken up places in the room, ready to assist and witness the event. There were three beds along the walls of the room, in addition to the one positioned to catch the maximum light from the window, each covered with an ordinary clean cotton sheet and a cotton pillow.

      The girls were the center of attention and the subject of conversation, but there was no formal ritual or special sequence of events prior to the cutting, except for the midwife’s preparations. Both girls knew that this was their special day and that they would be circumcised, but they did not seem particularly fearful, knowing little of the details of what they were about to experience.

      A rather animated discussion developed when the mother of the girls vacillated about her decision to allow both girls to be circumcised. The older girl was six, and doing her circumcision now would allow her to heal before it was time to start school. But the younger appeared to be not much over four.

      The mother held the hand of the little one. “Maybe we should wait. She’s so young.”

      Immediately Besaina and the other women offered a torrent of reassurance about the decision to circumcise: It’s better to do it early, they don’t remember as much, she’ll be healed long before school, she’s already prepared. The midwife admonished the mother gently but firmly: Don’t worry so much, it will be over soon. It’s better to just do it, and if she’s younger it’s better.