The Un-Cut
(Originally published on Café Dissensus website on May 5, 2016. Republished here with permission from author). (Trigger Warning: Below is the account of one woman’s experience of her sister undergoing FGC. We thank her for being brave and sharing her story with us). Country: India By Insia Dariwala I still recall that wet rainy day in our four-by-four cramped shoebox. To the world it was a pit – dark and dingy; but to us this was home – a royal home that ceremoniously ended where it began. In our spare time, my sister and I loved sitting at the windowsill that overlooked years of dirt and misery. Imagining the intertwined pipes that crawled off our chawl to be a game of snakes and ladders, I wondered if we would ever escape the venom of this dreaded place. The narrow and smelly cramped lanes had pain written all over them. Every stain on the walls lining the chawl was a reminder of a dream splattered perhaps by a .32 pistol. Luckily my father’s stains were far more conventional: two betel paan leaves with lots of limestone and kimaam (an intoxicating ingredient). Each night as we prepared for our descent into the world of dreams, we would be awakened by a loud bang at our door. In his usual drunken state, our neighbor had once again forgotten his house. His constant arrival at our doorstep was a grim reminder of how easy it was to get lost here. Most of the time we lulled ourselves to sleep under a wrinkled, patchy blanket and my sister and I felt more at ease there than anywhere else in the world. It was here that we plotted our future, and re-lived our Cinderella moments of getting rescued by handsome knights in shining armor. Fatema would joke, “But what if he doesn’t come?” To which I would widen my big eyes, make a sword from my long braid in one hand and say, “Fear not, my dear sister, I will protect you no matter what.” Fatema would then giggle loudly, only to be shushed by our mother-hen who was always on the lookout for boys peeping through our broken glass windows. Our mother-hen was a dutiful wife with an unflinching tolerance for dad’s consistent tyranny. Thanks to my father, our never-ending poverty was sponsored by his alcoholism. His frequent showers of physical and verbal abuse were far more generous than the money he put in her hands. Almost all of our mornings dawned with mom’s screams and dad’s abuses. That day too was no different, or maybe it was, because this time the shrieks were not just mom’s. Dad hit mom hard across the face. Hurriedly, we ducked behind the tattered curtains, getting our uniforms on and struggling to dodge the gaping holes in the curtains, lest someone should see through our innocence. Looking through those holes, I wondered if my future too would be this hollow. When the storm settled, we peered into hell. Maa’s eyes were red. Her lip had a bluish tinge and it was hard to tell if it was from the slap she must have got or from biting down her urge to retaliate. Pappa nonchalantly spat his venom out of the window and looked at us with disgust. We then sat down to eat our breakfast, hoping we would not lose our only meal of the day to the joint family system. The daily bread of salt from my tears was getting quite tasteless now. Just then Rukaiya aunty walked in, surprisingly, far more pleasant than usual. Mom watched her offer some candy to Fatema. Hopeful and hungry, I put out my hand for one. Instead, she just walked away, leaving me salivating at the candy in Fatema’s mouth. Poor Fatema felt horrible seeing me in tears, but not as horrible as she was going to feel later on. Mom asked us to run off to school but no sooner had we reached the door aunty called out to Fatema. “Look, Fatema.” Fatema’s angelic face lit up with excitement as she saw her dream flutter in aunty’s hand. Two tickets to the matinee show of the hit film, Sholay. Fatema always had a weakness for Hindi films and Hindi songs. Even at the tender age of seven, she could sing every song with more proficiency than our older cousins. Had there been an Indian Idol then, she would have surely won. On one occasion, Fatema had come storming into the house, waving a ten-rupee note that the uncles had given her. ‘Golden voice’, they used to call her. We listed hundreds of ways to spend those ten rupees. It’s incredible the things you can do with ten rupees, when that’s all you have. Chandu’s sandwich was first on the list; watching the much awaited Sholay, second. Children below eleven were free, so we could treat our mother to a film as well as the sandwich. After all, she did eat more salt than us. But while our taste buds danced to the thought of Chandu’s chutney, and Mom dreamt of styling her hair like Hema Malini, Dad had already reached into our hopes and vanished with the money. Some other golden voice must have got lucky that night. So on that day when Fatema’s dream of watching Sholay was finally coming true, I too joined in the excitement and begged Aunty to take me along. My pleas, though, fell on deaf ears. They don’t love me as much, I thought. The tantrums and pleas continued. Fatema looked towards Maa, who kept giving us the look, which meant business. But Dad’s voice overpowered her. “Let her go. Study is useless anyway.” Mom reluctantly gave in. Fatema shrieked with joy. I fumed with jealousy. That’s so unfair, I thought. I reached for my school bag and Fatema looked at me guiltily. Our poverty had always taught us to share everything. Unfortunately, what she came back with that day was something I could never share.