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Chapter 1: The Day the Sun Went Out

The sun was a promise. At seven years old, Deeqa knew this as she knew the sound of her own name. It was the promise of warmth on the packed earth of the compound, the promise of chasing lizards until their tails snapped off, the promise that the world was wide and bright and belonged to her.

This morning, the promise felt different. It was heavier, more important. The sun seemed to shine just for her. Her mother, Amina, had woken her before the roosters, her hands softer than usual, her voice a low, sweet hum. There was a special bath with water scented by a sprig of acacia, a ritual that scrubbed away not just the dust of yesterday but, it seemed, her very childhood.

She was dressed in a new guntiino, a cascade of brilliant orange and gold fabric that felt impossibly grown-up against her skin. It scratched a little at her shoulders, a pleasant, important friction.

“Today you become a woman, my Deeqa,” Amina whispered, her eyes shining with a strange, fierce light that Deeqa mistook for pure pride. “Today is a day of celebration.”

Celebration. The word was a taste of honey and dates on her tongue. It meant approval. It meant she was good. She stood straighter, puffed out her chest, and followed her mother out into the courtyard, a small queen in a borrowed crown of sunlight. The other women of the compound were gathered, their voices a river of praise. They touched her hair, her new clothes, their smiles wide and bright. In the corner of the courtyard, Deeqa saw her grandmother, a woman whose face was a beautiful map of wrinkles, presiding over a steaming kettle.

And she saw her little sister, five-year-old Asha, peeking from behind a doorway, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes wide with a child’s simple awe at the spectacle. Deeqa gave her a regal, grown-up wave.

The pride carried her all the way to her grandmother’s hut. But the moment she crossed the threshold, the sun vanished.

The air inside was thick and suffocating, a blanket woven from the smells of burning frankincense, boiled herbs, and something else—something sharp and cold, like a stone from the bottom of a well. The smiling faces of her mother and aunts followed her in, but the smiles did not reach their eyes anymore. They were masks, their expressions set with a grim, sacred duty.

In the center of the hut sat the Gudda, the old woman who was the village cutter. Her face was even more wrinkled than her grandmother’s, but there was no softness in it, only an immense, unmovable authority. Beside her, on a small, worn mat, lay a bundle of cloth. Something glinted from within its folds.

The honeyed taste of celebration turned to ash in Deeqa’s mouth. A cold tendril of fear snaked up her spine. This was not a party. This was something else.

“Mama?” she whispered, turning, but her mother’s hands, which had just moments before been so gentle, were now firm on her shoulders. The other women moved in, their bodies forming a soft, inescapable wall.

“It is for your purity, my child,” her grandmother said, her voice no longer the warm rasp that told stories, but a flat, ceremonial chant. “It is to make you clean. To make you worthy.”

The words made no sense. Her questions became a whimper, then a cry as they laid her down on the mat. The hands she had trusted her entire life, the arms that had held her when she fell, were now the shackles that pinned her struggling body to the earth. Her screams began, high and piercing, but they were swallowed by the rising voices of the women, their chanting a relentless wave that beat against her terror, drowning it, erasing it.

She twisted her head, her cheek scraping against the rough mat, and for a single, searing moment, she saw the doorway. Framed within it was Asha’s face, no longer in awe, but a pale mask of horror, her eyes two dark pools reflecting a scene she could not possibly understand but knew, with a child’s primal instinct, was a violation.

Then the Gudda moved over her. Deeqa saw the glint again, a small, curved blade held between practiced fingers. She felt the cold dab of something wet between her legs, and then a pain so absolute, so blinding, it had no shape or sound. It was not a cut. It was an annihilation. The sun did not just vanish from the sky; it was extinguished from the universe. Her world, her body, her very being, was torn in two by a single, white-hot line of agony.

When she returned to herself, it was to a world of throbbing twilight. She was back in her own hut, the familiar patterns on the woven walls a cruel mockery of the normalcy that had been stolen from her. Her legs were bound tightly together from ankle to thigh with strips of cloth, locking her into a prison of her own flesh. A fire raged between her legs, a ceaseless, burning torment that pulsed with every beat of her heart.

Later, through a haze of fever, she saw her mother’s face, her eyes full of a pity that felt like another betrayal. Amina offered her water, stroked her forehead, and whispered that the pain would pass, that she had been brave, that now she was whole.

But Deeqa knew the truth. She was not whole. She was broken. And in the dark, silent space where the sun used to be, a single, cold question began to grow, a question she would never dare to ask aloud but would carry in the marrow of her bones for the rest of her life: Why?

The Discourse, Chapter 1: The Anatomy of a Crime

Section 1.1: More Than a Tradition: Naming the Crime

What happened to Deeqa in that hut was not a "cultural practice." It was not a "rite of passage," a "custom," or a "tradition." To use such neutral, academic language is to become complicit in the lie. It is to sanitize an act of barbarism and grant it a legitimacy it does not deserve. Let us be precise. Let us be unflinching.

What happened to Deeqa was child abuse.

• It was aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

• It was torture.

The act is known clinically as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The World Health Organization defines it as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." It is classified into four major types, ranging from the removal of the clitoral hood (Type I) to the most extreme form, infibulation (Type III), which involves removing the clitoris and labia and sewing the wound closed—the very procedure Deeqa and the majority of Somali girls endure.

But this clinical language, while necessary, is also insufficient. It fails to capture the intent and the political reality of the act.

FGM is a crime of power. It is a premeditated act of gender-based violence designed to permanently alter a girl's body in order to control her future, her sexuality, and her social capital. It is a system of patriarchal domination made manifest in flesh and blood. The blade of the Gudda is not merely a tool of tradition; it is the instrument of a social and political order that demands the subjugation of women as its price of admission.

When a government fails to protect its citizens from assault, it is negligent. When it fails to protect its children from torture, it is morally bankrupt. The Provisional Constitution of Somalia explicitly calls FGM "tantamount to torture" and prohibits it, yet the practice continues with near-universal prevalence and total impunity. This is not a legislative oversight. It is a catastrophic failure of the state's most fundamental duty. Every scream that is swallowed by the walls of a hut is an indictment of a government that has chosen to look away, that values the appeasement of traditionalist power brokers over the bodily integrity of half its population.

Therefore, we must begin by stripping away the euphemisms. The fight against FGM is not a negotiation between cultures. It is a fight against a crime. Deeqa was not a participant in a tradition; she was the victim of a violent assault, perpetrated by her loved ones under the duress of a brutal social code, and sanctioned by the silent complicity of the state. Until we name it for what it is, we can never hope to dismantle it.

Section 1.2: The Political Body: Why Her Body?

Why was it Deeqa’s body, and not her brother’s, that was chosen for this ritual of “purification”? Why is it the female body, in so many cultures, that becomes the primary battlefield for honor, tradition, and social control? To answer this is to understand the political heart of FGM.

The act is rooted in a single, powerful patriarchal anxiety: the fear of unchecked female sexuality.

In a system built on clear lines of male inheritance, a woman's sexual autonomy is a direct threat. Paternity must be certain. Lineage must be guaranteed. A woman's body is therefore not her own; it is the property of her father, her husband, her clan. It is a vessel through which the male line is propagated, and its purity must be physically, brutally enforced.

FGM is the most direct and devastating expression of this control. It is a three-fold assault:

1. It attempts to eliminate desire: By removing or damaging the clitoris, the primary center of female sexual pleasure, the practice aims to reduce a woman’s libido. The logic is simple and cruel: a woman who does not desire sex is less likely to seek it outside of her marital obligations. She is made “manageable.”

2. It enforces fidelity through pain: The physical reality of FGM, particularly infibulation, makes intercourse a painful, difficult act, rather than a pleasurable one. This serves as a further deterrent to any sexual activity outside the duty of procreation.

3. It serves as a public mark of ownership: The scar tissue is a permanent, physical testament that the girl has been “made pure” according to the rules of her society. It is a mark of conformity, a sign that she is a suitable, non-threatening commodity for the marriage market. An uncut girl, by contrast, is seen as “wild,” a risk, her body and desires untamed and therefore dangerous to the social order.

This is why the justifications for FGM—that it promotes hygiene, that it is a religious requirement—are patently false. It is not about cleanliness; it is about control. It is not about God; it is about guaranteeing that men, and the patriarchal systems they create, remain the sole arbiters of a woman’s life, her body, and her future.

The Somali government’s failure to stop this practice is, therefore, a failure to recognize women as full and sovereign citizens. By allowing their bodies to be systematically mutilated to serve a patriarchal social structure, the state implicitly agrees that a woman is not an individual with a right to bodily autonomy, but a piece of communal property. Deeqa's wound is not just a personal injury; it is a political scar, a mark of her subjugation carved into her flesh with the silent consent of those who are supposed to protect her.