Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia

she had been
circumcised when she was twelve years old. She said the rite had
also been performed on the three sisters that followed her in age.
This happened because our mother was from a tribe that continued
the practice, despite the fact few girls in our country had to
undergo the custom. Thankfully, the youngest six daughters of our
family had been spared the barbaric custom due to the intervention
of a Western physician who spoke for many hours against the ritual.
Nura added that most young girls in Saudi Arabia were blessed not
to have endured such a trauma.
    I was one of the fortunate.
    *
    I could see that my sister was close to
tears; I asked her what had happened.
    For more generations than Nura knew, a large
number of the women of our family had been circumcised. Our mother
was one of these women. She had been circumcised when she became a
woman, a few weeks before she was wed. At age fourteen, when Nura
became a woman, Mother followed the only tradition she knew and
arranged for Nura’s circumcision to be performed in a small village
some miles from Riyadh.
    A celebration was held, a feast prepared. A
youthful Nura basked in the attention bestowed upon the one of
honor. Moments before the rite, Nura was told by Mother that the
elder women were going to perform a small ceremony, and that it was
important for Nura to lie very still. One woman beat a drum, other
women chanted. The oldest women gathered around the frightened
child. Nura, nude from the waist down, was held by four women on a
bed sheet that had been spread on the ground. The oldest of the
women raised her hand in the air; with horror Nura saw that she had
a razor-like instrument in her hand. Nura screamed. She felt a
sharp pain in her genital region. Dizzy with shock, she was lifted
in the air by the women and congratulated on her coming of age.
Thoroughly frightened, she saw blood pouring from her wounds. She
was carried into a tent and her lacerations were dressed and
bandaged.
    Her wounds healed quickly, but she did not
understand the implication of the procedure until her wedding
night; there was unbearable pain and much blood. As the condition
persisted, she grew to dread sex with her new husband. Finally,
after becoming pregnant, she saw a Western doctor who was appalled
at her scars. He told Nura that her entire external genitalia had
been removed and that, for sure, the sex act would always result in
tearing, pain, and bleeding.
    When the physician discovered that three more
of Nura’s sisters had been circumcised and that the remaining six
would more than likely suffer the same consequences due to the
beliefs of mother’s tribe, he pleaded with her to arrange for her
parents to visit him in his clinic.
    My other three sisters visited the physician.
He said our sister Baher was in much worse condition than Nura, and
he did not know how she endured sexual relations with her husband.
Nura had been a witness to our sisters’ ceremonies and recalled
that Baher had fought the old women and had actually managed to run
a few yards from her tormentors. But she was caught and returned to
the mat, where her struggles caused much mayhem and a great loss of
blood.
    To the doctor’s surprise, it was my mother
who had insisted upon the circumcision of her daughters. She
herself had endured the rite; she was certain it was the will of
Allah. Finally, the physician convinced our father of the utter
nonsense of the procedure, as well as of the health risks. He also
reminded our father of his father’s ban.
    Nura said I had been saved from a custom that
was cruel and useless. I asked Nura why she thought Kareem would
inquire of such a matter. Nura said I was fortunate that he was a
man of the opinion that it was good for a woman to be complete. She
said that some men still insisted upon circumcision of their
brides. It was all a matter of the region you were from or the
opinion of the family in which a girl was born. Some families
continued the practice while others left it in the barbaric past,
where it belonged. Nura said it sounded to her like Kareem wanted a
wife who would share pleasure, not just be an object of
pleasure.
    Nura left me with my thoughts. I knew I was
lucky to be one of the younger females in our family. I shuddered
when I imagined the trauma Nura and my other sisters had endured. I
was glad Kareem was concerned for my welfare. I was beginning to
entertain the notion that some women might be happy in my land, in
spite of