Princess Sultana's Daughters

floors
were rented out as apartments. Fatma pointed up and said that her
daughter, Elham, lived on the top floor. Incredibly, Elham must
have been looking down at the crowd from the flat-roofed building,
for she recognized her mother, and began to yell Fatma’s name,
which we could barely hear over the loud noise of city life.
    Abdullah did not know that in this particular
family women were permitted to meet men not of their family (in
Egypt the custom varies from family to family) and told me that he
would wait in a small café we had passed that served shawarma sandwiches, which are thin slices of lamb that has
been turned and cooked on a split and placed into a piece of Arabic
bread, with tomato, mint, and onion for added taste. Shawarma sandwiches were a big favorite of all my children,
and Abdullah said that he was becoming hungry.
    Elham and three of her four daughters met us
on the stairwell, all four speaking at once, demanding to know if
there had been some illness or tragedy in the family.
    My first thought was that Elham looked
identical to a young Fatma.
    She gazed at me in fascination when Fatma
introduced me as her employer, a princess from Saudi Arabia, for I
had never met this particular child, even though I had met most of
Fatma’s children and grandchildren. I grew extremely conscious of
my showy jewelry, for in my haste, I had not remembered to remove
my large diamond earrings or my opulent wedding ring, which I
realized were more than conspicuous in such poor surroundings.
Elham’s youngest daughter, a girl of only six, was slapped by her
mother as she rubbed her small fingers across the stone in my
ring.
    At Elham’s insistence, we were led into her
small sitting room, and she left us for a short time to go and boil
water for tea. Fatma had two granddaughters in her lap and a third
at her feet. Alhaan was nowhere to be seen.
    I examined my surroundings and could see that
Elham lived a simple life. I tried not to stare at the threadbare
floor coverings and the torn slipcovers, for I did not want my
attention to be misunderstood. There was an open brazier in the
middle of the room, and a square table pushed against the wall was
piled with religious books. A small gas lamp hung down from the
ceiling, and I wondered if the apartment was not supplied with
electricity. I noticed that Elham’s apartment was spotless, and it
was evident that she was a proud woman who took great trouble
keeping the dust and bugs out of her simple home.
    Elham soon returned, serving sweet tea and
small almond cookies she said she had baked herself for the family
celebration they were having that evening. She mentioned to her
mother that Alhaan was excited over the event and was on the
rooftop, reading the Koran and quietly preparing herself for the
most important day in her life.
    The atmosphere remained cheerful until that
moment, as Fatma brought up the topic on our minds, pleading with
her daughter to cancel the planned ritual, to spare her child great
pain and suffering.
    Fatma talked in a rush and, seeing that she
was making no dent in her daughter’s determination, pointed to me
and said that if Elham would not listen to her own mother, perhaps
she would pay heed to a woman who had been educated by bright
minds, a woman who had learned from respected physicians that the
mutilation of girls was not encouraged by our religion and was
nothing more than a custom with no basis or meaning in modern
life.
    The tension built, and though Elham was
polite and listened to my thoughts on the matter, I could see that
the lines of her face were set and her eyes were glazed over with
stubborn determination. Knowing from Fatma’s confidences that the
family was notably religious, I shared my knowledge of religious
thought, saying that nothing in the Koran spoke of such matters,
and that if God had considered it a necessity for women to be
circumcised, then surely He would have given that message to
Prophet Mohammed when He revealed His wisdom to His messenger.
    Elham admitted that while female circumcision
is not mentioned in the Koran, the practice was founded upon the
customs of the Prophet so that it had become Sunna, or tradition
for all Muslims. She reminded me of a well-known hadith , or
tradition, addressed but not recorded in the Koran. This hadith says that Prophet Mohammed one day told Um Attiya, a
matron who was excising a girl, “Reduce but do not destroy.”
    It was this tradition that Elham and her
husband were