I am different than most girls, who didn't know where they were being taken
I was in 3rd year of elementary school, so I understood things.
The thing is, it was I who noticed a protrusion in that area
And I felt it between my labia,
I didn't know what that was then.

I was in the seventh grade,
When mama and baba told me:
“You’ve grown up and you need to be circumcised.”
I didn’t understand what was going to happen,
Or what exactly they were going to do.
All I understood was that if I didn’t remove that specific part,
It was going to grow to look like a male part.

We went with them,
And I don’t remember anything about that day,
Except for the doctor yelling at me.
She told me to take off my pants,
But I refused.
They gave me anesthesia,
And cut off a part of me.
I regained consciousness when I had become a “woman.”
Everything changed after that day.
Gender violence; sexual violence; physical violence; FGM; sex

There were a lot of women of different ages on the stairs,
And everywhere else.
They were all gathered in front of a specific room.
I was terrified.
I didn’t know what was happening.
Then, a tall, chubby man came out,
Carrying the older girl’s sister.
She wasn’t wearing any pants,
And she was bandaged up.

I was around 13.
We were in the countryside, where every girl had to be circumcised.
One of my mother’s relatives was a nurse, and used to perform circumcisions.
She examined me at first to check what will need to be cut,
It was the first time in my life that someone would examine me like that.

For the longest time, perhaps until after highschool, I thought all girls were like me.
Then I found out that not all of them were like me.
I didn’t understand what it meant. What’s the difference?
I would always avoid thinking about the incident.
Until a black cloud formed in my mind, engulfing the memory of this incident.

In my time, we didn’t go in for examinations.
We were circumcised right away.
I was in second grade.
My mother told me what was going to happen,
She told me that it would feel like a pinprick.

I was in middle school then.
My little sister, who was three years younger than me, was also in middle school.
I was in 9th grade and she was in 7th grade.
My mother is ignorant and uneducated.
She harms others and herself.
She was never loved by her parents or siblings.
Girls to her were mere servants to their brothers, their mothers and their fathers.

I don’t remember my circumcision clearly.
Ever since it happened,
I’ve been avoiding thinking about anything related to my body.
I always feel like there’s something missing.
That I’m not really a girl.
My family’s strange beliefs are the reason for this.

That is why I hate my body,
Every inch of it.

One day,
In the middle of the first term of seventh grade,
Mama sent me over to my aunt’s.
“Go see what she wants,” she said.
When I went over to her place,
She told me to accompany her to the doctor’s.
I thought she was sick.
While we were waiting for our turn, she said,
“The doctor is going to examine you.”