On the bare floor of a crumbling apartment, Fatma Ahmed’s 5-year-old daughter, Yara, sketches the doll she dreams of owning. Their one-room home on the outskirts of Egypt’s capital holds little: a chair, two mattresses, and a broken cupboard.
But for Ms. Ahmed, this space represents a life-changing new beginning. A little over a year ago, she and her children fled their home country of Sudan to escape a spiraling civil war. But that uprooting has had a profound silver lining. In Egypt, Yara and Ms. Ahmed’s two other daughters will be spared a trauma that shaped their mother’s entire life: female genital mutilation (FGM).
“When the war came … it saved my daughters,” Ms. Ahmed says.
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Female genital mutilation has long been a critical rite of passage for girls in Sudan. But now, exiled by civil war to Egypt, their mothers are quietly breaking with this harmful tradition.
Unraveling tradition
Ms. Ahmed is not the only mother who has found this new freedom in exile. In Sudan, nearly 90% of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone some form of FGM, a term for a variety of procedures that remove or maim parts of the female genitalia without medical reason. Though FGM is outlawed in Sudan, enforcement is inconsistent. Meanwhile, religious and cultural beliefs, often falsely linking the practice to Islam, drive its persistence.
But in Cairo’s refugee enclaves, far from home and its traditions, some Sudanese women are turning their backs on this dangerous procedure that has long defined their womanhood.
Although it is too early to tell how widespread the change is, many experts believe FGM is on the decline among Sudanese in Egypt. The reasons are varied, explains Rayan Alsadeg, an anti-FGM activist working with Sudanese refugees in Egypt.
Mothers are often separated from extended family and the midwives who would perform the procedure back home. Meanwhile, although Egypt also has high rates of FGM, the practice is declining there, and punishments are severer and more consistent than in Sudan. All this “make[s] a real difference,” Ms. Alsadeg wrote in a WhatsApp message to the Monitor.
Ms. Ahmed, who is in her mid-30s, was cut as a young girl. She says that her mother was initially against the procedure, but relented under pressure from Ms. Ahmed’s paternal grandmother. She tried to run, she says, but her uncle and neighbors held her down. And the pain of the cut itself was only the beginning. Intimacy with her husband became strained, and the emotional scars lingered.
When Ms. Ahmed’s own daughters neared the time for FGM, which is typically performed between the ages of 5 and 9 in Sudan, she faced the same pressure her mother had from her husband’s family. So she stalled, pleading that they wait until the school year ended. Then the war began, and in the chaos of escape, the ritual was forgotten.
Today, when Ms. Ahmed’s eldest daughter, 12-year-old Yasmin, is asked what she thinks of FGM, she says simply, “I’ve never heard of [it].”
Her mother beams. “That’s what I wanted,” she says, “to erase it from our lives.”
Crackdowns and advocacy
Experts say part of the reason FGM is down among Sudanese women in Egypt is the law. FGM is illegal, and in recent years, the country has introduced harsher penalties. Medical professionals carrying out FGM now face a prison term of up to 20 years.
“These crackdowns have had a chilling effect” on Sudanese migrants considering FGM, says Ms. Alsadeg, who conducts her anti-FGM outreach for the Farah Foundation for Development in Alexandria.
Still, many of the more than 1 million Sudanese migrants who have come to Egypt since the start of the war live in refugee communities where old social norms can easily be rekindled, according to Yussra Mohammed, co-author of a recent study on beliefs about FGM among Sudanese in Egypt.
“Without accurate knowledge, harmful traditions can persist quietly,” Dr. Mohammed says.
Fatma Bakr is among those trying to ensure that Sudanese women have that knowledge. A university student before she fled Sudan, Ms. Bakr remembers her own FGM experience vividly. “I felt violated,” she says.
But in Egypt, Ms. Bakr regularly attends informational meetings on the dangers of FGM organized by local and international nongovernmental organizations. She says the meetings have given her the confidence to become a vocal advocate against the practice. She has shared what she learned with her young sisters and friends.
“If I have daughters, I’ll never allow [FGM],” she says.
Leila Sadeeq, a law graduate in her late 30s, fled to Cairo with her husband and three children after losing her parents in a bomb strike in Sudan. The emotional and physical impact of that loss remains, but Ms. Sadeeq says at least one good thing has come of it: Her 12-year-old daughter, Maab, has access to a different life.
“My mother is against FGM,” explains Maab, who dreams of becoming a doctor. “I missed two years of school, but we’re safe [here].”
Some mothers in exile say they’ve deliberately chosen not to speak to their daughters about FGM. “They don’t need to know,” Ms. Ahmed explains. “The less they hear of it, the less chance they’ll be drawn to it in the future.”
But without education, some fear the practice could resurface, especially if families return home or resettle in places where FGM is more accepted.
The cost of safety
Despite the Ahmeds’ relative security from FGM, their life in Cairo is fragile. Though they hold refugee status, support from UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, is sporadic. Ms. Ahmed’s husband disappeared in Sudan last year after being stopped at a checkpoint set up by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring parties in the civil war.
That means that in Egypt, Ms. Ahmed is the family’s sole breadwinner. She says she earns around 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($24) weekly selling her handicrafts on the street. But her 1,500 pound ($30) rent gobbles up much of that income, and she cannot afford tuition for her five school-age children at the community-run Sudanese schools in Cairo, which costs from around $60 to 80 per child annually. Ms. Ahmed also has a baby girl, born just after the family arrived in Cairo last year.
But amid these hardships, she finds meaning in knowing she has given her girls a life she could not have imagined even two years ago.
“I lost my husband, my home, my brothers,” Ms. Ahmed says. “But I saved my daughters. That is enough.”
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.
