By Anonymous

Country: United States 

Age: 50 

I may not be able to share the same emotional or physical experiences of some of the other Sahiyo participants who attended the Sahiyo U.S. Activist Retreat in March 2019 and who have undergone khatna, but I have a story to tell. My mother, myself, nor my daughter have undergone khatna, and that is not the end of the story, but the beginning of this restlessness in me to do something for others in my community who have undergone it. 

Khatna conversation made landfall on my household when my daughter was 7-years- old. There was pressure from my mother-in-law to have my daughter cut. Her argument was that she would never suggest something that was bad for her granddaughter. There was no Sahiyo platform to educate my family members then so one could imagine my struggle twelve years ago. Seeing my mother-in-law so upset, my sisters-in-law got involved and they insisted that I should just lie to my mother-in-law to end the matter. I had been told to shut my mouth in my monthly Bohra menij groups, also. “Don’t do it, but speak about it otherwise.” 

Let’s fast forward to after the Sahiyo retreat that I attended in March. A few days later, I met a friend at a gathering who had brought her 9-yr-old daughter along. I was very curious and worried if she had gotten her daughter’s khatna done, so I asked the question. She replied that she hadn’t and that she was, in a strange way, thankful that the conversation about the Detroit incident happened at the same time as when it was time for her daughter’s khatna. She saw all that was happening with the case and thought against the act. She wanted to know if I knew more about the case and I was thankful I attended the Sahiyo retreat, as I was able to give her more details about the case and was comfortable and confident to hold a dialogue on khatna. 

My thought is that the Detroit case is very important. Even if the outcome may or may not be to our liking, it did cause a big stir in our Bohra community and at least one more girl was spared the blade. 

By Anonymous 

(Anonymous is one of our Sahiyo Story participants who continues to use her voice to advocate for change on female genital cutting.)

At the Pro-Voice storytelling event at the Frogmore in Boston on March 31, there were three storytellers, including myself. The event was organized by Rev. Susan Chorley to contradict the narrative of shame, judgement, and stigma directed at women’s bodies and women’s lives. It was intimate in the sense that we created a small circle and we also paired in groups to engage in discussion with the attendees after each storyteller presented their piece. I was the second storyteller.

I told the crowd I experienced female genital mutilation (FGM) when I was five, but I didn’t really process it until I was thirteen. It took me many years to understand it and its impact on my life. I speak about it because I don’t want to be silent anymore.

For me, I’m still getting the hang of storytelling and so I was nervous when I first got up, but the feedback I got after the event was over made me glad I shared my story. A lot of the attendees were shocked to learn about the prevalence of FGM around the world and how many women it affects. One woman in particular stated that she was unaware that such a practice was happening here in the United States, and they were shocked to find out that it impacted so many girls around the world.

During our small group conversation after my speech, we discussed a cultural or family practice we would undo for our people or community and how it would change our lives. I gave a brief example of a 10-year-old girl who died as a result of FGM in Somalia last July. I stated that I wanted to undo this practice so that innocent lives do not have to suffer like the girls who’ve died because of FGM, and many other girls who will potentially experience it.

When each storyteller told their story, the attendees would write something positive on three cards for the storyteller, which they would get to take with them at the end of the event. After the last discussion, Rev. Chorley, who is also the Executive Director of Exhale, thanked the storytellers, attendees, volunteers and gave storytellers a book along with cards

Overall, I was happy to share my story with the general public, I didn’t expect to receive so much positive feedback. One woman in particular I remembered stated that she was moved by my story. After the event was over people were networking. This older American woman came up to me and stated that she was not ready for the story I told. She was in disbelief that this had happened to me and thanked me for sharing my story and bringing awareness to such a private and intimate practice. This moment in particular made me realize why it was important to tell my story of surviving FGM. She added that hopefully what I am doing can bring change for girls.

By Farzana Doctor

Country of Residence: Canada

Age: 48

When the first emails circulated about last month’s Sahiyo retreat in New York City, I wasn’t sure why I wanted to register, only that I knew I had to.  I felt anxious the week leading up to the event and couldn’t pinpoint the reason why.

During the opening exercise, when we listed our hopes for the weekend, a voice in my head said, quite definitively, “healing.” This surprised me because I’ve been thinking and writing about khatna since 2016, when I joined WeSpeakOut and began my healing journey. Over the previous years I’ve seen a therapist, talked to friends and family, and even finished writing a novel on the subject. What more healing was there to do?

But I put up my hand, and the notetaker recorded “healing” on the flipchart page. I felt vulnerable in my honesty, but I told myself to remain open to whatever could come from the gathering. Anxiety thrummed through my body.

On the second day, I listened to the woman across from me share her khatna memory, and a deep sorrow rose up in me as I recognized elements of shared experience. A painful penny dropped. I didn’t participate much in that session, just quietly wiped my tears and journalled my realizations.

Later, in a pair-share exercise with the woman sitting next to me, I found myself relating to an aspect of her story, even though it was quite different from my own. It was like she was indirectly speaking to my fears and they quieted somewhat.

On the third day, I sat with my Saathi (my partner in the peer support program that Sahiyo is piloting) and I talked to her about ways I might shift my activism from “behind the scenes” to being more public. I was still anxious, but sharing with her also made me feel brave.

After the retreat I spent a few hours hanging out with another participant. She commented that I’d seemed grounded the whole weekend and I told her that I was good at wearing a calm mask. In fact, I had dissociated a little during some of the sessions, missing bits of the conversation and activity instructions. While I’ve long known that this is one of my coping strategies, saying it aloud to her, to another Bohri woman, was powerful in a way I couldn’t name right then.

But, after a week of reflection, I can name it now: the Sahiyo facilitators created an intentional space of respect and safety, and then twenty-one feminist Bohri women stepped into it. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.  

This was what was so incredibly powerful for me.  And so healing.

For the second year, Sahiyo and StoryCenter will collaborate to host a 3-day in-person, U.S. based digital storytelling workshop from September 20th-22nd, 2019 for survivors of Female Genital Cutting/Mutilation (FGM/C) and/or those who come from FGM/C practicing communities and are advocates against it. This year’s workshop will take place in Asheville, North Carolina and will be supported by Threads Weaving Dreams.

 To apply, fill out this form to be selected as one of the storytellers for this workshop.

 In 2018, Sahiyo and StoryCenter brought together nine women from across the United States to create personalized digital stories that narrate experiences of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). These women, who differ in identity and experience, each shared a personal story addressing a different challenge with FGM/C. The collection that resulted was called Sahiyo Stories and the digital stories were woven together with a united sentiment and a joint hope that the stories would build a critical mass of voices from within FGM/C-practicing communities, calling for the abandonment of this harmful practice.

Building from the first digital storytelling workshop, this second iteration will be called Voices to End FGM/C and will seek to gather 8 people from across the United States who are connected to the issue of FGM/C to come together in a workshop dedicated to healing and creating, through sharing their personal stories. 

Space is limited to 8 participants, and travel scholarships are available. The application will close on June 30th. Apply here. 

View sample stories from our previous work with survivors of FGM/C, and check out Sahiyo’s blog posts about the first digital storytelling workshop, the Sahiyo Stories project. 

If you have any questions, please get in touch with Amy Hill, from StoryCenter, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; or Mariya Taher, from Sahiyo, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

By Xenobia

Country of Residence: India

Earlier this year in January, I attended the Sahiyo’s Activist Retreat in Mumbai, where I met some brilliant, fantastic people from all walks of life. Women shared their experiences, stories and life-lessons, and talked about how female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) had impacted their lives, either directly or indirectly, and what they were doing about it. 

Shortly after I returned home to Pune, my mind was filled with a bunch of ideas that involved reaching out to more Bohra women, hearing about their experiences with the community in general, and speaking to more women of substance. One of the training sessions at the Sahiyo Activist Retreat was on how to host one’s own ‘Thaal Pe Charcha’ (TPC, loosely translated as ‘discussions over food’).

Representational photo of Thaal Pe Charcha cuisine

Thaal Pe Charcha is a flagship Sahiyo program that brings Bohra women together in an informal, private space, so that they can bond over traditional Bohra cuisine while discussing FGM/C and other issues that affect their lives.

I felt that the next logical step for me was to host my very own TPC. It would give me the opportunity to meet and talk to more women from my city about certain community-centric issues that affect all our lives.

Even though I have never really been an activist myself, I knew of Sahiyo, and the cause that they have been fighting for. I admired and respected them, and I had silently been fighting for the same cause all my life, too. 

Did I have my fair share of apprehensions? I absolutely did. And why wouldn’t I?

In a closely-knit community like ours, where one person’s word is law, it is so hard to try to reason with women and mothers, to give them more clarity by pleading with them to not hurt their children. Often, they never seem to be able to see beyond how you are “going against the community” or “against Moula”, even though the point has never been about that. There is a fine line between following someone and blind faith. No matter which country you are in, child abuse is still child abuse, irrespective of what you choose to call it or who performs it.

For my TPC, I managed to invite a few women for lunch – a mix of friends, cousins, acquaintances and colleagues. It was also the first time I had ever hosted a Bohra get-together by myself, without the usual family members around to really help me. So for me, that itself was a personal milestone. Strangely, I felt it brought me a step closer to warmly embracing other nicer aspects of our culture – getting people together, bonding over food, and discussing the many facets of our little world.

The conversations bordered around what each one was doing in their lives, professionally and otherwise. We discussed issues such as soft-feminism, journalism, opinions on certain movies and the debate on whether wives should take their husbands’ surnames after they are married. For a couple of the women who attended, FGM/C was a new concept they had never spoken about before. They asked questions about why it is performed, when they heard of it, and why we needed to stop practicing it on the next generation, especially since conversations around this topic have always been taboo for some strange, secretive reason in our community. The younger minds agreed that all customs with no solid reasoning usually always die a natural death, because no one likes doing things without a valid reason.

Having access to the right answers and accurate information definitely helped each of them in getting more clarity on the topic, even though not every single person wanted to necessarily talk about their personal experience. It is still daunting to talk about something so personal in front of a bunch of strangers.

But for me personally, it was important that the topic was at least touched upon, so that other women realise that this is a safe, non-judgemental place and that they could reach out to me if they wanted to speak about anything that bothered them at all. Apart from that, I do enjoy bringing new people together and nurturing relations with those I care about. So all in all, this was extremely special to me.

While this event was still pretty small-scale, I would love to host and be a part of bigger TPCs eventually, where more women can come together and share their stories, opinions and ways to raise awareness about the harms caused by the practice in question, and how we can all work together to promote the abandonment of FGM/C and save the many generations of girls and women in the future from physical, mental, emotional and psychological damage.

By Anonymous

 Country of Residence: United States

 Age: 45 years old

I often wondered what the two women closest to me thought about khatna. I wondered because I never really talked with my sister or my mom about it. Well, we talked, but not with much purpose. I thought they were against it, just like me. I told them that I was going to a Sahiyo Activist Retreat where I would meet other Bohri women who are against khatna, otherwise known as female genital cutting. They said okay.

At the retreat, I realized that before I advocate publicly, I needed to process my own situation privately. I had khatna performed on me when I was young. I have not talked much about it. My story is much like most. I was probably under 10 years old at the time. Seems like most remember it being done when they were seven. Perhaps that was also the age when it was done to me. I was playing outside with a friend. I’m not sure what we were playing, but it seemed like a normal day and I was doing something perfectly normal. An aunt called out and said we were going somewhere. Was I to go get ice cream? I remember not wanting to leave my playmate and crying. I was taken to a relative’s home not too far from where we lived. It’s been decades, but the memory is vivid. We walked up the stairs. There were two women at the house. One held my hand. The other pulled down my panties. I remember crying. It drowned out what was happening to me.

A sharp pain. Blood. Blade. That’s what I remember. I don’t remember how I got home.

For the next few days, I remember the pain. I could not walk properly. I was sore. I walked with my legs apart, afraid of scraping the area that hurt.

Time moved on. And I suppressed my memory of what happened.

Years later, we heard of an African woman talking about FGM in the news. We all were outraged. A cousin told me that what happened to us when we were young was FGM. What? I was surprised. And somewhat glad. Because I was able to finally understand what happened when I was younger. Khatna was FGM. It was like solving a mystery of my life.

Life went on. I became sexually active and curious. Sex hurt and orgasm was hard. I asked my doctors about it. Most of them did not know. I asked my gynecologist to check me out. They said they saw a nick, but nothing much. Nothing much.

I often wonder if it is in my head if the pain I feel is because of something else. The pain is sharp. And, when certain parts are touched, it is unforgiving.

There is so much silence around khatna that there is not a good understanding of the harm to women. I do not know if I am the only one, or if there are others who feel this way. Are there others like me who are suffering from khatna decades later? Are there others like me who can’t have healthy sexual relationships with their husbands? Are there others like me suffering in silence?

After coming back from the retreat, I talked to my mom about my experience with khatna. She was surprised to know that it had impacted me long-term. I was surprised to learn that she was not impacted by it at all. I also talked to my sister. She said that she blindly follows the Bohri teachings and is neutral on the issue. And, like my mom, it has not impacted her long- term. I thought my sister would automatically be against it. But I was wrong.

Next day, I recapped the story to my husband, who does not share my religion. While he was sympathetic, his anger turned into islamophobic rhetoric and a focus on my “crazy” culture. There are so many “crazy” cultures, and perhaps mine is another use case for patriarchy.

I don’t hate my culture, the people who performed khatna on me, or the people who defend the practice. I want the judgment to stop. I want the fear to stop. I want to create a safe place for conversation and understanding.

I know there is work to do to change attitudes about khatna. I learned that the work is much closer to home than I thought.