Desert Cut (22 page)
“You crazy?” he yelled, his accent faint. “We do not associate with animals like that! Why you think we move here in the first place?”
He slammed the door in my face.
Giving up on the hostile Jokabi, I next tried the Maranji family. They lived in a peeled-paint duplex where the front yard was littered with broken children’s toys, and the only vehicle in evidence was a rusty Chevy Cutlass that had once been blue. In the neighboring yard, a pit bull growled from a chain attached to a laundry pole.
A young woman wearing a bright dashiki and carrying a pink-wrapped baby answered the Maranji’s door. “Yes?”
Keeping my nose out of door-slam reach, I started my spiel.
Halfway through, she interrupted me. “These are things we do not talk about. We are Americans now.”
“I understand, but the girl they call Precious Doe died because of this procedure. Perhaps other girls in town have, too. If you’ve heard anything at all, please tell me.”
She studied my face, then nodded. “I saw you on the television this morning when you told that reporter woman about Dr. Wahab. When you walked away, that woman went over to his house and asked ugly things. Other television people did, too. I watched it all, right here from my living room.”
For the first time, a smile touched her lips. “It made me laugh. You wonder why I am so happy at that? My husband works for Dr. Wahab. He is a bad man, that one.” She glanced up and down the street, taking in the boys shooting hoops next door, the girls riding their bicycles along the sidewalk. She shifted the baby on her shoulder and stood aside. “You come in. We talk.”
Encouraged, I entered the house. In a small but tidy living room decorated with African carvings and masks, twin boys wearing matching jeans and shirts played with a Game Boy.
Their mother reached over and turned the game off. “Go to your room.”
“Aw, Mom!”
“You heard what I said.”
“As soon as we finish this game.” A wheedling whine.
“Now!”
Grumbling, the boys stalked off.
“Good-looking kids,” I offered.
She sat down and motioned for me to do the same. “They are not respectful. In some ways, the old customs are best.”
“But not all?”
She kissed the top of her baby’s head. “This cutting of which you speak, that is a wicked custom I was happy to leave behind. To perform such evil on a little girl, it is a great sin.” She kissed the baby again. “Such a thing will never happen to my Caroline. My husband has given his word. Unlike Dr. Wahab, he is a good man.”
I studied my notes. “You came here, what, ten years ago?”
“When I was twenty, yes. I did not have my boys yet.” At my expression, she smiled. “They are only eight.”
“Big for their age.”
Her smile grew broader. “Children do not starve to death in America or die so much from AIDS. And your wars, you fight them other places.”
Goody for us.
I wasn’t here to discuss the benefits of living in America as opposed to anywhere else, so I brought her back to the subject at hand. “Mrs.Maranji, do you know anything about the woman called the Cutter?”
She caressed her daughter’s black, silken hair. “That thing, it always happened to the girls in my tribe. There is a ceremony and when the cutting is finished, the grandmothers who guarded us all night so that we would not run away, sing that we are now women.” Gazing at her child’s innocent face, she added, “My good friend, Esiankiki, she died beside me on the cutting mat. So did Chanya and Na’Zyia.”
I realized, then, what she was saying. “You lived through it.”
Before she answered, she kissed her baby again. “Yes. But many mothers cried that night.”
Then why did they have their daughters butchered in the first place,
I wanted to yell, but I already knew the answer. An impure girl was a worthless girl.
“This Cutter, the one who lives in Los Perdidos. Do you know her name?”
To my disappointment, she shook her head. “Her name is never spoken. She is just called the Cutter.”
“If I wanted to contact her, how would I begin?”
The baby made a gurgling noise and spewed some foam. Her mother smiled. “My pretty,” she cooed, kissing the tiny forehead. “My so very, very pretty girl.”
“Mrs. Maranji? Where can I find this woman?”
“There is a place where some of our people meet in what they call a discussion group, but I do not know if that woman attends. Someone will know, perhaps one of those who do not care for the customs here. These people, they plan to return to Africa once they are rich.”
At my exclamation, she said, “American money goes far in Africa. On what my husband makes at the chemical plant, they will live like kings, and in Kenya, where I was born, the men can have as many wives as they want.” She scowled. “These people who meet at this place I tell you about, many of them think it shameful that an American man is allowed only one wife.”
The people she was talking about didn’t know about Arizona’s polygamists and their ten-wife families. If they ever found out, it could save them plane fare.
***
Following Mrs. Maranji’s directions, I soon found Los Perdidos Unitarian Church. After wading through a crowd of well-dressed parishioners, an elderly man directed me to the church secretary. “Barbara knows everything that goes on around here.”
Somehow I doubted that.
A few minutes later, after most of the parishioners drifted away, Barbara, a middle-aged woman with a comforting voice and just-as-comforting waistline, showed me the outbuilding where the Middle Eastern Discussion Group met.
“They won’t get together again until next Friday, after prayers,” she said. “Our book club’s meeting there tonight, though, if you’re interested. Seven o’clock, drop-ins welcome. They’re discussing
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
, by Lisa See. It’s about foot-binding in old China.”
Great. More horrors perpetrated against little girls. I thanked her anyway, explaining that my choice of reading seldom made the book club list. “Actually, I’m looking for an African group, not a Middle Eastern group.”
“One and the same, frequently. Muslims of all different colors and cultures, united by faith. It would be nice if we Christians could say the same thing about ourselves, wouldn’t it?”
This wasn’t the time for a debate on the relative merits of ecumenism, so I simply asked, “Do you know who leads the discussion group?”
“That would be Dr. Moustafa Abdou.”
Another Egyptian with a PhD. Didn’t that country have any dropouts? “Don’t tell me. He works at the chemical plant, right?”
She nodded. “Head of research. A nice man, if a bit, well, old-fashioned about women’s place in the world.” She smiled as if it didn’t matter.
After a few more moments of chat, she gave me his address, adding that if he couldn’t help me, to try his wife. “Mrs. Abdou knows what’s going on in town, more so than her husband.”
The Abdou’s house was right down the street from the Wahab’s house where a lone media truck was still camped in front, the brunette reporter who’d attempted to interview me, standing on their doorstep. At first glance, the Wahabs didn’t appear to be home.
The reporter didn’t let the silence deter her. “Dr. Wahab!” she yelled, waving her mike while the cameraman zeroed in on the house. “Is it true that CPS has taken custody of your daughter?”
A face flashed in front of the window, then disappeared.
Encouraged, the reporter moved forward with the cameraman. “Did they take custody because you were about to have your daughter circumcised?”
There was that damned inaccurate word again,
circumcised
. Wouldn’t the media ever get it right?
With all the fuss on the street, I figured my visit with Dr. Moustafa Abdou was doomed, so with no hope of success, I rang the doorbell. To my surprise, the door opened immediately and a stern face resembling a particularly handsome pharaoh peered out.
“Enter. Quickly. Before that television creature sees.”
I scuttled inside.
Dr. Abdou’s house was larger than the Wahab’s, and sported a collection of silk Persian carpets that would put most museums to shame. Their vivid reds, blues, and golds blazed up from the underlying marble tile, while more carpet pieces in the form of plush toss pillows accented matching white sofas. Above the tall fireplace, a life-sized, full-body painting of Dr. Abdou frowned down on the room. This was a humorless man, and proud of it.
“So you think you will now make trouble for the Abdou family as you did for the Wahabs?” he growled.
Since it was always a mistake to back down from serious men, I replied, “Only if you deserve it. Do you?”
He fell silent for a moment, then clapped his hands three times and shouted something in Arabic. Immediately, as if they had been lurking around the corner, a woman of around Dr. Abdou’s age appeared, wearing a long
abayah
with a matching
hijab
that covered her hair. Behind her trailed five girls ranging from around six years old to a gum-chewing pre-teen. They wore jeans, but like their mother, their heads were covered by
hijabs
. All were giggling.
The sternness left Dr. Abdou’s face, but after a brief internal struggle, he regained it. “Girls, comport yourselves with dignity.”
The giggling ceased. The grins did not.
Feeling in control now, Abdou pointed to me and said, “This person, to her great shame, is interested in your health. Tell her all is well so that she may go annoy someone else.”
The eldest snickered, then cracked her gum. “Yeah, yeah, we’re fine.”
“Kyra!” her mother admonished. “Apologize to your father for your poor manners.”
Kyra tucked her gum into her cheek and ducked her head toward her father the tiniest bit. “I apologize, Poppi.” To me, she said, “My parents wish me to tell you that all of the Abdou females are fine, with all body parts present and accounted for.”
“Kyra!” Dr. Abdou sounded outraged.
The girl shrugged. “We’ve been watching the news, Poppi, and besides, we already know about those awful Wahabs and what they did to Shalimar.”
Aghast, their mother ordered, “Kyra, go to your room. And take your sisters!”
Off they went in a flurry of giggles,
hijabs
flapping.
Their mother remained. Her scowl made Dr. Abdou look downright cheerful.
Ignoring her, Dr. Abdou said, “Is your husband aware that you are carrying on like this? Approaching strangers, asking unseemly questions?”
Without realizing it, he had just described the life of every private investigator. “I have no husband.”
“And probably never will!”
The barest of smiles flickered across Mrs. Abdou’s face.
“Thank you for that prediction, Dr. Abdou. Since you already know why I’m here, we might as well cut to the chase. Do you know who the Cutter is?”
He hissed, as if I had said a filthy word.
Mrs. Abdou walked up to her husband, put her hand, on his arm and said something in rapid Arabic. He answered in kind. She shook her head and said something else, this time in a tone as stern as his.
“I forbid it!” he yelled, in English.
Another spate of Arabic from her, and whatever she said made him gasp. He fled in the same direction as his daughters.
Her face calm, Mrs. Abdou watched him go. “Good. Now we can speak freely. But before we begin, would you like coffee?”
When I declined on the premise that I had already surpassed my caffeine allotment for the day, she gestured me to a seat. “First, you must understand I
know
nothing.”
I’d played this game before, and was comfortable with it. “Then just tell me what you suspect.”
Parameters drawn, Mrs. Abdou said, “There has been talk of a woman, an African, who clings to the old ways. We Abdous, of course, have contempt for such barbarism, but people like the Wahabs, who believe they can make money off their daughters, they are dirt. In our country, this
cutting
, as they call it, is said to benefit young women because it focuses their minds on Allah, not the pleasures of the flesh.”
I didn’t challenge this monstrous philosophy, since it was not hers. Out of cultural solidarity, she had felt it necessary to mount a token defense.
Her next words confirmed my suspicions. “As you know, the procedure is now illegal in Egypt, which is as it should be. However…” She paused, searching again.
I waited. She wanted to be frank, but hadn’t yet figured out how.
Her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles whitened, she resumed. “However, few are in agreement with the new law, which is never enforced, anyway. Parents believe that without the procedure, their daughters will become wild and bring disgrace to the family. Also, they worry that an uncut girl cannot make a good marriage. You realize that the Middle Eastern attitude toward marriage is different than the West’s?” She made it a question.
I nodded. “In America we marry for love.” And divorce as soon as the glow wears off.
Her smile matched my cynicism. “To Muslims, marriage is an arrangement that benefits both families, the bride’s and the groom’s, not simply the young people themselves. This is an entirely different philosophy from yours.”
I drummed my fingers on the sofa’s arm rest. “I understand all that and am sympathetic to cultural differences unless it involves butchering little girls. Now, could you please tell me about the Cutter?”
“Very well. Since you are in such a hurry—another problem with America, if you will allow me to say—I tell you that this African woman does not attend prayers or our woman’s discussion group. Perhaps she does not feel comfortable with us. As I have said, I do not know her, just
of
her. They say she lives near the Safeway, with her brother, his wife, and their children. Her first name is something like Deeke or Seike. I forget. When she is spoken of, which is not often, she is merely called the Cutter.”
My disappointment grew. “You don’t know her last name?”
“Sorry.” Now it was her turn to fidget. She plucked at her
hijab
, drawing it closer around her face. For the first time I realized how uncomfortable she was with our conversation.
“How can I find her, then?”
“Los Perdidos is no crowded Cairo, so why should the search be difficult? I hear that the wife is tall and fat, but the husband short and skinny like his sister. There have been many jokes about this. There are four children, all boys. A good thing, do you not agree?”
