That Takes Ovaries! (25 page)

I wanted nothing to do with either the marriage or the so-called
circumcision, so with the help of my sister, and my mother from afar, I fled that very day.

But all that is just background. My story here is about something else entirely. It isn’t about how I thought America would be my refuge, or how I arrived at the Newark airport and asked for political asylum, or how I was sent to prison instead, to wait (wait and wait and wait, like other refugees) until a judge could hear my case. No, my story is about resistance and holding on to one’s Self in the face of cruelty, and it goes like this….

Kim was evil. She was the corrections officer on duty the night I was brought, shackled, straight from the New Jersey airport to prison. She was the one who conducted my strip search, the first of many. I had my period at the time, and now, naked and humiliated, I meekly asked, “What should I do with my [soiled] pad?” She ignored me, until I asked again. Then she barked, “Why don’t you
eat it.”

That was Kim.

Kim worked the night shift. When she did her midnight count she didn’t just come into our dorm cell and count bodies; she pinched, slapped, and startled each sleeping woman, one at a time. Kim.

I had been in prison a few weeks already and had come to know the million rules, including “No showering before 6:00 A.M. wake up.” So, like the others, I didn’t. But I did get up at 5:00 to recite Muslim words and wash parts of my body in preparation for first prayer. It was an important ritual in my religion, and something I had done every day since I was a child. Kim was still on night duty at 5:00 A.M., and one morning she rushed into our cell screaming, not caring that women around her were sleeping.

“Turn that water off! No showering until six.”

Surprised, I looked up at her, “I’m not showering, I’m preparing for prayer.”

I was nowhere near the shower; she could see that. I was standing in a totally separate location, at the sink, with all my clothes on, washing and silently reciting holy words.

Kim, ugly with anger, stormed toward me, turned off the water faucet, and left. I was almost finished, so I turned the water back on.

“Turn it off, I said,” she yelled.

I was done by then, so I did.

The next morning, when I began my washing prayer, she rushed into the room, “Off!”

Again, I was obviously fully dressed. “But it’s for my prayers.”
She has to understand there is someone called God, and she must have heard about prayer,
I thought.

“No showering until six.”

I stayed cool, unruffled: “I’m washing for prayer. I’m not
showering.”

“No
washing
until six.”

She was changing the rule. There may have been a million rules, all meant to control prisoners’ every move, but this one was about showering, not washing. I stood my ground. God was too important to me to stop my prayers for a whimsical change of the rules.
I’ll ignore her,
I thought.
She’s just being mean, as usual.

“I’m sorry. To pray, this is what I have to do.”

Kim thought differently. She grabbed me, handcuffed me, and snarled, “I’m taking you to seg.”

Segregation. My prison friends, loving and generous women who were more seasoned than I, had warned me about it, told me I never wanted to experience it.

She brought me through a dizzying number of hallways, opened one of the many metal doors, pushed me into a tiny cell, and locked me up, alone, in a concrete box. A metal bed, sink, and toilet, no more. No phone calls, no TV, no contact with humanity. The miniscule window on the door was too small to see anything.
Where am I? Is this the America I’d heard so much about?

I was stunned, horribly scared, and cold. The cell was freezing, the lighting harsh. I couldn’t stop thinking,
This can’t be. How long will it last; how long will they keep me here? A few hours maybe; then they’ll let me out. Right?
With nothing to do, my mind whirled round and round,
Why? Why? What did I do?

I was being punished, but I had no idea for how long.
Hours, days, two weeks, a month?
I was served three meals a day, but besides that had no way of telling the passage of time. Lights off, day one ended. Lights on, day two began. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t exist. It was too painful to fathom what was going on.
Okay, I’m not here.
I cried so much there was nothing left inside. I was hollow. Day three, four, then five, and they came to get me. Five days, long enough to bring me close to madness.

I later found out I was lucky. Isolation can last months, even years, in American prisons, sometimes as a form of punishment, often for seemingly arbitrary things. Like being forgotten. I don’t know for sure if I
was
forgotten, but it certainly seemed that way. It happened when I was eighteen; after an inconclusive TB test, the prison quarantined me. They locked me in a tiny room and seemed to forget I existed. I was scared for my life.

Am I sick? Shouldn’t they be giving me medicine?
They passed meal trays through a slot in the door, but nobody would talk to me. No one explained what was going on. Days and days of being alone passed.
What kind of bad dream is this? Am I going to wake up?
Weeks went by, and my time in that cell turned into a complete blank. I remember only bits and pieces, like when I stood in front of the metal sheet that passed as a prison mirror and watched myself say, “Oh, Fauziya, you’re not going crazy. Everything will be okay,” only to hear myself demand a minute later for God to take me, take me now! I flipped back and forth between elation and despair, out-of-control laughter and sobs.
I’m definitely going out of my mind.
Finally, after I lost it and screamed my head off, they let me out. It’d been twenty days of crazed, mind-numbing isolation—something no one should have to go through.

Earlier, when I was released from my
first
experience in isolation (the five-day stint for washing), my heart was filled with hatred. I was brought before a prison official.

“Number Seven Six One?”

“Yes.” I was so nervous.

“You broke the rules and fought with an officer,” he said.

What?
Not true, but the truth—justice—didn’t count in prison.

“Your sentence is five days in segregation. You have already served your sentence. Return to your dorm.”

The prison official didn’t let me say anything. But I was free to go back to my dorm, back to my cellmates.

The very next morning I was up at 5:00 A.M.
The fact that I am in prison doesn’t mean you can stop me from praying.
I turned the water on just a trickle and washed as quietly as I could. Maybe Kim heard, maybe not. From then on that was how I washed for prayers every morning. I was scared of being caught and taken to isolation again, yet at the same time I didn’t want them to win. I was willing to take the risk; my religion was a big part of who I was, part of my Self and not something I would easily give up. I now knew if they sent me back, I might go crazy but I wouldn’t die—and I could still continue to pray in there.

It took sixteen months before I won political asylum. In a landmark, precedent-setting decision, I was the first woman to be granted asylum by the INS’s Board of Immigration Appeals for fleeing a forced genital mutilation. Now, when I look back, I think something must have gotten into me in prison. All the things I did, I don’t know how I did them. I often think, “Gosh, I really did that?” The answer is always the same:
Yes, that strong woman is me!

Personal commitment to a cause can take you far … but the fun really starts when you have a whole Babe Brigade at your side. Besides that, you accomplish more with a posse.

When a woman pools her talents with the energy of others, her ability to effect change increases exponentially. Most important, she is taken more seriously. One woman hangs out her window banging on a pot, everyone thinks she’s a wacko. Twenty do it, and people know something’s afoot.

These stories are about women and girls taking direct action with the support of a group. Estrogen-powered activism. When a legion of girls believes in a cause, an individual’s personal beliefs and sense of power are affirmed; her conviction that
Of course I will have an impact
grows. Optimism and hope can make—or lack of it can break—a movement. Working with others can also heighten understanding of the situation, offering both a reality check (sometimes difficult to obtain working alone) and an awareness of how the act fits into the larger scheme of things.

As these stories illustrate, collective activism can be born out of
the incredible bravery of a single female. Her independent rebellion gives rise to a larger one. So, in a sense, the division between the preceding chapter and this one is porous. They both show that when it comes to the end result—social change—the line between individual and collective activism blurs. Individual protests will have an impact on the larger society. And the general zeitgeist will influence individuals who are unaware a movement is stirring, yet who independently decide to take a stand regarding some personal belief.

In these stories we see the varied roles a girl agitator can play within a group. The ringleaders relay how their one match starts a bigger fire. Others are early participants, adding dry twigs to make the flame grow. Some sign on later, blowing oxygen and bringing the fire to a roaring blaze.

Whatever role a woman plays in an effort to provoke change, it is important. Whether she immediately succeeds is less so—because she can always try again! And with so many other riot-girls involved, who’d want to miss the party?

I am a member of the Washington, D.C., Lesbian Avengers, a nonviolent, direct-action group of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women organizing for dyke survival and visibility. For anyone not familiar with the Lesbian Avengers, we were founded in 1992 in New York City as a space for queer women to be active outside traditional male-dominated (and by extension, often sexist) political groups. By
direct action
we mean the mobilization of bodies in the streets: marching and picketing versus letter writing or lobbying. Our actions usually combine civil disobedience with equal parts street theater. We don’t apply for permits because we don’t ask permission. We take our shirts off at demonstrations because our bodies are not obscene.
We offer women a much-needed opportunity to kick that “nice girls don’t” socialization in the ass.

Still, we aren’t without our soft, romantic side either. To illustrate this, let me tell you about an action we did one Valentine’s Day at the Family Research Council (FRC). The FRC is a conservative Christian organization based in D.C. They lobby the federal government for a return to legally imposed “family values.” In other words, a rollback of most of the legislative and social gains made by gays, lesbians, and straight women in the last thirty years. Just before our action, FRC had also announced that it would raise money to put a series of advertisements on television claiming that homosexuality is a dangerous disease, and that gays and lesbians can be “healed” by becoming born-again Christians.

Is it any wonder that we wanted to send them a little love?

On Friday, February 12, a small group of Avengers walked into the FRC building’s main lobby. About half of us were dressed like cupids. We were wearing pink gauze wings, little white tutus, and combat boots. We were, for the most part, bare breasted. Considering it was February, this was something of a chore, but we had never seen a fully clothed cupid, and we are nothing if not sticklers for authenticity. Besides, the FRC believes that modesty, chastity, and a graceful submission to her lawfully wedded husband are the chief virtues of a woman, and, well, we don’t. We also brought with us a bouquet of flowers and a large red valentine heart that read: