Amira El-Noshokaty watches as the latest creative force against female genital mutilation is unleashed "We support you, Ms Nadia, no matter how much ignorance you face!" Thus ended Dunia, a play addressing female genital mutilation. FGM -- as defined by UNICEF's 2005 publication of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), is the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs. Generally practiced on girls, between four and 14 years of age, for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons, most often undertaken by midwives or barbers. The play revolves around a student who is subjected to FGM/C despite the pleas of her teacher -- Ms Nadia, herself a victim of FGM/C whose marital life suffered as a result. In the closing scene, both students and teachers go on strike in support of Ms Nadia. FGM/C is a highly traumatic experience involving excruciating pain; it can result in urine retention, ulceration of the genitals, injury to adjacent tissues, septicemia, infertility and obstructed labour. Other side-effects include shock, haemorrhaging and infections which could be potentially fatal. FGM/C is in violation of a range of human rights; it sustains health risks and life-threatening circumstances and jeopardises the right to bodily integrity; it proceeds in the absence of prior consent and constitutes discrimination based on gender. A Centre for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance (CEWLA) production, Dunia was written and performed by community members aged 18-25 in the low-income Cairo neighbourhood of Bulaq; the project was preceded by a symposium in which the participants were persuaded of the need to ban FGM/C, followed by an all-round theatre workshop. Khadija Taher, head of the CEWLA public theatre project, says, "we aim to reach a large cross section of people; that's why we chose the theatre as our means of communication." Presented three times in Bulaq and Upper Egypt, the play has been a great success: "Audience responses highlighted the impact of drama on development." It also inspired the local radio in Upper Egypt to produce a similarly oriented series. But in the end could this be the ideal tool with which to address the issue? Mohammed Salah, a participant, says yes: "I was all for FGM/C before I attended the workshop." It was mainly for religious reasons that he felt that way, but when authoritative religious figures, ones that he often watches on television joined the workshop and denounced it as neither righteous nor safe, Saleh changed his mind. "Some preachers recommend it in their Friday sermons," Taher explained, "but it's actually more of an African-Nile basin heritage." Salah also stressed the advantage of a play over a seminar in terms of grabbing people's attention and drawing in a larger audience. Many have rallied for Ms Nadia over the past decades -- national and international initiatives have denounced the practice through the 1990s; in 2006, during a conference at Al-Azhar, the mufti declared it un-Islamic and an incriminating act -- but some 100-140 million women now living, according to World Health Organisation estimates, have experienced FGM/C; up to three million girls are at risk annually in sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan and Egypt. More locally, Vivian Morqos, training officer at the FGM-Free Model Village, an affiliate of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), says that according to the last (2003) demographic survey, 97 per cent of the female population in the 15-49 age bracket in Egypt had experienced it. Yet this percentage does not reflect the whole picture, as far as the new generation is concerned. however, she adds: "In 2005, the Ministry of Health and Population conducted a national survey which showed a 50 per cent decrease in the practice among school girls in lower Egypt and a 60 per cent decrease in upper Egypt. Ironically, nowadays, 75 per cent of those in the medical field are the ones practising it, though it was Ali Ibrahim, a doctor, who first lobbied for banning FGM/ C in Egypt back in 1928," added Morqos. Along with misleading messages from the media, lack of awareness even among the educated and the cultured is to blame. But it is believed that transforming the issue into a political conflict over the female body -- indeed permitting any debate on it -- constitutes a setback. As Morqos puts it: "Incomplete information, unprofessional opinions and the notion that the practice is limited to grassroots communities are all instances of irresponsible misinformation." Together with the Donor Assistance Group (DAG) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), she explains, the FGM-Free Model Village project aims to cover 120 villages -- some villages in Upper Egypt have already signed a binding declaration. Awareness, she says, is the key, with doctors, media people, religious and community leaders all targeted. One media tool, besides theatre, involves filming real-life testimonies. Wahdunna (Alone), a documentary on Riham Shebl -- graduate student at the American University in Cairo, independent researcher, feminist and activist against FGM/C, but herself a victim -- was chosen to represent Egypt at the Documentary Film Festival, hosted and organised by the Museum of Television and Radio in Manhattan, New York, two months ago. Shebl regards the film, which she scripted and appeared in, as "therapeutic and cathartic and one way of reclaiming a body that is no longer voiceless and mutated". Shebl's awareness of the issue started back in 1997 during a class of literature and gender, in which Marie Assad, pioneer activist against FGM/C, asked, "who here is circumcised and would like to talk about it?" She recalls: "It hit me then that I had not been given the chance to utter the word, let alone talk about the experience." Already, at that point, she was uncomfortable with the media portrayal of FGM/C victims as sexually handicapped -- due to frigidity or trauma. After joining Assad's taskforce, Shebl's pent-up rage drove her to initiate her own activist project. Daily she would ride in women's carriages at the subway bearing anti-FGM/C posters. A year later Media House Productions asked her to do one of two documentaries funded by UNICEF: "For a long time FGM/C was associated with lack of education, a lower socio-economic background. This made it worse for upper- and middle-class women, because it became a double stigma; they were not only circumcised, but are also like the poor and the uneducated. That's why I dedicated this film to my own social class." Born and raised in Kuwait to a conservative family, Shebl's mother and grandmother had decided to have her circumcised during a summer break in Cairo, when she was seven. The operation was performed despite her father's disapproval, but it was a doctor who was commissioned to do it, for hygiene. "However, what killed me was that people were congratulating me; I did not know what for. I was faced with the same silence a year and a half later when I got my first period." Eventually Shebl managed to stop the practice in her family, saving all of her younger relations. Why is it so hard to break the habit, though? "Despite all serious efforts, the process is a bit slower than usual," Shebl responds. "I believe there isn't enough political commitment to eradicating FGM/C. When the government focused on family planning, television advertising was in great abundance. So why did it take them till 2003 to talk about it on television, listing it on the national agenda? Sexual education is also an important missing link," she concluded, "because people don't realise that desire begins in the brain, not the genitals."
