A Rite of Passage -- Or Mutilation?

By Jill Smolowe

The images came so rapidly that TV viewers scarcely had time to consider what they were about to witness. After CNN senior correspondent Christiane Amanpour warned that the following footage would be "very hard to watch," the TV camera cut to a home in Egypt's Sayedda Zeinab slum, where 10-year-old Nagla Hamza peered into the lens, her dark eyes excited and anxious. Cut to a crowded living room, where relatives smiled and ululated in celebration. As a voice-over explained that no sanitary precautions would be taken, no anesthetic applied, Nagla was tilted onto her back by two men -- a plumber and / a florist -- and her legs prodded into the air in a wide V. While the florist cradled her from behind, the plumber wrapped Nagla's hands around her ankles. Then the plumber quickly leaned in between Nagla's legs and cut off her clitoris with a pair of barber's scissors. The girl barely had time to emit her first gasp of pain before her legs were lowered and her mutilated genitalia were bound with rags. Only then did she find her voice. "Father! Father!" she shrieked. "A sin upon you. A sin upon you all!"

Nagla's outraged cry echoed high above the din of words spoken during the U.N. population conference that ended last week in Cairo. Female circumcision was part of an official agenda that included the subject of women's control over their sexual destinies, and CNN's shocking footage briefly dominated the dialogue among conference participants. It also left their Egyptian hosts angrily on the defensive.

Western delegates generally hailed the CNN footage as much needed publicity for a long-overlooked custom that is common in Egypt and other parts of Africa, though it has no roots in the Koran. But the Egyptian press denounced the tape as a betrayal of Cairo's gracious hospitality and tried to discredit the piece by charging that CNN had "staged" the circumcision and paid the participants. Actually, CNN paid $300 to a free-lance producer to find and make arrangements with the Hamza family, who in turn paid $44 to one of her aunts for serving as a go-between. "This wasn't a singular, aberrant event that we set out to sensationalize, and it wasn't our presence that caused the child physical jeopardy," says Steve Haworth, CNN vice president for public relations. When asked about the CNN segment, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak made the improbable statement that he thought the practice had disappeared in his country.

In fact, the Egyptian weekly Al-Wafd claims that several thousand Egyptian girls are circumcised daily at the hands of "hygenic barbers." In all, some 80% of Egyptian women have undergone circumcision, which serves no purpose beyond depriving females of sexual pleasure; Egyptian men believe this condition ensures their fidelity. While Egyptian law does not ban clitoridectomies, a ministerial decree issued in 1959 bans the procedure in facilities affiliated with the Health Ministry and permits only physicians to perform the surgery. Last week Egyptian authorities arrested Nagla's father, the free-lance producer and the two men who performed the procedure. So far, only the producer has been released. The others face charges of sexual abuse and practicing medicine without a license.

All this comes as a shock to Nagla's father, Hamza Sayed Eid, who told police he had never heard of CNN and claimed that he thought he was participating in a documentary on Islam. He also finds the uproar bewildering. As a Muslim, he believes he acted properly.

With reporting by Hadia Mostafa and Lara Marlowe/Cairo and Lisa H. Towle/Raleigh