I remember the events of that night rather too clearly, the evading thoughts stuck too closely to me that they scarred me, the night of my tenth birthday.

“It is time,” Aunty Fatima, the lady that helped women during deliveries had said.

She came toward me with a daunting smile. I could perceive the smell of Masa as she led me out and my mother hurried behind us. Like a lamb led to slaughter, I walked quietly in a sullen manner.

Aunty Fatima had lost her smile and in its place was a mask of skillfulness. She has done this before, I could tell. She brought a razor blade from a calabash and scraped it against a stone. I felt a shudder as two women jumped on the first unsuspecting girl and led her inside a room. She screamed, jumping and sprawling on dirt. I was next in line.

The room was cold and dark and I watched Aunty Fatima clean off the blood and rust from the razor on an old rag. My insides churned when I saw the young girl that had been led in before me, on the floor laying still. Some older women were dabbing the floor of her blood and the stench oozed.

That was when the surge of anguish blurted out in a loud cry from me. I was held still and my legs opened wide. Aunty Fatima used that razor and tore out the flesh of my clitoris, it was brief yet concentrated before being widely diffused into stinging bits to every inch of my being.

I was writhing in my blood as the rush of crimson red blood soaked my gown. I screamed and wrenched, the pain was unearthing and it disarmed my members. I was going to die, I could feel it. My eyes blurred dimly as my voice croaked in fresh pain.

“The blood is too much, we might lose her,” Aunty Fatima said in a coherent Hausa language. My head spurned as I thought about death. I was too young to die forgotten and in the cold hands of a barbaric practice. I had to stay alive and talk about this, to bring this menace to an end and so I struggled to purge out the words of pain within me. I was buried in my blood, weak dismembered, and in gruesome pain but I survived.