Radi remains unmarried, so Zaina, his fiancée, agreed to host Modi, Mani, and him for coffee, cakes, and conversation, supervised by her father, Mahmoud bin Samir. Zaina has just poured the coffee.
Modi (Moderate): Radi, this young vision’s coffee is so good you need to marry her before others find out.
Radi (Radical): Don’t say things like that in front of her. She will be after me now for days.
Mani (Mainstream): And well she should. We thought you two would be married last year.
Modi: It is not good for men to be unmarried.
Radi: I have heard all of that. Why can’t you guys let me alone about that?
Mani: Just think of all of the young men who would like to be in your place. You have a woman whom you love and who obviously loves you. And you just sit there. Zaina is a great catch. Why she wastes her time with you, I just do not know. You should be bouncing babies on your knee.
Modi: Yes. I have heard that Zaina had dozens of suitors and could have been happily married with nice kids by now. And there you are.
Mani: One of my cousins was head over heals with a young girl who helped her father with his shop, but he does not have a job and no income, so he could not talk to her family about marriage and could not even talk to her. Her father married her to that old fart that has the vegetable cart. He must be 60 if he is a day.
Modi: Oh, yes, I know who you mean. She does not look like a young girl any more. Sad.
Zaina: It is our tradition unfortunately. But what kind of life would a young bride have if she married for love but her husband could not find work and could not house her or feed her.
Modi: Radi has a job and can afford a wife and kids. He drives me crazy. I too had a cousin who was heart broken. He had a little sister whom he loved more than life itself. His father was from the old school and thought that a marriage contract for her when she was only eleven was great, something worthy of bragging.
Mani: Don’t tell me. . . .
Modi: Yes, before my cousin could do anything, his father fulfilled the contract, and his little sister was taken away, kicking and screaming. Her husband was in his fifties.
Mani: That poor little girl. She should be playing with dolls.
Radi: You two people are nuts. There was nothing wrong with marrying a girl of eleven. Aisha was younger than that when she married the Prophet (peace be upon him), and she was betrothed to someone else before that. Our Shi‘ite brethren have established nine years as the marriageable age for girls.
Zaina: I always wondered how some people can do their ablutions five times per day and still remain dirty old men.
Mani: To tell the truth, although I love my little nieces and nephews, I really can’t stand being around them for more than a few minutes at a time. How can an older man look at some tyke playing in a sandbox as a wife? What in hell is the matter with our people?
Modi: It is an old tradition. Arabs have always wanted younger girls for their wives, even after our Prophet (pbuh) chose, as his first wife, someone fifteen years his senior.
Zaina: Ah, but she was rich. There is something about gold that makes some folks look a lot younger.
Mani: Yep. I was drinking some of Modi’s Saudi coffee and happened to mention to Barma, my wife, that the more I drink of that good stuff, the younger she looked. Then she ran out of the house. When I caught up with her and asked where she was going, she said to get some more Saudi coffee. (Zaina had to laugh at that; Modi smiled)
Modi: I would like to ask Zaina a question, Radi. (Radi nodded)
Zaina, what about your cousin down the street? She was supposed to be married, but something went wrong. What happened?
Zaina: Mutilation, Modi, mutilation. You wonderful guys have been talking about going to the USA and taking us with you. I would like to stay here and try to teach our young girls. I cannot do anything with the old ones.
Mani: That is a nice thing to do. But what about the young bride-to-be here?
Zaina: It was butchered so bad it just could not be undone. Any attempt at undoing it led to excruciating pain and screaming.
Modi: What about hospitals here?
Zaina: European medical teams have found that in some areas, 60 to 70 percent of women have been “circumcised.” It is a huge problem all over Iraq.1 The teams have accomplished great things while here, but they cannot cure everyone.
Modi: I assume that not only has too much been cut away, but the unsanitary conditions in the procedures and the unprofessional and sometimes bizarre stitching have led to scar tissue that results in impossible odds of repairing.
Zaina: That is what happened here. All of this has been outlawed, and even many imams have declared it is illegal within the religion, but the old know-nothing hags know nothing else but how to cook, sew, and circumcise their granddaughters. Sometimes I think that is their main purpose in life. They use an old, weak Hadith with no credibility as their justification. No wonder some of the Bedouins toss them out to starve.
Mani: Perhaps the Americans will take an interest in what they call FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and do some studies on how best to repair it.
Zaina: Look how quiet Radi is. I have told him that removing Saddam has been good fortune for Iraq women. He does not want to hear the Americans are good for us. Yet he wants to go there.
Mani: Logic-tight compartments.
Zaina: The Americans and the Europeans and even the Asians have been very good about coming here and helping us, even to the point of repairing it for as many patients as they could see. (Modi and Mani noted tears starting in her eyes.) Little girls dying of blood poisoning, just barely getting to a hospital in time.
Mani: My wife Barma had said a few times that it would be wonderful if our little girls could grow up away from these disgusting old men who keep the rules from changing because of a belief many others do not have. In our Prophet’s (pbuh) time, city people sent their boys to Bedouin camps for years to be brought up by the brave, cruel, and unyielding nomads.
Modi: So you are now advocating sending our little girls to America or somewhere to learn how to be sweet, pretty, little girls.
Zaina: And then you would bring them back here to Iraq, unprepared for the cruelty and savagery of some of our institutionalized slavery factories. What about a family calling their 12-year-old back after four wonder-years in the USA and then telling her they have a contract of marriage with someone over fifty? You teach her how beautiful the world can be and then show her she is nothing but meat.
Modi: We must redo the country, Zaina. But we cannot do it all at once. There are too many people against any type of change or reform.
Zaina: And if both you and your wives leave, that means four people are lost to us; four people who understand the problem and could do something, anything, to help.
Mani: Radi’s friends are bad enough, Zaina, but when you add the officials, the radical imams, and the people who will do nothing to help themselves or anyone else, it is not just swimming upstream. It is swimming upstream with teams of bears in the water waiting for us.
Zaina: I guess you guys will have to become imams. You must do something special to help. You do not have a choice. You love your country and your people—and your little nieces to come. We cannot sacrifice any more to the Neanderthals.
Modi and Mani look at each other. Radi just shrugged his shoulders.
Modi: Well, Mani, this looks like the beginning. . . .
Mani: Oh, shut up!
HJS
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