The tale behind women's circumcision

[Viking]

My dad wrote this piece for an East African magazine called Safari many years ago. I initially posted it on Somalinet two years ago and thought I should share it with my fellow Nomads.

 

 

The tale behind women's circumcision

 

The story of Arrawelo remains the best known of all Somali folk tales. A pre-Islamic pagan queen, it is she who ruled the entire Somali-speaking world at a time when the Somali sun god Ra- subsequently co-opted, it is said, by the ancient Egyptians-held sway as the supreme diety in the universe.

 

The exact locality in Somaliland of the pagan quuen`s fabled seat of power remains a mystery. But its whereabouts is still of much speculation, and there are in the Horn of Africa any number of ancient mounds and heaps of stone that one time or another have been claimed by local communities as marking the tomb and final resting place of Arrawelo.

 

The Queen`s notoriety stems from her unparelleled cruelty to men. Legend has it that as a girl Arrawelo was the unfortunate victim of a brutal rape. This so embittered her that she later came to power her long reign was given over wholly to exacting her revenge - on the entire male sex. In an uncompromising crusade, she set out to empower women through having all her male subjects forcibly castrated, so creating in Somaliland a whole generations of eunuchs.

 

Arrawelo, though, was haunted by misgivings that somewhere, some men might elude emasculation at her hands, and that one of their number would one day engineer her downfall. Accordingly, she introduced a strict code of precautionary dos and don'ts for women, including the infamous injunction that they were always to say NO when they actually meant YES, and YES when they meant NO. She is also said to have lectured women endlessly on how to maintain their dignity in the face of possible approaches by maverick men.

 

To flush out those few wily men whose intact manhood, she was convinced, posed a threat to her absolute rule, Arrawelo devised a series of seemlingly impossible demands and riddles, which - she belived - only such men would be able to solve. Thus on one occasion, the neurotic queen instructed a community of villagers to supply her with camel-load of fruits from the Lote tree, stipulating that the fruits be brought before her on the bare back of the animal without using any form of container.

 

Try as they might, the villagers could find no way of fulfilling this demand. For, no matter how balanced, the fruits would simply roll off again as soon as the camel was made to walk. The Queen, for a while, while berating the poor villagers on each failure, was secretly satisfied, all was well she thought, reasoning that the inhabitants of the village must indeed be either women or eunuchs. Then one day, to her surprise, she was told that a camel-load was waiting for her outside her chambers.

 

Her worst suspicions were soon confirmed, the feat had been orchestrated by one Oday Biqe, a reclusive village elder who had managed to get the fruits to stay in place by first smearing the camel`s back with a thick viscous mixture of bird lime and mud.

 

With the help of further layers of this sticky paste, baked hard in the sun, the fruits - piled high on the camel`s back - had easily withstood the rigours of the journey.

 

For his trouble, Oday Biqe was ruthlessly hunted down by Arrawelo`s knife-wielding minions, although in one version of the tale the old man died before the pursuing mob could do its worst. All the same, the offending organ was summarily cut from the dead man`s body and carried aloft to the savage queen as proof that her order had been carried out.

 

Arrawelo`s own secret fears - that an undocted male would bring about her demise - were to prove well-founded. For one night a youthful stepson of hers, who had long since fled for fear of being an example of and emasculated, returned in disguise and drove a spear into the old queen`s chest, thus putting and end to the perpetual misery of men.

 

After the Queen`s death, long suffering Somali men wasted no time in conspiring to get even with their womenfolk. Their immediate recourse was to introduce the practise of female circumcision, which they felt would forever serve to censure womankind for the untold misery that Arrawelo had once inflicted on the male sex. And so it is, the story goes, that many women, not just in Somalia but in many other lands as well are fated to go on paying the penalty for Queen Arrawelo`s legendary cruelty.

[Reality Check]

One flaw to the story.

 

The female circumcision started in ancient egypt, not Somalia.

 

But again, nice way of placing the blame back on women

[Tuujiye]

DA your right that ish is from egypt and alse wear but not from us somalis.

 

But viking I agree with you on everything alse..

[Baashi]

This folk tale had been included as part of the Somali curriculum (prior the civil war) - I don’t remember whether we took it in grade 6 or grade 7 in the elementary school. If I’m not mistaken, there was no mention of the circumcision or rape in Araweelo childhood. The moral of this folk tale, at least the version given in the Somali elementary school, was to stand up for the truth even if the consequence is death. In that version, Odey Biiq is working for Queen Araweelo to hunt down the brave men who are not afraid to expose the harshness of her rule and her unreasonable demands. I could be wrong though.

[OG_Girl]

DA your right that ish is from egypt and alse wear but not from us somalis.

 

Yeah right!!, Somalis are angels walking!

 

Salam

[Blessed]

^^ He's telling the truth sis. After all it is called the 'fircowni'.

[Tuujiye]

Thats right Ameenah..

 

OG waalagaa weenyahay ee wax maqal. Aloo yaa dhangadeeya oo yiraahada dhagaha qabso. :mad:

 

lol

 

Jaaw

[rudy-Diiriye]

hmm! i curse the pharaohs! why! why! actually, it was xatashpashut, one the pharoaph queens who came to the land of punt, stayed for years! and at time, this land was ruled by a queen...if u check the history books.

 

well basically, the king pharaoh died, his 14 old was suppose to inherit the throne, but the queen set up a diabolic plan for him to send him to a conquest to east africa so she can make here quest for the throne stronger!

 

she went there after 4 yrs to bless her new kingdom and ended with mucho treasures like precious stones, incesense and myrah!! which if u recall is what all the egyptian mummies were wrapped on!

 

WELL NO MORE CUTTING!!

[NGONGE]

What an interesting read. Thanks for that, saaxib.

See, if had to hear this story being told in Somali with all the ums, errs, erms and eeens in between I probably would not have found it that interesting.

[QUANTUM LEAP]

It is indeed avery interesting read. It somehow gives you an insight into the Somali pysch too and the uncompromising nature of our women and men to achieve their goals.

[Viking]

Devil's Advocate,

Not necessarily a flaw if you are familiar with Somali history. One cannot simply say that it started in Egypt, because the Somalis history is very much intertwined with ancient Egypt; plus there weren't these clear borders we used today which were drawn by the colonialists when slicing up our continent.

 

 

Also, as rudy stated earlier, the famous Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut made a voyage to the Land of Punt in 1,500 BC. There even was contact between Ancient Egypt and people of the Land of Punt many years before the visit of Hatshepsut. Some Egyptian gods names can also be found in the language of the people of The Land of Punt i.e. the Sungod RA (Ray, Re). The Somali word for 'slaughter' is GOWRAC, literally meaning 'cut for RAC' .

[Tuujiye]

Viking you are right bro. But this practice is something that we learned from Egypt. It wasn't something we came up with, is something that we adopted from them Egyptians.

They introduced their custom to us and their gods. And that’s how circumcision started.

 

Wareer badanaa

[BORN_BRANIAC]

Originally posted by Devil's Advocate:

One flaw to the story.

 

The female circumcision started in ancient egypt, not Somalia.

true that..... for the first time i had to agree with ya DA...

[Warmoog]

Viking,

Very interesting story, thank you for sharing.

 

Feebaro,

There's evidence to indicate the founders of Ancient Egypt as having been people with very close ties (cultural, social, trade, etc.) to the Land of Punt and, likely, having roots in that region. So, much like the pagan Ancient Somalis and their god Ra, who came to also be worshipped in Egypt, female circumcision might be something else that was first initiated by the Ancient Somalis then adopted by their counterparts in Egypt. It's not an impossibility.

 

* * * *

For anyone interested, Zaylici posted a very informative piece in the Debate section about Somali history called Taxaddar qoraalkan lama tafatirin Qormada 3, which also explains the ties to Ancient Egypt. It's a bit intensive, but worth the read and a good source of helpful background information so check it out.

[Viking]

I am glad people liked it. There's a paper I have called 'THE LAND OF THE GODS'. It's a brief study of "Somali etymology and its historio-linguistic potential". It is quite interesting and gives a different perspective to the ill-documeneted history of the Somali people. I will try and post it some time inshaAllah.