ABSTRACT
I remember we had a fig tree at our home. I don’t know how I succeeded in climbing the fig tree, but when I wanted to come down, I got frightened. The height made me terrified. I was around eight or nine years old. I remember my mother and grandmother standing by the tree. My grandmother said, ‘If she slips and falls, she will lose her parde-ye bekarat [virginity, the hymen or, more literally, the virginity curtain]’. I didn’t know what the bekarat was. I don’t remember how I came down. I don’t recall if someone helped me down or I came down by myself. But I remember very well that I scratched my crotch [she shows me where she means]. There was a big veranda in our house. I remember when I came down, my pants also tore. My grandmother seemed very anxious and kept asking my mother to check me. In sum, they laid me down on the veranda, I remember clearly. There were two to three more people there. There were no men. This was so horrible for me that even now when I think about it, I feel repulsion in the pit of my stomach. They pulled down my pants to expose my lower parts, and the area close to my private parts was injured. My grandmother was crying and kept saying, ‘For sure, she has lost her virginity’. Then they looked more closely. I was just a little girl. Three people were staring at my bare crotch. Sometimes, I think probably the reason that I still hate to go to the gynaecologist so much probably relates to my feeling of being as exposed as I did that day … I think I went through my first gynaecological examination when I was eight or nine years old. The ridiculous thing is that even in that situation, no one explained to me what parde-ye bekarat was, and what would happen if I lost it. Does one die? Does one become physically disabled? Does one become mentally disabled? [She laughs.]
Shirin and I sit in the kitchen in her place in a mid-size city outside Stockholm. It is early spring. We have tried to make plans for this meeting for more than five weeks. I am amazed by her great sense of humour and her exceptional talent for storytelling; I cannot stop thinking it was definitely worth the wait. It seems she reads my mind, and as she looks at me thoughtfully, she says: ‘Believe me, prior to this interview, I did a lot of thinking about these issues, because they are very important to me. I tried to think back and remember my childhood and youth…. During these four or five weeks that we’ve been trying to meet, I have really tried to think a lot about how I have related to my body.’2 Then she tells me the
preceding story. Afterwards, we laugh out loud together. But Shirin expresses irritation, too; she further regards her mother and grandmother’s manner as ‘ignorance, cruelty and lack of compassion’.
