Betrayed by Rosie Lewis

Author:Rosie Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780007541805
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

In the morning Peggy called. ‘I’ve spoken to the father,’ she said, in that distancing way of hers. The father, the mother, the sister. It made Zadie’s relatives sound anonymous, like faceless cardboard cut-outs from a report rather than living, breathing people sharing the closest of blood ties. I wondered if it was her way of dehumanising them, perhaps making it easier for her to do her job. ‘He wouldn’t admit to making plans for Zadie to be cut, although when I pushed him he told me that a small procedure for girls is considered necessary for their own well-being in his culture. According to him, cutting girls is seen as the duty of loving parents and part of the job of raising a girl properly. Islamic law forbids brutal behaviour of any kind, apparently. British people know the practice as clitoridotomy, he tells me. All perfectly legal, so he says.

‘I’ve had a little look online and the thing is, he seems to be correct on that, Rosie.’ There was a pause, a rustling of papers. ‘Yes, here we are,’ she said, sounding satisfied, like she’d just solved the last clue in a particularly tricky crossword. ‘There are doctors on here describing the procedure. It sounds to me like circumcision, only under a more palatable guise.’ Peggy snorted. ‘I’ve even downloaded a price list from Harley Street.’

She paused. I didn’t say anything in reply. I was too incensed. Grown women making a voluntary decision to take themselves off to London for a cosmetic procedure was hardly on a par with the enforced cutting of a young girl. It struck me as an attempt by Zadie’s father to minimise the brutal act. I must have been breathing harshly or something. Peggy seemed to sense that I was livid and her tone softened. ‘Look, Rosie, all I’m saying is that there are too many unknowns at the moment, so much we don’t understand. My advice is to hold fire for a while, until we know more. Let’s not judge the father too harshly.’

‘So that’s it. We do nothing?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Peggy said slowly, with exaggerated patience. ‘I’ve asked for an Emergency Strategy Meeting to be arranged so we can go through all the concerns.’

‘Oh good,’ I breathed, relieved that some action was being taken.

‘Meanwhile, you keep up the good work. And remember, Rosie, I’m only interested in Zadie’s best interests. We simply don’t know enough about her culture to ride roughshod over her relatives’ wishes.’

It was only when Zadie asked if she could spend some time on the computer later that day that I remembered why she had been so keen to use it. She had said that she regularly trawled ancestry and social networking sites in an attempt to locate her sister. It had been such a frantic few days since our chat that I hadn’t really absorbed it all. Now, as I watched her leaning close to the screen with an intense expression, I wondered whether there was anything I could do to help her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.