She said to Deborah, “If you want five minutes, you can have them while we walk,” and she headed towards the picket gate. Once on the path, she strode to the right, the opposite direction from the footbridge.
Deborah followed. Dr. Weatherall, she saw, had a don’t-mess-with-me way of walking. She moved rapidly and Deborah did likewise. She was fairly certain that whatever else Dr. Weatherall was going to give to her, it probably wasn’t going to be a full five minutes. So she began to talk: about the project she was working on for the Department for Education, about Orchid House, about the photo book she wished to produce, about the bookending idea making use of interviews with her. She ended with, “Narissa spoke highly of you.”
“Well, that’s very nice of her, isn’t it,” the surgeon said. “I can hardly mind being spoken highly of, can I. But I’ve given Narissa chapter and verse on why I prefer to remain as deeply in the background as possible. I’m hardly a popular figure when it comes to those parts of the Nigerian and the Somali communities who practise disfiguring women, not to mention those insecure men looking for women who’ve been cut up and sewn up to assure them that their technique—such as it is, which I daresay it isn’t—will never be compared to another bloke’s. Have you spoken to these women?”
“I have. I’ve not been accepted with open arms—hardly a surprise considering the nature of the issue, not to mention the nature of our society, but I have spoken to them. If I may ask: As a white woman, how did you become involved in reconstructive surgery?”
“I trained for it in France. It was pioneered there, so I went to the source.”
“Was that always your focus, reconstructive surgery?”
“It wasn’t. I was as ignorant about cutting women as most of the population. I’m a gynecologist and obstetrician by training.”
“So how did it happen that you moved from that to what you’re doing now?”
They’d reached a tall gate, on it the sort of lock that required a code to release. Dr. Weatherall punched in a set of numbers, shoved the gate open, and headed towards the water. “I was called in to advise on a special case,” she said. “A child in hospital had a rampant infection, and nothing was stopping it. It would slow, then it would seem to be gone, and then back it would come stronger than ever. She’d been cut about ten weeks before I saw her.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died. They’d waited too long, her parents, to take her to hospital.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It’s far worse than that. She was three years old.”
“Oh my God. That’s . . . I don’t even know what to call it.”
“Ghastly, horrible, inhuman, disgraceful, disgusting, appalling, hideous, despicable. Words fail to do the job, don’t they?” the surgeon said. “When it happened, I decided I had to do something. But as you helpfully pointed out, I’m a white woman, and an English white woman at that. I knew it would be next to impossible to explain to any woman from one of the immigrant Black communities still practising FGM that her culture—or at least some members of her culture—is adhering to an ignorant tradition that threatens a girl’s welfare, her future, her ability to bear children, and possibly her life. And anyway, I’m very bad at talk and persuasion and all the rest. So I offered my services instead, to women who’d already been damaged.”
They walked along the side of a building and came out on a wide concrete boat launch. The building was a boathouse. Lights were on inside and someone had rolled a tall rack of sculls out onto the top of the launch. She hoisted one off effortlessly, setting it gently on the ground. She said, “I had to work for ages to gain anyone’s trust, but Zawadi helped me with that. She saw the point of what I was doing and of what I could do. She began referring young women to me. She still does.”
“How did you find your way to Orchid House?”
“The internet. Isn’t that how everything’s done these days? I began to contact the various anti-FGM groups that I discovered online. Orchid House was one of the first to respond. Others have since. I explained what I do: repair the damage, try to restructure, and—if whoever butchered a girl left the nerves of the clitoris intact—I rebuild that as well. Or as much as I can rebuild it so that the patient may experience at least some degree of sexual pleasure.” Dr. Weatherall looked at the river and said in a tone that indicated their conversation had concluded, “There may be more savage things being done to women on this wretched, dying planet of ours, but I’m not yet aware of what they are. Still, I’ve learned over time that even as far as one allows one’s imagination to go when it comes to the abuse of women, someone is out there already doing it.” She nodded sharply at Deborah and took two oars from the rack. These she carried to the water’s edge. She returned and said, “I wish I could help you, but it’s just not on. For the sake of these women, I can’t afford to be taken out of commission by someone or a group of someones who might disapprove of my work.”