Free Forest Gate by Peter Akinti Page A

as Mr Bloom used his other hand to touch my neck.
    For a moment I wanted to cry because I remembered being dressed up by my aunt, Shifa. I wouldn't dare use her name, not even in my thoughts – in Somalia all elders are called 'uncle' or 'auntie', even strangers. It is a mark of respect. She was wildly spiritual, my aunt, but not godly. She took an immediate dislike to me right after I told her the things her husband tried to do to me whenever we were alone. I don't know what I expected.
    My aunt dressed me for the men she would bring home to come and look at me. She would put yellow beads around my neck, a middle parting in my hair and dress me in a slinky white diriic like my mother's, which hung low on my shoulders and revealed the top of my back. The men always came in the afternoons. We would assume our positions in the centre of her living room like stage actors, while my aunt's husband lay flat on the folding table in the kitchen – the worse for drink – with his mouth open wide, dribble coursing through his stubble.
    Their house was an unfinished two-storey building of brick. One of those houses somebody started building but then ran out of money or was killed. My aunt and her husband took possession in 2002. It was a common thing to do. She wasn't poor, my aunt, but she wasn't rich either. She scraped by. When my parents were alive I remember she often came over to our house to ask for help. When they died she thought about moving into our house – I heard her discussing it with her husband. They decided it was too dangerous, they were afraid of being so closely associated with my father. Our house was lovely, especially at night under the glow of moonlight. It was surrounded by grass that felt like carpet to walk on, even barefoot – when I close my eyes I can remember the feeling of warm soil pressing against my toes. It was always cool and when there was no gunfire you could hear the sound of flowing water.
    The men my aunt brought to look at me were all old. Cattle herders mostly, covered in sweat, with naked arms protruding from voluminous cloth. We Somalis called it aroos fahdi , arranged marriage. My mother did not agree with aroos fahdi . 'It could make you think you were indifferent to the power of true love.' When I think back on those men in that living room with its makeshift bamboo shades on the heavily framed windows, its empty-beer-bottle smell and its ugly walls, it all seems very sad to me. In my memory the men all look the same – wide lips, dead eyes. Up close they smelled of cattle or desert sand or fresh khat, a mild stimulant they liked to use to speed up time.
    My aunt would burn incense in my hair and use khidaab , a plant-based dye to decorate my left foot up to my ankle. I hated that incense smell in my hair. It was too old for me.
    'Wirgin?' the men would ask candidly. They often spoke English to feel like the wealthy men of the West but they could never pronounce the English letter 'V'.
    'Straight from heaven, not even circumcised,' my aunt would say.
    My mother was circumcised. My great-grandmother held her down and cut her when she was nine. Strangely, she was not bitter like most of the girls at my old school. She put it down to culture rather than male domination. Ashvin was circumcised when he was three years old. My mother made a big deal about being progressive. She waited until I was thirteen and she gave me the choice. She sat me down with a human biology picture book.
    'What is it?' I asked.
    'It is a Muslim ritual.'
    'I know that. But no one ever says what it is.'
    My mother put the book on my lap. 'In Sudan they remove the clitoris,' (point) 'the labia minora,' (point) 'and the labia majora,' (point) 'and then they stitch the sides together.' (Point, point, point, point.) 'In Somalia we only remove the clitoris.' (Point.) 'It takes forty days to heal. It's part of your ancestry. Would you like to have it done?' She smiled because she already knew the answer.
    I was in