change of story

"All this might be dismissed as tabloid voyeurism had Hirsi Ali herself not turned her own most intimate history into fodder for public debate, first in her acclaimed 2006 memoir Infidel and now again in its sequel, Nomad. As a five-year-old in Somalia, she has written, part of her genitals were removed in a circumcision ceremony designed to preserve girls as virgins until they can be married off; she has since hinted that thanks to a sympathetic surgeon she got off lightly compared with other Somali Muslim women." (thanks Laleh)