Excerpt:
Wearing a pale pink headscarf and a long floral skirt, she meets me at the train station in Basel so we can take the tram to her home. She's warm and chatty, and soon whips out her gold-tone iPhone to show off photos of her three children.
Originally from Sudan, Amal Bürgin has lived in Switzerland for many years. She and her Swiss husband have two sons and a daughter, aged between four and 11. The fact that she managed to conceive and deliver three children is almost remarkable considering the brutal tradition she herself endured as a child.
When Bürgin was five years old, she and her older sister found themselves at the centre of a genital cutting ceremony in their native Khartoum. In addition to sweets and fancy henna tattoos, they were given the so-called pharaonic circumcision. This involves the removal of the clitoris as well as the labia, and then the fusion of the remaining flesh. Only a small hole is left to pass urine and menstrual blood.