Saida Herzi narrates Rahma’s story in “Against the Pleasure Principle “, in a non-linear format. In the exposition of Saida Herzi’s “Against the Pleasure Principle”, Herzi recounts Rahma’s enthusiasm which stems from her upcoming journey to the United States of America. However, Rahma’s mother is apprehensive as she is conscious at Rahma, being a circumcised woman, giving birth in the USA would distress her due to the rudimentary experience that the American midwives have with circumcised women. Rahma postulates that her mother’s protest against her imminent relocation is founded on the fears of Rahma’s propensity to neglect her culture once she is in America.
Next, in the rising action, Herzi shifts to the day when Rahma was circumcised. Rahma committed herself to be circumcised by herself without coercion from anyone so that she could be like her nine-year sister. During the process, which was spearheaded by women, she screeched but the women used drums to inundate her cries. Eventually Rahma during the operation. The recovery process was painful as her legs were tied. Another step in the circumcision is the sewing of the wound which left her with a very miniature opening , the size of a “grain of sorghum”. Herzi notes the goal of circumcising girls is, in Somalia, to guarantee that the girl would not yield in any coitus until she got married.
In the climax, Rahma’s mother hosts a banquet known as Kur after failing to persuade Rahma to back out of her plans of leaving for America. During the Kur Hawa narrates her ordeal with an American gynecologist who had never come across a circumcised woman. Hawa’s doctor hypothesized that the aim of circumcision was to extinguish all the chances that woman had sexually-fulfilling lives. Hawa freaked out after the visit to a gynecologists and concluded that her genital organs must have horrified the gynecologist.
After Hawa’s narration, Dahabo, who is for the practice of circumcising girls, recalls how her doctor who was a woman sobbed upon hearing about female circumcision. Dahabo even confirmed to the doctor that prior to going to America, she had circumcised her daughter. After the interrogation, Dahabo’s doctor shed tears, but Dahabo did not make sense of the doctor’s tears.
The story’s resolution outlines Rahma’s decision to go on with her plan. At the end of the Kur, Rahma is hell-bent on going to America. The horrifying, disgusting stories that Rahma hears during the Kur festival do not dampen her spirit at all. Rahma’s final thoughts inform the reader that she feels aversion towards circumcision, thus would not allow her daughters to be circumcised.
