1 October 06
The Sacred Snip
I have been finding it very hard to even turn my computer on these days, let alone write anything. Between Elyas’ need for constant attention (he’s getting demanding), Ramadan, and my newest accomplishment (a job), time has been focused outside of my Web sites. Yeah, you read that right, I have a job. I’ll come back to that in my next writing, this one is about Señior El.
Elyas had his willy circumcised a short while back. He didn’t have it done at birth because the hospital didn’t provide the service. At the time, they did suggest a particular doctor so we made an appointment about a month later to go see him. Man, the guy was a real piece of work.
He was a little man, clearly anal retentive, and full of himself. He wore a smock that looked starched three times, had yellow tennis shoes, and wore square designer glasses that had thick, bright-red frames; they looked like glasses for a woman. Like many independent doctors here, his place of operation was in an old building downtown and consisted of a small room that served as his bureau, and in this case he also had a little side attached room where his bed, lab cabinets, and such were located. His office was extremely orderly…too orderly. Everything looked like it was placed with the precision of using a ruler to mark it out, and if you saw this guy, you would think that’s precisely what he did, perhaps even going around and measure-checking once in a while between clients to ensure nothing got bumbed a millimeter or two.
I didn’t like this guy immediately, there you go, and my suspician proved to be true. I didn’t really understand him, he spoke too fast, and frankly, I wouldn’t have cared any other time, but it was my son we were dealing with here so I tried to tap in, without much success. From the moment we walked into his office he seemed as if he couldn’t get us back out of it fast enough.
He quickly ushered us into his little side room to give Elyas a quick looking at. He snapped on some rubber gloves as we did so, came over and looked at my boy’s jewels for all of three seconds, and then motioned for us to redress him again. He was completely indifferent to Elyas and didn’t show any kind of communication or warmth to him at all. Hanane and I were like, what the fuck? He then asked us to sit back down at his desk, and seemed impatient as we redressed our son. He then proceeded to speak directly at Hanane (he knew I was out of the loop at this point), telling her that he wouldn’t do job. Hanane didn’t translate so I didn’t actually know this until after we left his office. I could tell he was talking about concerns, or at least it appeared as such judging by the overly serious and pretentious look on this guys face, but I didn’t get the full scoop.
Anyway, after being in this guy’s office for not more than 20 minutes he then demanded 50 euros on th spot, which Hanane paid him, and then we left. I’m sure he wiped our seats down afterwards. So then Hanane filled me in fully. The guy apparently gave us some song and dance about insurance worries, like if he happened to hurt Elyas, he didn’t want to be sued for it, or some such bullshit. I was immediately angry, and wondered why the hospital, which was so fantastic in every respect, would recommend him to anyone. This goofy little quack had the nerve to look at my son’s privates, callously make some judgement call about not doing the service, and then readily demanded 50 euros of our money for having told us that. Lucky for him I didn’t understand the conversation when I was in front of him, or I would have made it clear to the fool he wasn’t getting a single dime. In any case, I was quite happy this guy wouldn’t be touching my son any further.
However, it turns out that not many doctors in Strasbourg do circumcisions, oddly enough, so we had no choice but to hold off on Elyas’ little ritual. Then about a month ago we came to find out about another doctor. Hanane’s father had attended a celebration of an acquaintance who’s son was circumcised by the same doctor and so he got the contact information for us and a week later we made an appointment to go see him.
Unlike the fool, I liked this second doctor right away. He was older, confident, and extremely friendly. He also spoke to Elyas with genuine affection and care, and with lots of smiles. He told us he did circumcisions routinely and was in demand as far away as Belgium (which isn’t really that far from us, actually). His office wasn’t prestine to the point of sterile, there was some dust here and there and he had a few loose stacks of papers around his office. A normal person’s office. He didn’t snap on rubber gloves either, but somehow that didn’t bother me.
He gave Elyas a look and explained to us how it would work and even where exactly the skin would be removed. This new doctor made it seem as simple as buttering toast. This is exactly the kind of reaction I wanted to see from a doctor who was going to be handling my son. I could even undersand what he was telling us, which made me feel even better about it. We left the office and I immediately assured Hanane this was our guy. It turned out he was about to go on vacation for a month, so we had to either have it done that Friday (two days later) or wait until he returned, which would be during Ramadan, and thus wait even more until Ramadan passed. Hanane was very concerned about Elyas and the potential pain and what not and almost wanted to delay it, but to me the immediate Friday opporutinity was the right time. So we did it.
Hanane had to be a work for critical meetings so couldn’t attend, which was probably a good thing anyway because she was pretty bothered by the idea of it. Her parents went with me instead. I held Elyas while the whole thing took place. He was very brave. He cried, of course, but you can’t blame the little booger. I won’t go into the details of all that, and the aftermath, but it was a very interesting process.
In the end, he’s doing quite well now, the skin has healed up and his aim is better than it was before, trajectory is a lot farther too.
isabelle :: 5 October 06 :: #
CONGRATULATIONS on your new job ! ... and thanks for keeping us posted on what’s going on … as always, so interesting to read …
will be waiting for the next installment now !
Take care, Ramadan time can be quite tiring !!!
Isabelle.
isabelle :: 6 October 06 :: #
by the way, was in DC for 3 days and baugth some books for some expatriate US children that I know of, you may wish to add these two on your wish list !
ISBN 1 4169 0286 4
ISBN 0 8225 0798 6
HijabMan :: 7 October 06 :: #
Wooo! Think he is anywhere close to the guinness record for distance? MashaAllah times 3. Anyway havent spoken to you in a while—will shoot you an e-mail and a shirt soon!
Celestine :: 17 October 06 :: #
Congradulations brother, your little baby boy is one step closer to man hood everyday. It is truly amazing how the time flys with a child.
Destry :: 17 October 06 :: #
Isabelle: Thanks for the books tips.
HijabMan: Yeah, we won’t have to get him a water rocket in summer…he’s got his own built-in supershooter.
Celestine: Hi C. Thanks for dropping in. Don’t be a stranger.