Putting Back The Odometer Poem by gershon hepner

When the hymen is repaired
virginity is as restored
as mileage in a car declared,
in vintage Camry or a Ford,
to be a zero. Guarantees
for used cars are not worth their paper,
and for what’s above the knees––
forget about it when you caper.
Besides, who cares about the hymen
apart from suicidal bombers?
Today, except for shy men,
the market is a Doubting Thomas,
no buyers in my own vicinity,
except maybe a Simple Simon,
hung-up about virginity
in girls who all end up two-timin’.

Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet write about virginity and the repair of hymens among Moslems in France (“In Europe, Debate over Islam and Virginity, ” NYT, June 11,2008) :

As Europe’s Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women are caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the deep-rooted traditions of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Gynecologists say that in the past few years, more Muslim women are seeking certificates of virginity to provide proof to others. That in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; medical tourism packages are available to countries like Tunisia where it is less expensive. “If you’re a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage, ” said Dr. Hicham Mouallem, who is based in London and performs the operation. “So if you’re looking to marry a Muslim and don’t want to have problems, you’ll try to recapture your virginity.” No reliable statistics are available, because the procedure is mostly done in private clinics and in most cases not covered by tax-financed insurance plans. But hymen repair is talked about so much that it is the subject of a film comedy that opens in Italy this week. “Women’s Hearts, ” as the film’s title is translated in English, tells the story of a Moroccan-born woman living in Italy who goes to Casablanca for the operation. One character jokes that she wants to bring her odometer count back down to “zero.” “We realized that what we thought was a sporadic practice was actually pretty common, ” said Davide Sordella, the film’s director. “These women can live in Italy, adopt our mentality and wear jeans. But in the moments that matter, they don’t always have the strength to go against their culture.”


6/11/08