BY ALEXANDRA STEIGRAD, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[this story was originally published by Reuters on April 29, 2007, and ran in dozens of news outlets around the world, including Washingtonpost.com, Boston.com and NYTimes.com]

to the companion lead story "Muslim women in France 'regain' virginity in clinics"

A 19-year-old Moroccan student in Paris, who asked to be called Amel, plans to have her hymen resewn before returning home this summer to marry a man who, according to local custom, expects her to be a virgin.

This is her story, as told on the condition her identity not be revealed.

"I dated a boy when I was 15 and I didn't even realize what had happened," she said, referring to her first and only sexual experience. "I was very young. After we had sex, he became very possessive. I couldn't stay with him any more.

"I met someone at the beginning of this year. He's the son of my parents' friends. We get along very well, but because he's a family friend, I can't tell him about my past. That's why I decided to get this surgery.

"I decided to get it done here because in Morocco, it's not official. It's just done in an office, not in a clinic. It's done around noon or 2 p.m., or at night, or when the secretary isn't there, and you don't know who is going to do it."

"It's known about just by word of mouth. In general, it's done in Casablanca and all the doctors do it."

"My friend's cousin has done it. She said (in Casablanca) they just use a string," Amel said -- instead of surgical sutures -- to close the hymen.

"It's very expensive to get it done here, but it's better.

"Only two of my friends know that I'm getting this done, but my other friends from Marrakesh will all end up doing this too, I am certain ...

"Sometimes I joke around with them and say: 'One day when we all meet someone, we're going be in trouble, what are we going to do?' They say: 'It's no mystery. You don't tell anyone and you have the operation.' It's simple ... and it's a bit strange, I know."

In Morocco, she said, a girl can be stopped and questioned for kissing or even holding hands with a boy in public.

"Can you imagine if you aren't a virgin?

"If I told my parents that I wasn't a virgin, they would call me a liar, and as a result, everything I have ever done would be a lie (to them)."

"I have to do this before I go home. If my mother ever found out about this, she would have a mental breakdown. I don't want to have this surgery, but I don't have any choice."

April 2007

BY ALEXANDRA STEIGRAD, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[this story was originally published by Reuters on April 29, 2007, and ran in dozens of news outlets around the world, including Washingtonpost.com, Boston.com and NYTimes.com]

to the companion story "'I have to do this.' Moroccan to have hymen resewn"

Sitting in a cafe near the Champs Elysees, the 26-year-old French-born woman of Algerian descent looks like any other Parisian. But two months ago, she did something none of her friends have done.

She had her hymen re-sewn, technically making her a virgin again.

"I'm glad I had it done," said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I wanted to reconstruct part of my life, to reconstruct myself so that I could feel better about myself."

This 30-minute outpatient procedure, called "hymenoplasty" and costing between 1,500 and 3,000 euros ($2,000-$4,000), is increasingly popular among young women of North African descent in France.

BY ARIEL ALEXOVICH, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[to the companion story, Coca-Cola, red wine or mint tea? A Moroccan woman decides where to live]

"Sale Arabe!" shrieked the furious middle-aged French woman to the heavy apartment door in front of her. The expression - commonplace in France nowadays - means, literally, "dirty Arab." "You turn down the music! You should stay in your country! Here in France we don't listen to our music that loud ..." She went on and on.

Fed up by the loud pop tunes blaring from the Bordeaux flat where Moroccan-born college student Meryem Laachi lived, the woman went next door and started shouting racial slurs without even knocking. If she had bothered to confront the offender face to face, the woman would have been surprised to see that Meryem wasn't home. Inside the apartment were two of Meryem's friends, two porcelain-skinned Caucasian French girls.

"Susanne was crying," Meryem says of her friend's reaction to the insults. As she sits in her new apartment in Rennes, a medium-sized city in the northwestern French province of Brittany, Meryem seems to let the incident roll off her back. "I just think my neighbor in Bordeaux was unhappy. She was living alone, she was 40 - I was thinking she had psychological problems."

That was about two years ago. Meryem, 22, has since finished her coursework in Bordeaux and is working on a finance degree at a specialized college in Rennes. She is tall, well-dressed and in fact, not dirty at all. What she doesn't have on her side, at least not according to French society, is shoulder-length coarse, dark hair and a long face shape that comes to a point at her chin. In other words, she looks Arabic, which in France automatically earns her a label as "the other." Compared with other instances of discrimination she's faced, however, being called "dirty Arab" isn't so bad. Especially compared with the hardships faced by French-born youths of Arabic descent, Meryem's situation is downright tolerable.

BY ARIEL ALEXOVICH, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[to the companion story, Liberty? Equality? Fraternity?: A Moroccan's place in the French order]

Meryem Laachi's phone bills are astronomical.

In an average week, the twenty-two-year-old fields calls from her parents and sister in Morocco, and from her brother in Minneapolis, all on the cell phone she bought near her university in France.

Like her older siblings, Meryem left Casablanca to go to college in France, not so unusual since French is the business language of Morocco, a former French protectorate. Next year, however, she'll graduate. Meryem will decide whether to follow the footsteps of her older brother, Nabil, who moved to the United States, or her older sister, Safaa, who moved back to Casablanca, or forge her own path, possibly staying in France.

In an average conversation with Meryem, she jumps around from topic to topic, explaining why it would be great to pursue all three countries. An internship in America, a banking job in France, she wants to do it all. But still, part of her heart leans towards going home, although her head tells her that a better life can be found in a wealthier Western country.

Some children who grow up in poor countries dream their whole lives about leaving. That's not how Meryem feels about Morocco. Even though she witnessed her brother's and sister's moves to French universities, up until the month before Meryem herself was to start college, she thought she would follow her own path and stay in Casablanca, studying finance at the elite Institut Superieur de Commerce et d'Administration des Entreprises (INCAE), Morocco's best business university.