SARAH and Amina did not want to be famous. They just wanted to grow up, get married and have children.
But their names were on many lips in Egypt this summer, when their deaths after botched circumcisions reopened a passionate debate over this normally taboo subject.
After Sarah (10) died in July, the Health Minister, Mr Ismail Sallam, banned female circumcision from public hospitals and clinics, where it had previously been allowed, and prohibited all doctors from carrying out the operation. He also announced the launching of a public relations campaign to end the practice.
But all this did nothing to help Amina, who bled to death less than a month later, after being operated on by a doctor in her Nile Delta village.
Activists fighting to end the practice acknowledge that it will take more than a government prohibition to stop people from circumcising their girls, but say it is a much needed step in the right direction.
Nevertheless, the challenges they face in their battle to stamp out the practice are formidable.
A professor of gynaecology at a Cairo university has already mounted a legal challenge to the ban, on the basis that circumcision is medically necessary for about a third of all women, and is also a religious obligation.
And, although the practice predates both Christianity and Islam and is carried out by both communities, many religious leaders agree. The head of the Coptic Christian church, Pope Shenouda, has refused to condemn the practice and many conservative Muslim leaders openly support it.
During a UN conference on population held in Cairo in 1994, a leading Muslim cleric and head of Al Azhar University, Sheikh Gad El Hag Ali Gad El Hag, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, encouraging parents to circumcise their girls.
Although the fatwa was based on texts considered to be unreliable by many religious scholars, and was widely seen as an attempt to outmanoeuvre a rival religious authority who had ruled circumcision unIslamic, Gad El-Hag's voice was heard by millions.
Gad El-Hag died last year and Al-Azhar is now headed by a moderate who supports the government ban, but he is currently struggling to rein in conservative elements and has said little on the subject since assuming his new posit ion.
Activists say that the support of circumcision by religious conservatives is one reason the state has been reluctant until now to take strong action on the issue.
Recent surveys show that almost 90 per cent of Egyptian women have been subject to genital mutilation in one form or another. Most commonly, it involves the removal of the clitoris but infibulation, or pharaonic circumcision, in which all of the external genitalia are removed, is also carried out in some parts of the country.
The operation is usually performed without anaesthetic by barbers and midwives. That millions of loving Egyptian parents are willing to expose their young daughters to such risks is testament to the power of tradition.
According to one researcher into the subject, after thousands of years of the practice, circumcised genitals are simply considered normal.
Other reasons cited for the operation include cleanliness and the need to prevent girls from becoming too sexually aggressive, thereby compromising her, or her family's honour.
The strength of these beliefs make it easy for religious figures and vested interests to exploit the issue, say opponents of the practice.
In response, they have formed a task force that is mounting a huge campaign to try to change traditional attitudes through public education, raising the awareness of professional groups, NGOs and the media, and prosecuting those carrying out the operation wherever possible.
For now, though, they are staying away from the religious debate.
"We can't ask any moderate religious figures to state an opinion on the subject at the moment," said an activist, Ms Marie Assaad, co ordinator of the task force. "The issue has been so politicised that it is difficult for them to take a stand because they will pay the price."