Brutally Abused Afghanistan Woman Gets Fresh Start In America<

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Brutally Abused Afghanistan Woman Gets Fresh Start In America

A young Afghan woman who was brutally abused at the hands of her family is finally beginning the road to a new start and ready to share her story of pain, triumph and resilience in the face of hopelessnes and unimaginable violence.

via CNN

For as long as the world has known her face, it has told a story.

In the beginning, when her disfigured image appeared on the August 2010 cover of Time magazine, the story was bigger than her. It symbolized the oppression of Afghan women.

Today, Aesha Mohammadzai’s face tells a story that is hers alone.

Aesha had never attended school and had experienced enough trauma to span 10 lifetimes. She lost her mother, she says, when she was only 2, was sent off to live with relatives elsewhere, then was retrieved by her father and forced into marriage at 16 to settle a family score. When she ran away from the Taliban family that abused her, they caught her, held her down, hacked off her nose and ears and left her for dead.

Her forehead has ballooned to the size of a baseball, and narrow, darkened, peeling and drooping flesh protrudes from where her nose once was — before her Taliban husband and in-laws cut it off. She is six months into multistage reconstructive surgery, and her face hints at a new path lined with resilience, hope and change.

This is sad and remarkable all in one. You can read Aesha’s entire story here.

Photo Credit: CNN/TIME Magazine