A young Afghan woman who had her nose and ears sliced off as punishment for running away from her abusive husband has revealed her reconstructed face to the world.
Aesha Mohammadzai became an emblem of the horrors of the Taliban when her mutilated face appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 2010.
Three years later, her life has begun a new chapter after doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington were able to rebuild her nose using skin from her forehead and her arm.
She unveiled her new face on British TV to send a message to abused women across the world.
“I want to tell all women who are suffering abuse to be strong,” Aesha told ITV’s “Daybreak,” the U.K.’s version of the “Today” show.
“Never give up and don’t lose hope,” she said.
To create the new nose, doctors implanted a small disk into Aesha’s forehead and slowly filled it with fluid to create a balloon of skin, a plastic surgeon told CNN in December.
Over the course of several surgeries, doctors rebuilt the inner nose using tissue from her forearm and rib cage, CNN reported.
They then cut the forehead skin, “flipped” it down and sewed it over the nose, said the surgeon, who was not one of Aesha’s doctors but was familiar with the procedure.
A jagged scar runs down Aesha’s forehead, and healing will take time. Aesha told ITV she’s “happy” with her new face.
It’s a vast improvement over the gaping hole she was left with after a sickening attack by Taliban butchers in the mountains of central Afghanistan.
Traded to a Taliban fighter to settle a family debt when she was 12, Aesha was beaten, forced to perform slave labor and made to sleep with her husband family’s livestock.
“Every day I was abused by my husband and his family. Mentally and physically,” she told ITV through a translator. “Then one day it became unbearable so I ran away.”
She was eventually caught and thrown in jail for five months, she said.
“When I came out the judge sent me back to my husband. That night they took me to the mountains,” she said.
“They tied my hands and my feet. They said my punishment was to cut my nose and ears. And then they started to do it.”
In some Afghan cultures, a man is said to “lose his nose” when his wife betrays him, according to a New York Times report after Aesha appeared in Time.
Hacking off her nose would have been payback. The gang left her in the mountain to die, but she was eventually found and ended up being taken in by American aid workers.
She was flown to the U.S. in 2010 and spent time in California and New York, where she was cared for by a Queens organization, Women for Afghan Women.
Now 22 or 23 — she never celebrated a birthday in Afghanistan — Aesha now lives with a family in Frederick, Maryland.
She not in school, but is studying English. Her foster family said she appeared to have found measure of peace.
Her foster sister Meina Ahmadzai told ITV, “Even through all that she’s been put through, I still hear her laughing
“She made our life a little more complete,” her foster dad, Mati Arsala, told the show. “Honestly, we as a family would do anything for her.”
