Aesha Mohammadzai was just a teenager when her Taliban husband sliced off her nose and ears after she tried to escape their abusive marriage. Now, three years later, she is half-way through a life-changing procedure to rebuild her face.
Aesha, now 22, is living in the US and is six months into facial reconstruction surgery.
Although she is thrilled to be on her way to a new face, Aesha’s current appearance is alarming.
Her forehead has ballooned out thanks to an inflatable silicon shell doctors have been gradually filling with liquid to grow skin for her new nose, and the hole in her face where her nose once was is now covered in drooping skin transplanted from her forearm.
Aesha will soon undergo another surgery which will see doctors take cartilage from a rib to construct a new nose.
The extra skin she is growing on her forehead will then be “flapped down” to cover the cartilage structure.
By June next year, Aesha’s transformation will be complete, and her surgeons say she should have a completely natural-looking nose, something she is thrilled about.
Aesha says the procedure has given her hope that she will be able to have a normal life.
“At the beginning, I was very scared. I was scared to look at my face in the mirror,” she told CNN.
“I was scared to think what will happen in the future to me. But now I’m not scared anymore. Now I know the meaning of life, how to live. There, I couldn’t understand how to live.”
Aesha’s story was first told by Time magazine in 2010. She featured in a shocking cover shoot for the publication, becoming a worldwide symbol of the oppression of Afghan women.
Aesha was just 12 when her father forced her to marry a Taliban soldier to settle a debt.
Her new husband tortured her, forcing to sleep in a stable with animals and beating her constantly.
Years later, she attempted to flee, but was caught and her husband hacked off her ears and nose as punishment.
She was left for dead in the mountains, but managed to get to a US medical facility, which cared for her for 10 weeks before a charity flew her to the US.
She has been taken in by a family and is now learning English with hopes of becoming a police officer.
