The image reminded her of life before she was forced into marriage, before she had to flee Afghanistan fearing for her life. Most importantly, it captured her as she was before her husband aimed a hunting gun at her face and pulled the trigger.
“The photo is a nostalgic memory of who I was,” said the 23-year-old. “Now I look at myself, my eye is not there, my cheek is not there, my lips are not there, but I have this picture.”
After the United States abruptly retracted its offer to settle her as a refugee, she is now starting a new life in Canada. But her ordeal began years earlier; she was 17 years old when her brother-in-law – a strongman with links to the Taliban in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province – descended on her family home with a 20-man entourage, intent on marrying her off to a cousin 14 years her senior.
Zareen protested. But her family, already reeling from an illness that had left her father bedridden, was powerless to stop the marriage.
The abuse began on her wedding night, Zareen said through a translator, and rarely let up. “He began to beat me and rape me.”
Desperate for help, she turned to the police. “They just said, ‘he hasn’t cut your nose or your lips or your ears or anything like that, so there’s nothing we can do,’” she said. “I felt completely hopeless. They took away any hope that something could be done.”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
