The Afghan Girl Mutilated, which was Cover of Time, has a new life

The Afghan woman who was on the Time cover and shocked the world when her husband cut off her nose and ears is trying to get a new life.
Aesha Mohammadzai is the Afghan girl who four years after that episode, faces a new battle in trying to make a new life in America.
Aesha was granted asylum in 2011, having fled to the United States, a year later, at just 18 years old beginning with reconstructive surgery.


She arrived not speaking a word of English and illiterate in her native language and has since pioneered reconstructive surgery with a prosthetic nose and received an education denied to women in her homeland under the Taliban regime.
Her plastic surgery was delayed because it was thought that she still was not emotionally stable to cope with painful and prolonged surgery.
When Aesha was 12 years old, her father promised her in marriage to a Taliban fighter to pay a debt. She was beat, abused and forced to sleep in the barn with the animals.


The UN estimates that nearly 90% of Afghan women suffer from some form of domestic abuse.
When she tried to flee, was captured by her husband who punish cutting off her nose and ears.
“When my nose and ears were cut, I fainted. In the middle of the night I felt like I had cold water in my nose.“


“I opened my eyes and I could not even see anything because of the blood.”
She reached her grandfather house and her father managed to get her to a U.S. medical center, where doctors treated her for ten weeks.
Aesha then was taken to a secret shelter in Kabul and in August 2010, was flown to the United States Grossman Burn Foundation to stay with a host family.