A Pakistani woman whose nose was cut off by her husband 32 years ago says she has been brought back from the dead after surgery which gave her a new nose. Allah Rakhi hid her face for decades after the attack. Orla Guerin went to central Punjab to meet her.
Thirty-two years ago a teenaged mother of two set off through the lush fields of central Punjab with one thought in her mind - escape.
She was slim and spirited and famed as the beauty of her family.
Her name was Allah Rakhi, and she had just endured another beating by her husband, Ghulam Abbas.
She made it to the edge of their village, the hamlet of Thatta Pira, before he caught up with her. Within minutes the rich brown soil was running red with her blood. Ghulam Abbas had hacked off her nose.
Three decades on, still spirited but now a doting grandmother, Allah Rakhi took me to the spot at the edge of the rice fields, where she was robbed of her looks, and much of her life. Dry-eyed and animated, she relived the attack.
"He told me to sit down and listen to him," she said. "I told him he had destroyed my life, beating me every day and that I was going to my parents' house. He sat on my chest, and reached into his pocket for a blade. As he slashed my nose off, blood poured into my eyes. Then he cut my ankle, from one side to the other."
Drenched in blood she was carried back home, rather than to the hospital, so she could not make a police report. Eventually Ghulam was arrested, and spent six months in jail. Allah Rakhi agreed to his release, for the sake of their young children. When he came home he divorced her, and threw her out.
Then the gregarious and garrulous Allah Rakhi began what amounted to her own prison sentence - condemned to isolation, avoiding mirrors and hiding her face - even from her own son and daughter. "It would have been better if he had cut my throat, instead of cutting of my nose," she says.
Sitting on a traditional woven bed inside her modest home, she recalls her lost years - when she kept a piece of fabric permanently tied around her face, and shrouded herself in a veil.
Source: BBC NEWS
Jamani kuna watu wanateseka sana huku Duniani mmmmh!
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