A year ago, she drank battery acid to escape life under the Taliban. Today, she has a message for other Afghan girls
Now, after an extraordinary intervention, Arzo is making a remarkable recovery – but she faces a new threat that could force her family to return to Afghanistan, and a life under Taliban rule that has become so intolerable for women and girls that some would rather die. Despite strong condemnation of the Taliban by most UN member states, the issue of women’s rights will not be on the formal agenda.Afghan women and other civil society members weren’t invited to the meeting – they’ll meet separately with member states, without the Taliban, the next day, according to a UN official.
For a year, the siblings have spent almost every hour inside a rented room in Karachi with three single beds, a ceiling fan and a carpet where they eat, study and read. “I don’t cry in front of her, but I kiss her and cry while she sleeps at night, for her future, for her treatment, so she can survive this sickness,” he said.Within hours of Arzo’s story airing on CNN last December, an email arrived with the offer of help.
Doctors told her siblings to increase her caloric intake threefold, so she’d be strong enough for her first medical procedure – an endoscopic examination that revealed severe damage to her esophagus, so that it had almost closed, making it impossible to eat. “As I ate food at home, I glanced at pictures of my classmates and felt a deep sense of longing for them,” she said.
“When I went to Kabul, I enrolled in a tailoring program. However, for three months, I lived in constant fear as the Taliban would visit our workshop daily and criticize us for not wearing the hijab. They eventually forced us to shut down the workshop,” she said.Instead of working, Mahsa found herself in Pakistan caring for Arzo, who was in constant pain with no medication to ease her suffering.
Arzo is determined to put the past behind her and has urged other girls in Afghanistan not to follow her lead. Some houses were marked with “ACC” , others with “POR” – both forms of identification issued to Afghans long before the Taliban’s return.