"When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out," 19-year-old Bibi Aisha of Afghanistan says with chilling candor. Her beauty is still stunning and her confidence inspiring. It takes a moment for the barbaric act committed against her to register in your mind and sight. Wearing her patterned scarf and with roughly painted nails she shares her story. "It felt like there was cold water in my nose, I opened my eyes and I couldn't even see because of all the blood," she remembers. It was an act of Taliban justice for the crime of shaming her husband's family. This story began when Aisha was just 8 years old. Her father had promised her hand in marriage, along with that of her baby sister's, to another family in a practice called "baad." "Baad" in Pashtunwali, the law of the Pashtuns, is a way to settle a dispute between rival families. At 16, she was handed over to her husband's father and 10 brothers, who she claims were all members of the Taliban in Oruzgan province. Aisha didn't even meet her husband because he was off fighting in Pakistan.
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