My brother 'honor me' and attack to kill me
Kabul, Afghanistan It's cold and raining in Kabul and the pothole-filled dirt roads have turned into a sea of mud. We drive up to the gateway of a high-walled compound. A soldier brandishing an AK-47 stands guard outside the building. We've come to a women's shelter to meet Gul Meena -- a 17-year-old girl from Pakistan who shouldn't be alive.
My crew and I are ushered into a room and sitting on a wooden chair slouched over is small, fragile Gul Meena. Her sullen eyes turn from the raindrops streaming down the window outside and towards us as we enter the room.
Gul's bright coloured headscarf is embroidered with blue, red and green flowers and covers most of her face. She nervously plays with it and gives us a glimpse of a frightened smile from underneath the fabric. Her guardian Anisa, from the shelter run by Women for Afghan Women, touches her head and gently moves the headscarf back. That's when we see the scars etched deeply into her face.
This Pakistani girl's life of misery and suffering began at the tender age of 12, when instead of going to school she was married to a man old enough to be her grandfather. She says: "My family married me off when I was 12 years old. My husband was 60. Every day he would beat me. I would cry and beg him stop. But he just kept on beating me."
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When Gul told her family what was happening, they responded in a way that shocked her. "My family would hit me when I complained. They told me you belong in your husband's house -- that is your life."
After five years of abuse, Gul Meena met a young Afghan man and finally gathered the courage to leave her husband in Pakistan. In November 2012 she packed up some belongings and they made their way across the border into Afghanistan to the city of Jalalabad.
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Gul knew she was committing the ultimate crime according to strict Islamic customs -- running away from her husband with another man -- but she also knew she didn't want to continue living the life she had since her marriage.
"I'd tried to kill myself with poison several times but it didn't work. I hated my life and I had to escape. When I ran away I knew it would be dangerous. I knew my husband and family would be looking for me but I never thought this would happen. I thought my future would be bright," she says.
Days later her older brother tracked them down. Armed with an ax, he hacked to death Gul Meena's friend, and then struck his own sister 15 times -- cutting open her face, head and parts of her body.
Gul Meena shows me these scars -- taking off her headscarf, her finger gently running up and down the raised, freshly healed skin. She touches her head where the blade hit her and then shows me the deep cuts that were made to the back of her neck and her arms. It's clear to me she desperately tried to fight off her brother before she passed out.
Assuming she was dead, her brother escaped back to Pakistan. Authorities are yet to catch him, but his family denies that he tried to kill Gul.
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Hearing the commotion, a passer-by discovered Gul Meena lying in a pool of blood in her bed, and rushed her to the Emergency Department of Nangarhar Regional Medical Centre.
With part of her brain hanging out of her skull, neurosurgeon Zamiruddin Khalid held out little hope that the girl on his operating table would survive.
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