Atlantic.com article on Afghan girl with nose prosthetic...?

May 21, 2012

There was an article in this weekends theatlantic.com on a young Afghan girl,

about 19 or so, named Aisha whose husband and inlaws had sawed her nose and ears

off for retaliation over what they viewed as her rebellion...

I don't know if anyone saw it. I wished I'd saved the link.

The article talked about how her father gave her in marriage to a man to pay

back some kind of debt (it was beyond ridiculous, again I don't remember but was

incredulous at how she was treated like an animal) and then her new husband and

family left her in their barn to sleep with their animals. Awful. Then came

the brutal incident with her nose and ears.

All of that to say, she was brought to the US for safety, was given a prosthetic

for her nose and the article talked more in-depth about her manipulative,

entitled behavior and how she spends her free time googling herself on the

Internet...as I was reading it, I thought " ugh, I feel bad for thinking

this...but she sounds very BPD... "

The next part of the article, to my surprise, noted that she may *have* BPD, and

that researchers are trying to understand if BPD can surface out of a

traumatically stressful situation as hers. Her therapist noted that she is

manipulative, that she (understandably) tries to hurt others before she can be

hurt or abandoned.

To me, her behavior was like that of a Queen, demanding, expecting the poorly

paid staff to lavish affection on her and to hug her and hold her and buy her

things she insisted on having, and if not she would throw wild fits and

tantrums. Of course, she's young and abused, so much of this is not surprising.

She is in therapy with a Farsi therapist, which is wonderful.

I felt both great compassion for her and yet felt a little triggered before BPD

was even mentioned in the article. It was a weird feeling!

Anyway, just thought I'd mention it. I couldn't find the article again this

morning.

Fiona

May 21, 2012

Wow. I remember briefly hearing about that young woman and how she'd been

treated like property by her foo, then mutilated by her husband's family as

punishment (for trying to run away, I thought), then somehow was rescued and

brought to the USA for restorative surgery/prosthetics, but I never heard/read

further of her behaviors or what happened to her subsequently to her rescue.

It makes me have mixed feelings about her too RE reading about the

tantrum-throwing, the expectations of special treatment, the child-like

clinginess and demanding, queen-like behaviors. That does sound rather a lot

like bpd or npd, I agree.

My take on this is that treating a living human being like property, like a

thing with no feelings, does a profound amount of very deep damage... I would

go so far as to call it *emotional mutilation*. And such deep damage can take

years to ameliorate even with a desire for change and lots of therapy, and may

not be completely repairable. Particularly if the person's brain is mis-wired,

so to speak, to perceive normal, ordinary everyday exchanges between people as

being mistreated or ignored.

I'm glad to hear that this young woman at least has this miraculous *chance* at

healing emotionally now. I hope for her that she will recover emotionally so

that she may eventually become a force or catalyst for change in her own culture

that does seem to treat women and children (female children in particular) as

property: as things with no human rights and no human feelings.

As Doug says, may we all heal.

-Annie

>

> There was an article in this weekends theatlantic.com on a young Afghan girl,

about 19 or so, named Aisha whose husband and inlaws had sawed her nose and ears

off for retaliation over what they viewed as her rebellion...

>

> I don't know if anyone saw it. I wished I'd saved the link.

>

> The article talked about how her father gave her in marriage to a man to pay

back some kind of debt (it was beyond ridiculous, again I don't remember but was

incredulous at how she was treated like an animal) and then her new husband and

family left her in their barn to sleep with their animals. Awful. Then came

the brutal incident with her nose and ears.

>

> All of that to say, she was brought to the US for safety, was given a

prosthetic for her nose and the article talked more in-depth about her

manipulative, entitled behavior and how she spends her free time googling

herself on the Internet...as I was reading it, I thought " ugh, I feel bad for

thinking this...but she sounds very BPD... "

>

> The next part of the article, to my surprise, noted that she may *have* BPD,

and that researchers are trying to understand if BPD can surface out of a

traumatically stressful situation as hers. Her therapist noted that she is

manipulative, that she (understandably) tries to hurt others before she can be

hurt or abandoned.

>

> To me, her behavior was like that of a Queen, demanding, expecting the poorly

paid staff to lavish affection on her and to hug her and hold her and buy her

things she insisted on having, and if not she would throw wild fits and

tantrums. Of course, she's young and abused, so much of this is not surprising.

She is in therapy with a Farsi therapist, which is wonderful.

>

> I felt both great compassion for her and yet felt a little triggered before

BPD was even mentioned in the article. It was a weird feeling!

>

> Anyway, just thought I'd mention it. I couldn't find the article again this

morning.

>

> Fiona

>

May 21, 2012