Mutilated Afghan teen on Time cover gets new nose

Aisha, the 19-year-old Afghan whose nose and ears were hacked off by her husband and who appeared on the cover to Time magazine this summer, has a new prosthetic nose!

With her new look, she attended the Grossman Burn Foundation’s benefit event in California on Oct. 8 and received an Enduring Heart award from Maria Shriver, wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “This is the first Enduring Heart award given to a woman whose heart endures and who shows us all what it means to have love and to be the enduring heart,” Shriver said.

The Grossman Burn Foundation paid for Aisha’s surgery in California, and plastic surgeon Peter H. Grossman, co-director of the Grossman Burn Centers, is hoping that a “permanent solution” can be found, perhaps reconstructing Aisha’s nose and ears from bone, cartilage, and tissue from other parts of her body, reports the Daily Telegraph. Now, Aisha is beginning a new life in the United States. What a brave young woman.

Update, 4:13 p.m.: The brutality inflicted on women like Aisha shows us why Secretary Clinton is so adamant that absolutely no political reconciliation in Afghanistan should come at the price of Afghan women’s well-being. As she said in July in Kabul:

I don’t think there is such a political solution that would be a lasting, sustainable one that would turn the clock back on women. That is a recipe for a return to the kind of Afghanistan — if not in the entire country, in significant parts of the country — that would once again be a breeding ground for terrorism.

Here is a CNN video about Aisha, whose surname has not been disclosed, and her new look: