Her Husband Shot This 17-Year-Old Afghan Girl In The Face

The local news coverage of Shakila, bedridden and wrapped in gauze, caught the attention of Arezo Kohistany, a 25-year-old analyst at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation in Washington D.C. Kohistany, an Afghan-American whose family moved to Virginia when the Taliban came to power, remembers watching the “sense of hopelessness” in the news coverage that showed Shakila’s mother crying next to her hospital bed. “I think because I’m Afghani, and had I not come to the U.S. … there’s a big possibility I could have been in the same circumstance,” she says. Having worked in Afghanistan for two years, and convinced she could use her connections to help, Kohistany started sending emails and making calls each day when she got into work.

“At the end of day, I want to know that, in the large gap between the world I live in and she lives in, somewhere, humanity cares,” she says.
She contacted more than a dozen organizations, from U.N. Women to the World Bank South Asia and the Red Cross. She began enlisting the help of friends. One, Saba Ghorab, a medical student, even began contacting hospitals and medical schools in the United States. A few doctors agreed to perform Shakila’s surgeries, but no hospital would sponsor the treatment.