I play for keeps.
Posted on 08/17/2008 3:02:21 PM PDT by forkinsocket
LAHORE, PAKISTAN -- Saira Liaqat squints through her one good eye as she brushes a woman's hair. Her face, most of which the acid melted years ago, occasionally lights up with a smile. Her hands, largely undamaged, deftly handle the dark brown locks.
A few steps away in this popular beauty salon, Urooj Akbar diligently trims, cleans and paints clients' fingernails. Her face, severely scarred from the blaze that burned about 70% of her body, is somber. It's hard to tell if she's sad or if it's just the way she now looks.
Liaqat and Akbar are among Pakistan's many female victims of arson and acid attacks. Such tales tend to involve a spurned or crazy lover and end in a life of despair and seclusion for the woman.
These two instead became beauticians.
The women can't escape the mirrors or pictures of glamorous models that surround them, but they consider the salon a second home and a good way to make a living. The two also serve as reminders of that age-old lesson on beauty -- a lesson that, needed or not, they learned the hard way.
"Every person wishes that he or she is beautiful," says Liaqat, 21. "But in my view, your face is not everything. Real beauty lies inside a person, not outside."
"They do it because the world demands it," Akbar, 28, says of clients. "For them, it's a necessity. For me, it isn't."
Liaqat and Akbar got into the beauty business in the eastern city of Lahore thanks to the Depilex Smileagain Foundation, an organization devoted to aiding women who have been burned in acid or other attacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Boy would I like to get my hands on the men who did this to those women. They’d beg to die.
Monsters!
How sad that these women were tortured and disfigured. Sometimes I wish American feminists would speak out against the real physical abuses of women in other parts of the world, rather than their relatively trivial complaints about how women are discriminated against in the western world.
Not a word from the feminist groups about this horrible practice.
Perhaps an altruistic plastic surgeon would like to step up to the plate and donate their time to making these women “smile again”...
I will be praying on it, that someone might see this as a ministry. Depilex “SmileAgain” sounds like a wonderful international outreach mission for a church to embrace.
There have been a few reports of acid attacks in the U.S. It’s subhuman. God bless these ladies.
What incredible courage and strength. This girl is an icon.
...and now a word of protest from CAIR (sound of crickets), the Diversity Council of the UN (sound of crickets) and the National Organization of Women (sound of crickets).
No matter how many elections these barbarians participate in, if their 9th century culture isn’t changed, problems such as this, honor killing and support for terrorism will continue.
>> Such tales tend to involve a spurned or crazy lover
Of course, no mention of the Religion of Peace connection from the LA times. But you know darn well it’s there.
— Mr. YGTG
I’m with you.
BTW, there are pics at the site, you may not want to see them. Pretty bad.
About three years ago, Akbar says, he sprinkled kerosene oil on her as she slept and lighted it.
A picture taken shortly afterward shows how her face melted onto her shoulders, leaving her with no visible neck.
Akbar has not filed a case against her now ex-husband. She says she'll one day turn to the law, at least to get her daughter back.
So the monster walks free, and raises the little girl, no doubt filling the child's head with lies about her mother. And if Urooq Akbar ever does get her daughter back, she will be a scarred, frightening stranger to her.
Sad beyond words. May God help these women.
Those aren’t “men.”
They’re below animals as well. The’re demonic, otherworldly creatures.
I play for keeps.
Hey, you must be a male chauvanist pig, or something. How dare you minimize the shame and humiliation of a woman being addressed by someone as "honey". B*st*rd!
I wish Concerned Women For America would speak out about these atrocities. They’ve been as silent as NOW.
This is very true. I understand why NOW doesn't speak up, the safety and freedom of women is not their agenda. But CWA has always seemed to me to be the true voice of women. They should speak out.
Too busy complaining about how they weren’t promoted quickly enough.
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