KANDAHAR: When attackers threw acid in Shamsia Husseini’s face outside her school in Afghanistan, she defied them by returning to class -- and now she has scored another victory for female education by becoming a teacher herself.
Shamsia suffered severe burns on her eyelids and cheeks in the November 2008 assault, which generated global publicity, with then US first lady Laura Bush condemning it as a “cowardly and shameful” crime.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed to hang the men who had attacked Shamsia as she walked to the all-girls’ Mirwais Mena school on the outskirts of Kandahar city.
One man, wearing a mask, asked Shamsia if she was going to school. Then he tore off her veil and pumped acid from a spray gun onto her face.
Several other pupils were hurt in a series of similar acid attacks that morning, but Shamsia and her friends refused to abandon their lessons and persuaded their reluctant parents to support the school staying open.
Shamsia, now 22, is still in the classroom -- but now she stands in front of an energetic bunch of nine and 10-year-old girls. “The students sometimes play around and it does test my patience,” she admitted with a smile. “But being a teacher is much better than being a student, and I am now studying to become fully qualified.”
Shamsia’s scars healed after treatment at hospitals in Kabul and New Delhi, though she has recurring problems with blurred vision and eye pain. “It was very important for me to become a teacher as it shows people that the attackers did not win, just like we came back to school after the attack,” she said.
“By teaching, I want to show that education is important and that women can do more than work in the kitchen.”
Shamsia retains the quiet determination she displayed when speaking out over the attack, and remains furious that her assailants have never been punished. “President Karzai promised to hang these men. If I talk to him, I will ask him why he failed to do that,” she said. The Islamist Taliban, who banned female education when they were in power from 1996-2001, denied any involvement in the acid strikes, and nine suspects arrested after the attack gave questionable confessions and were released.
Shamsia says one of her attackers lives close to her home, and that he sees her go to school every day. “He is free, and it is possible it could happen again. There is no justice, he needs to be punished,” she said.
Inside the school, built with Japanese aid money and opened in 2004, classrooms are packed with chirpy girls aged between six and 20, all wearing white headscarves and shooting their hands up in the air to answer their teachers’ questions.
Shamsia, who earns $85 (63 euros) a month, teaches art and handwriting to her fourth-grade class, while older girls have lessons in science, geography and mathematics. AFP
