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"He wanted to destroy my face. I used to be beautiful and now I look like this."

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Doktor Amin repairs a face which has been damaged by acid.

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A piece of skin from the forearm is stitched under the lip.

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"When I became a plastic surgeon I thought I’d be working with beautiful women,” he jokes.

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The Plastic Surgeon
The city of Bahawalpur lies in eastern Pakistan, 420 km south of Lahore, and has almost a million inhabitants. The city lies in a poor agricultural area. It has a state hospital with – unusually – a plastic surgery unit. This is where plastic surgeon Muhammad Mughese Amin works.

“First it’s about saving lives. Then we can start to repair.”   


Who
: Muhammad Mughese Amin
What:
Operates on victims of honour crimes who have been burned by acid or mutilated.

He is one of two plastic surgeons who serve 2,000 square kilometres, almost half of Pakistan. In this area there are thousands of victims who never even see a doctor, and almost all of those who do, arrive too late, when their injuries have started to heal.
The patients arrive at Mughese’s surgery in a steady stream. Some are the kind of patients you might find anywhere in the world: a five-year-old boy with webbed feet, a baby with a hare lip, a man with an old scar from a burn which has healed badly.

But there are also patients who have been the victims of violence. The doctor is incensed by the mutilated, burned and acid-damaged bodies he spends days trying to repair. He shows us page after pages in his photo album of pictures of noses and arms which have been cut off, burned breasts and faces which have more or less dissolved in streams of acid.
“When I became a plastic surgeon I thought I’d be working with beautiful women,” he jokes, but underneath he is deeply serious.

He shows us page after pages in his photo album of pictures of noses and arms which have been cut off, burned breasts and faces which have more or less dissolved in streams of acid.

The doctor presses a button on the wall and in comes a woman with her mother. Her left eye is completely gummed up, her nose is crooked and the left side of her face has been destroyed. Strings, like thick sinews, run along her throat.

She was asleep when her neighbour got into the house and threw acid over her. He said he wanted revenge for when she had beaten his brother’s children when they quarrelled with her children.
“I did hit them, it’s true,” she says, “but I don’t think that’s why he came. My husband died four years ago and since then I’ve had no-one to protect me. This neighbour had been after me many times. “You haven’t got a man, and you might need one …” He wanted to have sex with me, but I said no. I think he wanted revenge. He wanted to destroy my face. I used to be beautiful and now I look like this. I always carry a small mirror with me. When I look at my disfigured face I cry, but it’s only my right eye that has any tears.”

Dr Mughese talks about blind rage, but we have learned that many of the attacks have been well-planned. Sometimes they are part of other feuds which can be about money, land and revenge. In other words, not just ‘jealousy’ and ‘honour’. And hardly blind. Just criminal.

Mutilation is a sign that you have done – or at least been accused of doing – something immoral.

The doctor does not at the moment have any patients in his unit whose noses, penises or arms have been cut off. Mutilations – for the most part in the name of honour – are as common as acid attacks.
“I’ve performed over 500 operations on patients who have been maimed, as many as on victims of acid attacks.”

Mutilation is a sign that you have done – or at least been accused of doing – something immoral.
“I’ve had patients with severe nose cancers who have refused to have an operation. They would rather die than be seen without a nose.”

“At first it’s about saving lives,
” says Dr Mughese. “Then we can start to repair, step by step. My patients become a little more beautiful with every operation. I would like to see stricter laws, and it shouldn’t be possible to forgive an attacker. Anyone who attacks people in this way should be subjected to the same thing: an eye for an eye.”

Dr Mughese offers to press the button again but we decline politely. We’ve had enough.  The doctor also runs a private clinic. There he performs hair transplants on sheiks from Saudi Arabia and enlarges the breasts of landowners’ wives.
“The patients who come in for cosmetic surgery are always complaining.  There’s always some detail they’re not happy with. Here I do some good, and I get so much back in return. These patients will pray for me for as long as they live.”