She survived. That was supposed to be enough.

Her father is a daily wage labourer from Sargodha. According to Arab News reporting from August 2023, her mother had twelve pregnancies in fifteen years of marriage and nine other children at home. When the offer came — a household in Islamabad, some income for the family — her mother said yes. The household belonged to a civil judge and his wife.

For seven months, she was tortured. Systematically, in the home of a member of Pakistan's judiciary. She cleaned her own blood off herself after beatings. One of the sons beat her with a bat until the bat broke on her body. Both her arms were fractured. Her skull was burnt, the wounds left untreated until infection spread to her lungs and her heart. She was starved for five consecutive days. She was not allowed to be seen by any visitor. When she was permitted to call home, her employer sat beside her. Her hair, which she says reached her waist, was cut off.

She weighed 30 kilograms when she arrived at Lahore General Hospital. She should have weighed 46. A twelve-member medical board said she would need six reconstructive surgeries.

The civil judge gave media interviews calling her family greedy. His wife obtained pre-arrest bail through judicial networks within hours of the case becoming public. He offered money to make it go away. Her mother refused. The wife was indicted in February 2024 and refused to accept the charges. The case is in the Islamabad High Court. It has been over two years. Her files were stolen from the CPWB office.

She has been in care for two years. The speed of her — the way she jumps into conversations, finishes thoughts, keeps the room moving — is real recovery and it matters. But underneath the speed she stays tense in a low-level constant way, the way of someone who has not felt fully safe in a long time. She does not like new places. She does not like strangers. She finds it hard to concentrate.

She said: inho na kuch kiya hi nahi. They did nothing. She said it without drama, the way you say something you have already made peace with even though it is not okay.

She says funding comes in from abroad in her name and no one tells her how much. She says the surgeries keep getting delayed — every time she asks, there is a new reason. She raised the AC issue with the Director General — no windows in the residential rooms, just humidity, and she gets heat rashes — and he told her not to complain because it is hot all over the country. Her cooking teacher made her stand outside in the June heat after she could not answer a question. A fifteen-year-old with a burnt skull and documented heat sensitivity, standing in the Lahore sun.

The girls in the hostel make fun of her appearance. She knows. She carries it every day in a place that is supposed to be safe. What was done to her face did not stay there. It went somewhere inside her, into what she believes she is allowed to claim.

I asked her if she knew how pretty she was. She said: nahi piyari houn main. I asked if she could at least say she had a pretty heart. She said: ya bhi nahi keh saktay.

She is fifteen years old and she cannot say she has a pretty heart. Two years of delays and fundraising conducted in her name and girls laughing at her and the Director General's comment about the AC and standing outside in June have done something to what she believes she deserves to say out loud.

She wants Somia punished. Not for herself. So that Somia never does this to another child. She is fifteen and already thinking about the next girl.