disfigured
Naomi Amiri
52
Naomi Amiri was 22 years old and lived in a small village in southern Iran.
Since childhood, she had been told that one day she would marry a man her parents had chosen for her. With each passing year, the pressure grew, and by the time she turned 21, the decision had been made: an older businessman, three times her age, was to become her husband. Naomi refused—quietly, but firmly. But her silence meant nothing in a house where her father's word was law.
On the night before her engagement, Naomi fled with the help of a friend. Through several stops and much fear, she eventually made it illegally to the United States. There, she applied for asylum and slowly began to build a new life—a life where, for the first time, she could breathe.
She learned English, worked in a small café, and began studying.
She met Elias, an architecture student with serious eyes and a quiet kindness. He spoke to her, not about her. He listened. Naomi opened up to him, slowly, cautiously. For the first time, she believed that maybe a new life was truly possible.
But shadows from the past stretch far.
Her family had never given up on her—not out of love, but out of hate. To them, Naomi had brought shame to their name. One day, while she was out with Elias, a young man approached them. Naomi recognized him instantly: Ramin, her little brother, the boy she once held in her arms.
Before she could react, he pulled a bottle from his backpack and hurled its contents into her face. The world became fire. Her skin melted, her screams echoed through the streets. And when she awoke in the hospital, her features were destroyed—
and Elias was gone. Naomi remained. Not just disfigured, but broken.
She withdrew from the world, left university, quit her job, avoided mirrors. Every glance at a face—whether her own or a stranger’s—was an attack on the last scraps of self-worth she had left. Sometimes Naomi dreams of Elias, of Ramin, of her old life.
And every time she Wake up with tears, with pain.
hope
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