BANGLADESH

Rumana Monzur, a master's student at the University of British Columbia (UCB), has not only lost her sight to the attack by her husband in Bangladesh in June, she believes she has lost her life too.

She has started over as a blind mother in Canada to her daughter, 5-year-old Anusheh. Her vision is damaged beyond redemption and she is trying hard to reconcile with the fact that she cannot read to her any more.

Rumana was blinded and her face partially mutilated by her husband Hassan Syed in Dhaka in a fit of rage on June 5.

"She came to Canada two weeks after me, with my mother. When she came, she came with the hope that her mom was okay," Rumana told The Vancouver Sun.

The former Dhaka University teacher now tells Anusheh stories, stories she remembered from her childhood.

She told the newspaper, "Now she helps me. She is learning to read, and she gets a book and brings it to me and tries to read."

"The slender thread of storytelling that has pulled her daughter back into her arms tells another story: that in a world that has suddenly gone dark, there is still a glimmer of light," The Sun observed.

Having lost weight and looking tiny and frail, Rumana is struggling to cope. "I am not okay," she says in a barely audible voice.

"Sometimes I feel someone has snatched myself from me, and I am living someone else's life."

Her little daughter is faced with the challenge of attending kindergarten in a foreign country, and learning a new language.

Regarding the case against her husband, who has not yet been handed down a sentence, Rumana said "she is focusing on her recovery, not on him".

"How can he be punished properly? His life hasn't changed. I have lost my sight."

To other women who may be in abusive relationships, she cautions, "Plan ahead, and plan to get out of that relationship. If I had been able to get out of that relationship, I would not be here like this today."

Rumana was taken to India on June 14 for treatment, as she was severely injured in a physical assault by Hassan, who allegedly tried to gouge her eyes out and chewed her nose off.

She is doing a master's degree in political science at the Vancouver campus of the university, where she was supposed to submit her thesis paper in October.

On June 15, Hassan was arrested and later grilled in a case filed in connection with the torture.

He claimed she had an extramarital affair with an Iranian man, whom Rumana met while studying in Canada.