“Behold the daughters of the whores who defiled our sisters!” he roared, pointing a finger at the terrified crowd. “Behold the mothers who raised demons! You are not in your fancy homes now. You are in the house of Allah, and here, you will pay for your sins!”
The treatment was methodical and brutal. First, their identity was stripped away. They were forced to stand in a line while men with scissors and razors sheared their hair. Mousini’s long, lustrous black hair, her pride, was hacked off to a brutal, uneven stubble. Tanisha cried out as her own hair was torn from her scalp. Little Shagun just trembled, silent tears streaming down her face as her beautiful plaits were cut away.
Next came their clothes. Their expensive silk sarees and designer salwar kameez were ripped from their bodies and thrown into a large bonfire burning in the courtyard. They stood naked, their shivering bodies exposed to the leering eyes of their captors. Then, they were hosed down with ice-cold water, the high-pressure jets stinging their skin and forcing them to the ground.
They were not given new clothes. Instead, they were branded. A man with a glowing iron rod moved down the line. The brand was a simple, brutal symbol: the Arabic letter “N,” for “Najis,” meaning unclean or impure. He pressed the iron into the soft flesh of each woman’s left buttock. The smell of searing skin filled the air, mingling with their screams. Mousini bit her lip so hard she drew blood, trying not to scream in front of her daughters, but when it was Tanisha’s turn, she shrieked, a sound of pure agony that echoed in the vast hall. When they got to Shagun, the man hesitated for a second. The mullah nodded. “Purify the young sapling before it grows poisonous,” he intoned. The iron sizzled against the child’s flesh, and her high-pitched, animalistic squeal of pain was the final breaking point for Mousini, who collapsed into a sobbing heap.
Their fate was then decided. The younger girls, including Shagun, were taken away to a separate dormitory. The older women, including Tanisha and Mousini, were kept in the main hall to be broken.
Tanisha, at 19, was prime. She was dragged onto a raised platform that had once been used for recitations. Her hands were tied to a post behind her back, forcing her chest forward. The mullah himself stepped forward. He didn’t rape her. He took a long, thin, wooden switch and began to whip her breasts and her inner thighs. Each lash was precise, designed to inflict maximum pain without causing life-threatening injury. He lectured the crowd of men as he did it. “You see this flesh? This is the flesh of arrogance! This is the flesh that looked down on us! We will humble it! We will mark it! We will make it understand its true purpose!”
After twenty lashes, her body a map of red, angry welts, the mullah stepped aside. “She is ready for purification,” he announced. The first man from the mob climbed onto the platform. He raped her from the front, his hands digging into the welts on her thighs, making her scream anew. When he was finished, another took her from behind. Then another. It was a conveyor belt of violation. She was forced to service dozens of men, her body a public altar for their rage and lust. Her throat was raw from screaming, her vagina and anus were torn and bleeding, but they didn’t stop. They gave her water to keep her conscious, to ensure she felt every moment of the degradation.