Asadullah agreed to let us speak with him and Gulnaz because, it seemed, he wanted to show us that things were now settled, that under Afghanistan’s version of social morality he had done the right thing. He had rescued Gulnaz from shame.

“If I hadn’t married her, (but) according to our traditions, she couldn’t have lived back in society,” he tells us. “Her brothers didn’t want to accept her back. Now, she doesn’t have any of those problems.”

Gulnaz remains subdued throughout our meeting and does not once look her husband in the eye. “I didn’t want to ruin the life of my daughter or leave myself helpless so I agreed to marry him,” she says. “We are traditional people. When we get a bad name, we prefer death to living with that name in society.”