WorldViews: In 2004, I met an Afghan girl sold into an abusive marriage at age 9. This month, I set out to find her.
Pekay was small, with a puffy nose and an infectious smile. That was the last memory I had of her, 10 years ago.
She was 13 back then, but she had already suffered a lifetime of misery.
When Pekay was 9, her impoverished family sold her into marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather. They needed to pay their rent — $80, a princely sum at the time — and so their landlord became Pekay’s husband. He brutalized her, so severely that she contemplated suicide.
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