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KABUL, Afghanistan — Smiling as she lay on a hospital trolley, Sona Amirzada admired her new nose in a hand-held mirror. It was five days since she had undergone plastic surgery and little black stitches still held in place the bridge of her nose. On her rib cage was a red, raw scar where cartilage had been extracted to build it up.
“My nose was too small and I wanted to look like other girls,” she says with a shy smile. “At first when I saw it after the operation I was really horrified, but now I like it.”
While westerners go under the knife to reduce their noses to button-shaped perfection, Amirzada, a 19-year-old secretary, is one of a growing number of Afghans clamouring for bigger noses to conform to the Pashtun ideal of beauty.
Now that her nose had been enhanced she felt ready for her wedding.
“I’m excited. I’m going to marry my cousin Samir next month. Many relatives will come and we will celebrate for two days,” she said.
Nose enlargement is the most popular procedure at the Hamkar hospital in western Kabul. Dwarfed by hardware stores on a crowded, dusty street, it is the first cosmetic surgery clinic in Afghanistan.
Dr. Daud Nazari, the surgeon, can barely keep up with the demand. Women in sky-blue burkas flow up a dimly lit staircase to his tiny waiting room. He and a colleague perform at least 100 operations a year.
Many of Nazari’s patients belong to the Hazara minority, who feel out of place in Afghan society with their eastern features and flatter noses. Others simply want to refine their looks to bag a good husband.
“They want to make their noses bigger because they want to be pretty,” Nazari said.
During decades of war, plastic surgeons in Afghanistan have devoted their energies to reconstructive work, treating men mutilated by the Taliban and women who have set themselves on fire to protest against repression.
Ten years after the fall of the Taliban, violence still rages in much of the countryside but in relatively peaceful cities, the middle classes are exposed to fashions in Iran and India, and on television soap operas.
More and more people can afford surgery. A nose job in Kabul costs dollars 300 (pounds 185), about one-twentieth of the cost in Britain. Even for some Afghans on lower incomes, beautification is within reach.
“We have some cases where people have sold their jewelry to have cosmetic surgery,” said Nazari.
The long years of suffering have also made the population tough, he said. Nose reconstruction that involves surgery on the rib cage is done mainly under local anaesthetic.
Shabnam Niazy, a nurse whose own face owes something to a surgeon’s skills, said that in Afghanistan beauty was determined by the shape of the eyes and the size of the nose.
“Some young and unmarried girls come here for a facelift when they see wrinkles. It could be that they’re afraid they will never get married,” she said.
Niazy pulled on her surgical mask and headed to the operating theatre, where Feruzan Qari Zadah, 21, was waiting for her nose job.
“This is the will of her family,” said her uncle, Aziz, as he clutched his prayer beads in the waiting room.
“Her brother wants her to be beautiful for marriage, and she was unhappy about the way she looked. Her younger sister got married last year but she is still single and that was disappointing.”
Foreigners are also lured to a war zone by the tempting prices, said Nazari. One woman had come from Holland for a tummy tuck. “But this procedure is not so popular among Afghans. Our people, men and women, like to be fatter.”
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/...#ixzz29n3WeiIi
KABUL, Afghanistan — Smiling as she lay on a hospital trolley, Sona Amirzada admired her new nose in a hand-held mirror. It was five days since she had undergone plastic surgery and little black stitches still held in place the bridge of her nose. On her rib cage was a red, raw scar where cartilage had been extracted to build it up.
“My nose was too small and I wanted to look like other girls,” she says with a shy smile. “At first when I saw it after the operation I was really horrified, but now I like it.”
While westerners go under the knife to reduce their noses to button-shaped perfection, Amirzada, a 19-year-old secretary, is one of a growing number of Afghans clamouring for bigger noses to conform to the Pashtun ideal of beauty.
Now that her nose had been enhanced she felt ready for her wedding.
“I’m excited. I’m going to marry my cousin Samir next month. Many relatives will come and we will celebrate for two days,” she said.
Nose enlargement is the most popular procedure at the Hamkar hospital in western Kabul. Dwarfed by hardware stores on a crowded, dusty street, it is the first cosmetic surgery clinic in Afghanistan.
Dr. Daud Nazari, the surgeon, can barely keep up with the demand. Women in sky-blue burkas flow up a dimly lit staircase to his tiny waiting room. He and a colleague perform at least 100 operations a year.
Many of Nazari’s patients belong to the Hazara minority, who feel out of place in Afghan society with their eastern features and flatter noses. Others simply want to refine their looks to bag a good husband.
“They want to make their noses bigger because they want to be pretty,” Nazari said.
During decades of war, plastic surgeons in Afghanistan have devoted their energies to reconstructive work, treating men mutilated by the Taliban and women who have set themselves on fire to protest against repression.
Ten years after the fall of the Taliban, violence still rages in much of the countryside but in relatively peaceful cities, the middle classes are exposed to fashions in Iran and India, and on television soap operas.
More and more people can afford surgery. A nose job in Kabul costs dollars 300 (pounds 185), about one-twentieth of the cost in Britain. Even for some Afghans on lower incomes, beautification is within reach.
“We have some cases where people have sold their jewelry to have cosmetic surgery,” said Nazari.
The long years of suffering have also made the population tough, he said. Nose reconstruction that involves surgery on the rib cage is done mainly under local anaesthetic.
Shabnam Niazy, a nurse whose own face owes something to a surgeon’s skills, said that in Afghanistan beauty was determined by the shape of the eyes and the size of the nose.
“Some young and unmarried girls come here for a facelift when they see wrinkles. It could be that they’re afraid they will never get married,” she said.
Niazy pulled on her surgical mask and headed to the operating theatre, where Feruzan Qari Zadah, 21, was waiting for her nose job.
“This is the will of her family,” said her uncle, Aziz, as he clutched his prayer beads in the waiting room.
“Her brother wants her to be beautiful for marriage, and she was unhappy about the way she looked. Her younger sister got married last year but she is still single and that was disappointing.”
Foreigners are also lured to a war zone by the tempting prices, said Nazari. One woman had come from Holland for a tummy tuck. “But this procedure is not so popular among Afghans. Our people, men and women, like to be fatter.”
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/...#ixzz29n3WeiIi