Pakistani Rape Victim Learns, Teaches and Weeps as She Goes

"I was illiterate. I am attending my own school, and I am now in third grade," Mukhtar said.

She has gone door to door encouraging reluctant mothers to enroll their sons in the Gholam Farid School. About 160 boys now attend the school.

Mukhtar arrived in the United States last week to receive Glamour magazine's Woman of the Year award in New York, to raise money for victims of the powerful earthquake that struck Pakistan last month and to ask for funds to help educate women in her country.

On the surface, Mukhtar said, Pakistani authorities treat her with respect. But in June, the government tried to prevent her from traveling to the United States at the invitation of a rights group, fearing it would bring bad publicity. After a chorus of protests, the government relented.

Still wrestling with her own trauma, Mukhtar is somewhat bewildered by her effectiveness.

"I don't think I am powerful, and I tell them: I am a poor person just like you. I still get nightmares. I don't know if I have been able to turn things around in my life. A woman who goes through what I did never recovers. My mind will never be able to forget," she said, tears welling in her eyes.

Yet she has made a tremendous difference. Meerwala's tribal tribunal has been dissolved, "because they are scared," she said. Twenty-seven Muslim organizations in the United States signed a petition in support of Mukhtar saying, "Secular violence is not, nor has ever been, a legitimate means of punishment in Islam." She also has an appeal pending in Pakistan's Supreme Court against a court order to free men accused of involvement in her rape.

Mukhtar explained that she is focusing on changing the age-old custom of tribal justice into a process in which "police stations and the law" become the only recourse.

"We are trying to overcome the old ways," she said. "I just see myself as someone trying to fight the oppression."