Ayan Mohamed wears a niqab that covers her face, not for religious reasons but to hide what lies beneath.
"She wears it to cover the deformity. She covers it because people would stare, children would cry," says Edna Adan Ismail, Somaliland's former foreign minister and first lady. "It's not easy to look at."
Ismail founded the region's first maternity hospital, The Edna Adan University Hospital. The facility is now a bustling general clinic providing care to all.
For 11 years, she's been seeking help to repair Mohamed's face, which was torn apart by shrapnel during the Somali Civil War. Mohamed was just two years old when she was injured.
She is now 25 and can't close her right eye. Food falls from the hole in her cheek when she tries to eat. She's long learned to deal with stares and awkward questions.
"The hardest thing for her is when somebody asks what happened to her face," Ismail says, translating the softly spoken words from Mohamed, who's seated beside her. "It just hurts me," Mohamed says.
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