At four years old, Gul-e-Mehtab already knows what she wants to do when she grows up.

This little girl, whose name means “moonlight flower”, wants to be a doctor in order to heal her own mother, Manzoor Attiqa.

“She says: ‘Mama when I grow up, I will become a doctor. I will treat you, and then you will be perfect’,” Manzoor says, with a proud smile.

Twenty-two-year-old Manzoor is a patient in surgical ward 10 in Benazir Bhutto hospital in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.

The ward is a cluster of women in brightly coloured shawls, who share the same scars and the same trauma. All have been attacked with acid.

This story made my heart sink. I am still shocked after reading it. Not that I didn’t know of these cases, but still… How mentally twisted do you have to be to do something like that to someone so close to you!