KABUL, Afghanistan — The stitches and bandages are gone, but scars streak across one side of the girl’s face, across her cheek and behind her ear: stark testimony to the brutal attack she barely survived three months ago.

When the girl, Gul Meena, is with other people, even those whom she knows at the shelter where she now lives, she pulls a veil across the damaged side of her face, often touching it gingerly and sucking in her breath.

“It hurts,” she said softly.

The man who swung an ax over and over into her face and neck was her brother, according to the Afghan police and her neighbors. His reason, as best it can be pieced together from people who know the family, was that he believed Gul Meena had dishonored their family by running away with a man to whom she was not married.

What made her perceived crime worse — and, in the eyes of some, what made the “honor killing” necessary — was that she, barely past childhood, was married, said relatives and people in her village.