Mumtaz feared the commander would have her and the children killed as well, and begged for outside help. She had no remaining relatives except in-laws, since her own family had fled the country, and she was stranded in a Taliban-controlled area.

Once again, the women’s group’s activists managed to rescue Mumtaz. Last month, she reached the safety of the Kabul shelter for the second time, arriving just four days before Gul Meena left.

This time back in the shelter, Mumtaz did not think she would be watching any Indian soaps with the other women. “I have no patience for these things any longer,” Mumtaz said, indicating her two babies. “I’m too tired all the time, and I am not alone now.”

Though exhausted, she still has her dreams, too: little ones for herself, big ones for her daughters. “I want to study and learn to read and write and then become someone who works in an office,” Mumtaz said. “And I want my daughters to become a judge and a lawyer.”

She hopes that someday her daughters will sit in judgment of people like Commander Naseer. That is Mumtaz the Mother’s dream. Mumtaz the Widow’s dream is more visceral. “I am going to throw acid on the face of Naseer,” she said, “to teach him how bad it was, what he has done to us and what I have had to suffer.”

Gul Meena was recently resettled in the Swedish village of Duved, population 600, seven of them refugees. “I only wish Sahar Gul could be here,” she said.

She found it hard to believe that the lodging provided for her had only one bed in it. It was the first room of her own she had ever had. Ms. Motley, the lawyer, bought her a television set for it.