Documentary: A Thousand Eyes

 Every Tuesday morning,  Rumana Monzur adjusts her head covering, unfolds her white cane and taps her way past the trophy case, on her way to her first-year class at UBC law school.

Rumana Monzur has only been blind for 2 years. She's still not very good at navigating; she gets a bit lost crossing open spaces.

But it's breathtaking that she's here at all.

In 2011, Rumana Monzur was an international graduate student in political science at the University of British Columbia.  In June, she went home to Bangladesh to visit her family and write her thesis.  

That is when her husband attacked her. He bit off half her nose and gouged out her eyes.  Their five-year-old daughter watched it all happen.

Rumana Monzur was 33  - well educated, well off - the daughter of an army officer and an assistant professor at Daka University.

A friend spoke to her a few days after the attack.  "Rumana, you must speak up."   And against all odds - she did. With her father beside her,  Rumana Monzur gave a press conference from her hospital bed, and became the embodiment of the fight against the abuse of women in Bangladesh.

The very next day, the police "discovered" her husband hiding at a relative's house.  He was arrested and died in prison 5 months later.

Her Canadian friends raised money, UBC stepped up to the plate and within a month Rumana Monzur, her daughter and her parents were in Vancouver.  Despite multiple surgeries, the damage to her eyes was irreversible.

And now here she is at law school - waiting for what lawyers call Torts class, the study of when one person can sue another.

Karin Wells's documentary is called "A Thousand Eyes."