Thirteen-year-old Esther has the face of a Madonna in a Renaissance painting, and marriage is the last thing the teenager dreams about. Her parents, too, would rather put her marriage off until she is older, but her fiance, a 70-year-old drug baron, is anxious to tie the knot as soon as possible.
'Where else would an old man get such a beautiful young girl if I were not in debt?' her father, Abdul Satar, asked, tears welling up in his eyes.
Either Esther, or her sister Chai-Esther, 14, will be given to the local drug lord Khan Mohammed in the poverty stricken village of Deh Magas to settle the $14,500 debt her family owes to the drug trader.
Miles away from a functioning bank, opium acts as a form of credit in Afghanistan: the country which is the source of almost 90 per cent of the world's heroin.
Drug smugglers advance small farmers money against the following year's harvest and, acting as loan sharks, often double the money owed if the crop fails or is eradicated.
Eradication efforts in Badakhshan province, where opium cultivation dropped last year by 53 per cent, have led to a surge in reports of child marriage to level debts to drug dealers.