“I know there is still a risk to us, but we had no choice,” Mohammad Ali said last week. Now that they were back among the rugged mountain ranges that surround the Bamian valley, he was glad. “Your homeland is a place you will always love, and every mountain pass in my country is precious to me,” he said.

Since eloping last March 21, the couple has faced many obstacles. There were months of flight, followed by Mohammad Ali’s capture by the police in Kabul, who he said beat him daily. Zakia took refuge in a shelter run by Women for Afghan Women, a charity. The group’s lawyers managed to win Mohammad Ali’s freedom, and the two were reunited and their marriage recognized as valid.

Even as they became a cause célèbre — particularly among young Afghans, many of whom mounted Facebook and Twitter campaigns hailing them as a modern Romeo and Juliet who had the courage to choose their own mates in defiance of Afghan social norms — the couple dropped from public view.

They returned briefly to their village, but before long, one of Zakia’s brothers, armed with a gun and a knife, pursued Mohammad Ali through the potato fields. He managed to escape, but Mohammad Ali and a pregnant Zakia then fled to the protection of distant mountain villages in Yakawlang District.

Zakia was having a difficult pregnancy, though, and there were few medical services in Yakawlang, so they returned to hiding in Kabul last August.