Transplant recipient hid face

THE woman who received the world’s first face transplant generally kept to herself and wore a surgical mask to hide her disfigured face when she walked her dog on the pathways of her housing estate, neighbours said.

Many in her neighbourhood of small red-brick apartment buildings in northern France did not even realise the patient’s face had been mutilated. They did not want to pry.

“Every evening, I saw her out walking, wearing a mask,” said Belgassem Kahouri, a 57-year-old worker whose apartment overlooks the woman’s top-floor windows, trimmed with white lace curtains. “I assumed she had an allergy or some problem breathing, maybe trouble with pollution.”