KABUL, Afghanistan — Mostly paralyzed and often alone, Robaba Mohammadi could have easily given in to the despair that swallows her war-ravaged country, and few would have blamed her.

Instead, the stubbornly determined 16-year-old, born with clawed hands and feet, picked up a pencil and started drawing — with her mouth.

As she sketches, producing increasingly detailed portraits of animals, still objects and people, the girl who has a form of palsy is gaining modest fame as a symbol of unyielding hope in what looks to be another bloody year of war with Taliban insurgents.

“I was alone, and I wanted to find a way to pass the time,” Mohammadi said inside a small family home that sits among dirt roads on the outskirts of Kabul. “That's the way I started drawing. Now, I want to pursue this as a profession. It's not for fun anymore.”

Over about 15 months, Mohammadi has progressed from simple drawings of birds and dolls to serene portraits of flowers with delicate wrinkles on their petals, of animals with glistening eyes framed by light and shade and of unveiled women with glamorous hair and bold expressions.

When Mohammadi makes a mistake, she clutches an eraser between her lips and rubs away the error — a task she is learning to avoid.

On a recent afternoon, the girl positioned herself before her easel in the sunlit room she uses as a studio.

Mohammadi's mouth moved back and forth rapidly as she added depth to the face of an Afghan police officer, Serajuddin Afghan Mal, who has reportedly defused several thousand improvised explosive devices left along the roads by Taliban fighters.

This was her first commission, which came after a member of the Afghan parliament saw a story about Mohammadi on a Kabul TV news show last month and contacted her with a request to honor the officer.

The subject suits her, Mohammadi said, because she wants her art to reflect Afghanistan's better nature — to be a reminder that there is still cause for celebration in a country more often paralyzed by suicide bombings and the uncertainty wrought by nearly 15 years of war.

“Usually, people are hearing about fighting, explosions and blasts,” she said. “If they listen to my story, it's a story of hope.”

For Mohammadi, drawing was initially a response to a lifetime of frustration and loneliness.

Her parents brought her to Kabul from the country's central Ghazni province when she was 3, settling into a largely undeveloped corner near a sprawling lumberyard.

They carried Mohammadi over the neighborhood's jagged, dusty roads during repeated searches for a doctor who could unfurl her arms and legs and make them work. Doctors could only speculate about the cause of her condition and, after about five years, the family gave up.

“We lost hope,” said Mohammadi's mother, Masuma. Like many Afghans, she uses only one name.

Mohammadi spent most of her time inside the family's house, maneuvering her torso to get around and whiling away the hours as her three younger siblings grew up around her.

When Mohammadi was 7, she began to resent that her younger sisters attended school while she stayed inside, often alone for hours.

She found a school notebook belonging to one of her sisters and stashed it under a rug. Later, she did the same with two pens.

While the rest of the family was away, she grabbed a pen with her left foot and tried to write.

When that didn't work, Mohammadi held the pen in her mouth and slowly copied the first two letters in the Dari alphabet: “alef” and “ba.”

“For six months, nobody knew what I was doing,” she recalled, laughing. “My sister was saying, ‘Where is my notebook?'?”

But as her writing improved over the years, the teenage Mohammadi still had no outlet for her frustration.

So she started drawing. That meant enduring the pain that came with firmly and repeatedly guiding a pencil across what became countless sheets of paper.

“I cannot leave the house. I am not free,” Mohammadi said about her determination. “I have a desire to draw nature, natural beauty. I'm not free to see these things with my own eyes.”

Now, what she can see with her own eyes is the possibility of a future beyond the walls of her home, maybe even beyond Kabul.

An aide to the parliament member who commissioned the police officer's portrait arrived recently at Mohammadi's home to retrieve the illustration. In his hand was an envelope holding the equivalent of $72 — a sum that made the young artist's face blush with pride. Mohammadi thanked him.

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi, the parliament member, said that, when she saw Mohammadi's story on television, she recognized an opportunity.

“She's someone who can give courage to other Afghans,” Naderi said. “She's actually sending a message: If we have hope, we can try. We can move forward.”

Naderi said she is pushing to have Mohammadi enrolled in school, with an emphasis on art instruction so the teenager can further develop her talent.

She said she also intends to unveil the portrait of the officer at a ceremony to be held in his honor that will double as a public introduction for Mohammadi.

Mohammadi said she hopes to master drawing and then graduate into painting more sophisticated portraits and natural landscapes.

To that end, she stopped talking and went back to work.

As the lumberyard workers outside used a buzz saw to shave fresh planks of wood, Mohammadi drew a rough sketch of a dove carrying a peace sign.

The effort took about 20 minutes.

When she finished, the dove had a broken wing.

“Flying with a broken wing is art,” she wrote over the picture, before glancing around the room with a look of defiance.