The tragic double suicide of young sisters has come to symbolize the increasingly hostile world that many Afghanistan women are forced to live in. After Nabila Gul, 17, fell in love with a younger man “outside [her] families’ channels,” her sister Fareba, 25, became alarmed and insisted she cut ties. In a desperate attempt to prove to her family how much she loved the boy, Nabila went to the holy steps of the Hazrat Ali shrine and attempted to eat “just enough rat poison to scare her family.” She took more than enough. Overcome with guilt, her sister copied. The November deaths shattered the community of Mazar-e Sharif, and Afghanistan as a whole. While the government claims it collects no data on such incidents, the main hospital in the city says suicide attempts are soaring.
