Tragedy struck the town of Mazar-I-Sharif in Afghanistan a few months back when two sisters committed suicide on the same day. As the New York Times recently wrote about the story, questions have been raised about the environment young women are subject to in the Middle East.
Nabila and Fareba were very modern Afghan women, they wore jeans and makeup and both attended school; Fareba attended a university and Nabila was planning on following her sister. Problems began when Nabila confessed to her older sister that she had fallen in love with a boy, and Fareba scolded her, beginning a screaming math broken up by their mother. Following the fight, Nabila secretly drank rat poisoning from her home was found and taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, she had meant to take enough to scare her family, not to die; a few hours later she passed away.
Her family drove home, and her father was later admitted into the hospital following a heart attack. Little did he know, a few hours later his second daughter would join him in the hospital.
Presumably out of guilt, Fareba took the same rat poison as her sister and was found at the steps of the Hazrat Ali shrine by her uncle. She was rushed to the hospital and later died. Her father did not find out about Fareba’s death until he saw her nondescript coffin next to Nabila’s.
So what does this mean? In the near future, it means horrible grief for a family. But in the overall picture, what does the world make of this? These two girls were incredibly modern, and they had great futures ahead of them. What can we do to prevent these things? Can we do anything at all?