Desperation drives abused Afghan women to suicide by fire
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HERAT — In the refined, cultured and historic Afghan city of Herat, 67 young women have been admitted to the main hospital this year after setting themselves on fire.
Halima is the most recent. She arrived earlier this month with third-degree burns to 30 percent of her body after dousing herself in diesel oil and setting it alight during a family argument.
Her torso and one of her arms — the one that did not pour the oil — are swaddled in thick bandages, the charred and blackened fingers on her right hand poking through. Every now and then she winces in pain.
It had been a furious row, she said, with her husband’s first wife, whom she accused of supplying him with opium.
“I was crazy angry at that time. I wanted to kill myself and I thought that it would be a quick death,” said the 20-year-old who has been a second wife for five years. “But it wasn’t.”.... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100929com6.html
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