On her wedding night just a few days ago, Salma snapped. The 20-year-old Afghan woman doused herself in oil lamp fuel and struck a match.
Suffering from second and third degree burns over 70% of her body, she is now swaddled head to foot in bandages in one of only two specialist burns wards in Afghanistan. A metal frame keeps the blankets from weighing down on her body.
Speaking groggily through a haze of painkillers, her story is muddled. She insists there was no dispute with her husband-to-be or his family, or that she was being forced into a marriage she did not want – all reasons that have been cited by many of the increasing number of women who have resorted to self-immolation in recent years.
Instead, she says she was simply upset by the preparations for the wedding feast.
“Often they are ashamed to say what happened,” says Ahmed Shah Wazir, the doctor in charge of the understaffed and under-resourced burns unit in the Istiq Lal hospital in Kabul.
Few places highlight the miseries of women in Afghanistan more than Wazir’s workplace.
The number of women admitted after setting themselves alight has been increasing “day after day”, he says.
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