In April 2021, Anita was lying on a stained bed in the women’s room of the psychiatric ward in Herat Regional Hospital, a government-run facility in western Afghanistan. Stiff and covered in sweat, the 20-year-old was unresponsive. It was 8 a.m. local time, and all eight beds in the ward were occupied. Unconscious patients, shrouded in cloth, lay in the dappled morning sunlight, tended to by anxious relatives.
