GHAZNI, Afghanistan — Every night, Hamdullah Hemat gulps down a 500-milligram prescription sleeping pill. He is 15 years old, a ninth grader. Last month, he saw his best friend die in a suicide bombing at their school.

Mary Alimi, a 30-year-old mother of three, suffered a head injury in the same bombing. She can no longer remember her children’s names.

Jamila Neyazi is 19, a schoolteacher. She suffered hand and shoulder wounds in the July 7 blast and saw many of her students cut by shattered glass, or bludgeoned by flying debris. She fears she is clinically depressed.

“I feel numb,” she said. “I wish there was a calm, dark place where I could sit and cry.”

There are dozens of suicide bombings in Afghanistan every year. Each is uniquely tragic, and each is swiftly overshadowed by the singular brutality of the next.