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"The city must take some drastic steps," the consultant, John Boyle, warned the City Council in delivering his report at a public meeting in 2005. Among the options he suggested was filing for bankruptcy.

"I thought all hell would break loose — I thought the flag would finally be raised," Mr. Boyle recalled in an interview last week. But his warning drew little notice. "It was utterly astounding," he said.

The financial crisis that has made Detroit one of the largest cities ever to face mandatory state oversight was decades in the making, a trail of missteps, of trimming too little, too late, of hoping that deep-rooted structural problems would turn out to be cyclical downturns that might melt away as the economy picked up.

Some factors were out of the city's control. As auto industry jobs moved elsewhere over the decades, for example, Detroit lost much of its affluent tax base. Lower than expected state revenue sharing did not help, nor did corruption allegations in the administration of Kwame M. Kilpatrick, a mayor who resigned in 2008 and was convicted on Monday of racketeering and other federal charges.

But recent findings from a state-appointed review team and interviews with past and present city officials also suggest a city that over the years was remarkably badly run.

The state review team found in recent months that the city's main courthouse had $280 million worth of uncollected fines and fees. No one could tell the team how many police officers were patrolling the streets, even though public safety accounted for a little more than half the budget. The city was borrowing from restricted funds and keeping unclaimed property that it was required to turn over to the state. In some city departments, records were "basically stuff written on index cards," as one City Council member put it.

"This was bad decisions piled on top of each other," Gary Brown, the Detroit City Council president pro tem, said the other day. "It has all been a strategy of hope. You keep borrowing where every piece of collateral is already leveraged. You have no bonding capacity — you're at junk status. You're overestimating revenues and not managing the resources. Now the chickens have come home to roost."

Once the nation's fourth-largest city, Detroit had grown up around the auto industry, booming right along with it in the 1950s. City workers gained ground with pay increases intended to keep pace with those the United Auto Workers won for its members, analysts said.

"It was easy to do so back in the 1950s," said Joseph L. Harris, Detroit's former auditor general. "The city had 1.8 million residents then."

But as auto jobs moved elsewhere and the region aged, Detroit's labor costs — retiree health care costs, especially — ballooned.

At the same time, officials papered over growing deficits with more borrowing. Finally Detroit's legal debt limit, which is linked to the total value of real estate in the city, fell when the mortgage bubble burst and property values plunged. Today the city says its debt limit is $1 billion, and it has effectively lost its ability to issue debt in the name of its taxpayers.

When a city cannot borrow, it cannot function; New York City showed that in 1975, Cleveland in 1978. But even as Detroit has approached the critical limit, some city leaders have seemed unaware, quarreling over smaller, symbolic issues like whether to lease a city-owned park to the state.

"It is peeling an onion," Mayor Dave Bing said of his growing understanding after he took office in 2009 of the depths of the city's financial woes. "You dig and you dig and you dig, and you really start to find out how bad the problem was. "

Mr. Bing knew plenty about the city's struggles before taking office and ran on a platform of reversing the spiraling finances. Still, within his first six months in office, the city came close to not making payroll.

"That's a scary moment," he recalled in an interview. "You've got people living from paycheck to paycheck, week to week, and you're about to run out of cash. You can only imagine what kind of impact that that's going to have just on the life of the average person."

The big structural imbalance was hard to see building up, because until 2008, when a new accounting rule took effect, cities like Detroit were not required to keep track of their workers' lifelong health care bills. That is why Mr. Boyle found a $7.2 billion promise that no one knew about. Detroit's general-obligation debt to its bondholders, by contrast, was a little less than $1 billion that year, safely within the city's legal debt limit, then $1.4 billion.

But while the numbers are particularly grim here, the basic story line is hardly unique. The same path, long and slow, can be found from Providence, R.I., to Stockton, Calif.

To preserve cash, the city resorted to increasing its workers' future pensions at contract time, instead of raising their pay. That helped balance the immediate budgets, but set up a time bomb sure to explode as more workers retired.

The cost of the retirees' pensions also grew because of an inflation-protection feature that compounds every year. Detroit cannot renege on paying the benefits, at least outside of bankruptcy, because the State Constitution makes it unlawful to reduce pensions after public workers earn them.

By the 2000s, Detroit was borrowing to solve budget shortfalls. Meanwhile, property tax revenues fell, not just because of departing residents, but also as values fell and some people quit paying. The city has reported collecting 84 percent of property tax levied, but a Detroit News analysis suggests a collection rate closer to half of property owners.

In recent years, city officials have made deep cuts in staff and operations, leaving residents complaining of darkened streetlights, slow police response times and bus delays. But while cutting workers can help reduce the current year's costs, it moves many of those people into the ranks of retirees, putting heavy long-term pressure on Detroit's two public pension funds.

By late 2011, a sense of crisis descended on Detroit. In November, Mayor Bing, a Democrat, addressed the city on live television, warning that Detroit would run out of money without concessions from unions, layoffs and privatization. A month later, Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, called for a review of Detroit's finances, a first step in cases where the state is preparing to send an emergency financial manager.

City officials held off further intervention by committing to a legal agreement with the state in 2012 that laid out measures to save money. By fall, a board overseeing the agreement said progress was moving too slowly. While City Council members are contesting the matter during a hearing in Lansing on Tuesday, Mr. Snyder's administration is preparing to name an emergency manager within days. Mr. Bing says his administration has drawn up a plan to spare the city, though he acknowledges that it has yet to be fully put into effect.

Under Michigan law, the emergency manager would ultimately have the authority to remove local elected officials from most financial decision making, change labor contracts, close or privatize departments, and even recommend that Detroit enter bankruptcy proceedings, a possibility that experts say raises the prospect of the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history, at $14 billion worth of long-term obligations.

None of the decisions, experts here say, will be simple, and some wonder whether Detroit can be saved at all. Some 700,000 residents now live in this vast 139-square-mile city that once was home to nearly two million people. That number may fall to close to 600,000 by 2030 before the population begins to rise again, one regional planning group projects. By pushing costs into the future while its population is shrinking, Detroit has left the people least able to pay with the biggest share of its bills.

"Detroit is a microcosm of what's going on in America, except America can still print money and borrow," Mr. Boyle said.

But Nabila Gul, 17, a bright and spunky high school student, pushed it too far. She fell in love.

Her older sister, Fareba, 25, alarmed at the potential shame and consequences of Nabila's pursuit of a young man outside of family channels, tried to intervene. Their argument that November day ended in grief: side-by-side coffins, both girls dead within hours of each other after consuming rat poison stolen from their father's grain closet.

Interviews with family members and government and hospital officials here reveal a tragedy of miscalculation: Under pressure from her older sister to halt communication with the boy, Nabila tried to eat just enough poison to scare her family but not kill herself. But she misjudged. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Fareba followed by taking her own life on the doorstep of the city's most holy shrine.

The sisters' deaths shattered their family and have struck a chilling chord for the residents of Mazar-i-Sharif, a city increasingly marked by the despair of its young women. For many, the deaths have come to symbolize a larger crisis: an intensifying wave of suicide attempts.

Although the government says it does not collect data on these cases, the city's main hospital says it has been overwhelmed, with three or four such patients coming in every day, up from about one or two a month a decade ago.

The number of attempts has grown with such speed that the head of investigations for the police, Col. Salahudin Sultan, says he can no longer follow up on them.

"We don't have the time or resources to investigate these," he explained. "We would hardly get anything else done."

As for the questions of why, and why here, there seem to be as many theories as there are cases. Most explanations focus on Mazar's status in Afghanistan as an affluent cross-cultural hub, relatively more liberal and exposed to European influences. While Afghan girls here regularly are exposed to the social norms of the West through television serials and the Web, the fact is that they live in Afghanistan's conservative and male-dominated society. The clash is cruel, and can be heartbreaking.

"Most of the girls don't die, but they all take poison or at least threaten to kill themselves," said Dr. Khowaja Noor Mohammad, the head of internal medicine at Mazar-i-Sharif Regional Hospital. "This is their cry for help."

The doctor who tried to save the Gul sisters, Dr. Khaled, produced a patient ledger for the past two months. As he pored through the list, he uttered the names of several young women who had attempted suicide: Fatima, Mariam, Zulfiya, Zar Gul, Basbibi.

"There are probably 200 cases in here of attempted suicide," said Dr. Khaled, who goes by a single name, waving the ledger in the air. "In the last 12 hours, we had three."

Perhaps no case is more emblematic, or more discussed, than the deaths of the Gul sisters.

The two came from an educated, progressive family. Mohammed Gul, their father, is a prosecutor. Nabila was on the cusp of graduating from high school, and planned to attend college in the city. Fareba was already attending college and hoped to follow her father's footsteps into the legal profession. The young women were determinedly modern, and would not have seemed out of place in many Western cities.

Nabila was impetuous, with a quick temper and a strong sense of self. She often challenged what Fareba told her, rejecting the deference held for elders in Afghan society. Fareba, a softhearted woman who often wept after small arguments, confided to a close friend that she felt Nabila did not respect her.

Their last fight, the morning of Nov. 26, involved a boy Nabila said she was in love with. Fareba thought the relationship was inappropriate, and urged her sister against it. Nabila refused, and the two began shouting.

Their mother heard the fight, and ran in to break it up, slapping Nabila twice across her face for talking back to her older sister, according to people close to the family. The younger girl ran off in tears.

An hour later, Nabila's mother discovered her on the floor of her room, white foam dripping from the corners of her mouth.

At the hospital, doctors tried desperately to cleanse the rat poison from her system as family members surrounded the bed, begging Nabila to recover.

The mother shot an angry glance at Fareba and said: "If Nabila dies, it will be your fault," according to a doctor in the room at the time.

Mohammed Gul sat quietly, holding his daughter's hand. She went in and out of consciousness. She said that she had not meant to take so much poison, and that she regretted it now.

At 2:30 p.m., Nabila died. On the way home from the hospital, her father suffered a heart attack, and was admitted as a patient.

At the house, people began to gather. The Guls' eldest son, Abdul Wahid, played host to the mourners who crowded into the pale green parlor of the house. But he was worried about Fareba, the sister he was closest to. She was not answering calls or texts.

At 4 p.m., his phone rang. It was Fareba. Her voice hoarse and slow, she said she was at the Hazrat Ali shrine, a stunning mosque of cerulean tile in a sea of white marble. Stuck at the house with the visitors, Abdul Wahid asked his uncle, Malim Faiz Mohammad, to get her.

When he arrived at the mosque, Mr. Mohammad spotted a crowd near the entrance to the shrine. He found his niece lying on the cold marble in the center of the crowd. Strands of foam leaked from a corner of her mouth.

He rushed her to the hospital. Doctors put Fareba in a room down the hall from her father, who was still recovering. Neither knew the other was there.

No one else knew of Fareba's whereabouts, either. With the family preoccupied preparing Nabila's body for burial, the uncle said, he decided then to keep the matter to himself, not wanting to upend an already fragile household.

The doctors worked on Fareba for more than an hour. Her uncle stood by silently as they performed the same procedure that had failed to revive her sister hours earlier. At 5:30 in the evening, the doctors pronounced Fareba dead.

"Dying this way just doesn't make sense," Mr. Mohammad said in an interview. "I wish they would have died in an accident."

He took Fareba's body back to the house, but hid it in a separate room off the side of the compound where no one would see it. He still could not bring himself to tell them the bad news.

The truth came out the next day.

Early the next morning, Mohammed Gul woke in the hospital. He sat for a while in the sun-washed room, gathering his belongings, still unable to grasp Nabila's death. He needed to talk to Fareba about what had happened, he thought.

Back home, he was escorted to the courtyard, where coffins sat side by side.

"Why are there two coffins?" he asked his brother. "Who is in the second one?"

The sisters are buried together in a nondescript graveyard a few miles from the family home, their graves marked with two wooden poles and a mound of stones. A band of Tajik children roams the cemetery, turning the muddy slopes into a playground.

Mohammed Gul rarely eats, and suffers continued bouts of sickness. His wife, devastated, rarely leaves their cold, concrete house. Reminders of the loss spring from everyday rituals like sitting down at the kitchen table, with two chairs now empty.

The parents seek comfort in small ways. At night, Mr. Gul and his wife sleep in the girls' room, he on Fareba's bed, his wife on Nabila's. They have given away the sisters' belongings, as is customary, except for a pair of dresses. On bad days, the parents clutch the clothing to their faces.

The cardinals were scheduled to celebrate a special Mass in St. Peter's Basilica in the morning, dedicated to the conclave, as the election is called. At 4:30 p.m., they hold their procession into the chapel, where they will swear an oath of secrecy and obedience to the constitution on papal transition. After the words "extra omnes" – everyone out – the princes of the church will get down to business.

Only one round of balloting is provided for on the first day of a conclave, although Vatican officials explained that a vote is not guaranteed – the cardinals can decide not to – but likely. One thing is very predictable: that no one of the 115 cardinals present will receive 77 votes, or the required two-thirds, to become pope on that first ballot.

Candidates will build up blocks of votes over succeeding rounds. Two are scheduled in the morning and two in the afternoon each successive day.

The ballots and notes will be burned in a special oven set up in the Sistine Chapel, with chemicals added to produce black or white smoke. White means the world has a pope, black that no result is reached. Black smoke on Tuesday is expected to arrive toward the evening.

The process was set in motion on Feb. 11 when Pope Benedict XVI announced he would resign, an unprecedented event in modern times. A helicopter lifted him away from the Vatican on Feb. 28 and took him to the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, outside of Rome, where he is to remain in seclusion for several months until returning to a convent in the Vatican.

The Vatican has said none of the cardinals, who had been meeting daily to discuss the needs of the church and the expectations of a future pope, had sought him out.

Benedict's longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, was expected to attend the Mass on Tuesday in his role as prefect of the papal household, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman. Benedict named Archbishop Gänswein as prefect several months before announcing his resignation.

Like hungry children let loose at a buffet, Barcelona fans can often be guilty of overindulging. This is not altogether their fault, of course; the team is loaded with stars, and any struggles can often be assuaged by the promise of what tasty morsel might show up next.

Take Tuesday, for example. If Barcelona is unable to come back from its two-goal Champions League deficit against A.C. Milan, it would be disastrous, calamitous, catastrophic and all the other doom-and-gloom adjectives that come with being perhaps the world's most celebrated team. But then, after a mourning period of a few minutes, attention would quickly shift to what might be needed to put Barcelona over the top in next year's tournament — and specifically whether the Brazilian star Neymar is that needed piece.

Neymar is the prize. Despite his telling a number of news media outlets, including The New York Times, that he will probably remain with Santos in Brazil until 2014, speculation has increased recently that a move may be more imminent. Neymar's coach has suggested Neymar will eventually land at Barcelona. A Brazilian legend, Roberto Carlos, has said he has spoken to Neymar and such a move is "90 percent" certain to happen. And the Barcelona defender Dani Alves has been lobbying Neymar for months, telling FIFA.com that "I've been begging him to come to Barcelona for a long time, ever since the rumors of a move to Europe started."

The possibilities are tantalizing. Imagine how Barcelona might play if it had Lionel Messi and Xavi and David Villa and Neymar. Surely a team like that could not be beaten. Could it? SAM BORDEN

The End of a Long Road

Where did Barcelona lose its edge? Perhaps it would help to retrace the club's steps. In 2009, it was on top of the world. Under its first-year manager, Pep Guardiola, Barcelona beat Athletic Bilbao to win the Copa del Rey, held off Real Madrid to win La Liga and topped Manchester United in the Champions League final in Rome.

Those triumphs led to berths in the UEFA and Spanish Super Cups and in FIFA's annual Club World Cup, played in the United Arab Emirates that year. Barcelona swept those competitions as well. After repeating as Spanish league champion in 2010, Barcelona sent 14 of its players to the World Cup in South Africa, where the eight Spaniards on the club's books picked up winner's medals.

On and on it has gone, sometimes more than 60 games a season. A third straight Liga title in 2011. Another win over United in the Champions League final, in London, which meant a return to the Club World Cup, this time in Japan.

A semifinal exit from the Champions League last spring was a disappointment, but a Copa del Rey triumph — Barcelona's 14th trophy in four years under Guardiola — ensured that at least there would be some new silverware to polish. There was little time for reflection, however. Seven of Barcelona's Spaniards quickly packed their bags for Poland and Ukraine, where they helped their country repeat as European champion. More celebrations.

But this year, there will probably be only one trophy. Two recent losses to Real Madrid have hinted at a power shift in Spain, even if Barcelona looks certain to reclaim its Liga title. And now it may be headed out of the Champions League much earlier than expected.

Where did Barcelona lose the path? Abu Dhabi? Yokohama? Moscow? Glasgow? You choose. The players are probably too tired to look. But rest assured they will find it again. ANDREW DAS

A Team Reliant on Messi

Last Thursday, a Tokyo jeweler put up for sale a 55-pound pure-gold replica of Lionel Messi's left foot — veins, callused skin and all — and attached to it a price tag of $5.25 million.

The object seemed artless, the metaphor so straightforward as to be uninteresting.

But its opulence made a point.

Two days later in Barcelona, Messi scored his 40th league goal of the season, lengthening a run of mesmerizing individual play that has produced a wave of staggering statistics. Consider that Barcelona, as a team, has scored a total of 85 league goals this season and the second-highest individual yield belongs to David Villa, who has seven.

Yet Messi's individual feats can also symbolize what few shortcomings his team can be thought to possess. Now, as before, there has emerged murmuring about whether Barcelona, the paragon of team play, has become over-reliant on one man.

This was apparent three weeks ago. A.C. Milan applied the shackles to Messi, restricting his space, humanizing him and earning a gigantic 2-0 win at home. Barcelona held possession of the ball for two-thirds of the game, yet directed only two shots toward goal.

Barcelona needs goals on Tuesday night, when the teams will meet for the second leg of the series. And it seems obvious that Messi, who has produced 16 of the team's 41 goals (counting the league and all cup competitions) since the start of the calendar year, will be the center of attention for both teams.

All eyes will be trained on Messi's left foot. What sort of alchemy can it conjure?

ANDREW KEH

Stumbling, Not Slumping

Crisis? What crisis?

As amazing as Barcelona's run has been over the past 10 years or so, it is nearly as amazing how quickly the doubters, skeptics and haters (read Real Madrid fans) spring from the woodwork at the slightest sign of a misstep.

There is no arguing that Barcelona has stumbled, losing the first leg of its Round of 16 Champions League series against A.C. Milan then back-to-back matches against Madrid (in Copa del Rey and in La Liga). But take a glance at the Spanish league standings. After last weekend's games the "slumping" team at the top maintains a 13-point lead over Real Madrid, which might be the hottest team in the world.

With Barcelona, we are not talking about some Sunday beer-league team. Memories can be short, and there is no doubt that stars like Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta, Xavi and Gerard Piqué will be hellbent on stifling their critics by erasing the two-goal deficit against A.C. Milan on Tuesday at Camp Nou.

Talent and skill will trump all, even an expertly organized Italian team that will probably try to thwart Barcelona with smothering tactics. One of soccer's old saws is that a 2-0 lead is the most dangerous. It is, and it will be. JACK BELL