We lived many lives
in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves; yet when we achieved and
the new world dawned, the old men came up again and took our victory to remake
in the likeness of the former world they knew.
—T. E. Lawrence, The Seven
Pillars of Wisdom
Umm Khaled was among
the first to arrive with her young granddaughter. She had lost her daughter
somewhere. Probably dead, she says. When she first came, the camp was a great
unifier. Everyone was equal in their suffer