with thoughts of my brave Afgan pupil whose four children were burnt to death in their home by another group with God on its side, and then her husband beat her in his anguish-- well known phenomena, my mother when I was small beat me mercilessly, only dared whisper at nights about the wholesale rape and looting, and the things which happened in the waggons, sometimes with mothers and sons, as adrenalin overflowed- we know and understand-- it was grief, everyone and all we had lost, being battered at nine months pregnant over the head with rifle butts by two young men and so much more. Most of the camp mothers beat their children, only those who had come out as a couple and managed to stay a couple still were spared. Decades later these same women were gentle caring mothers once their fear and desperation laid itself down to disappear in their normal selves.