It was no use relating reports to probability when there was no quantum of knowledge from which to start. - John le Carré

Only Esmeralda was not weeping. Instead she wore that wooden look that whites mistake for churlishenss or indifference. Woodrew knew it was neither. It was familiarity. This how real life is constituted, it said. This is grief and hatred and people hacked to death. This is the everyday we have known since we were born and you Wazungu have not.

In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.

It was the other music that he was hearing: the feeling that, while she was telling him one story, he was listening to a different one, and so was she.