If Your Face Is Swollen From The

Looking After A Very Sick Child Was The Olympics Of Parenting.

We Were Exiles From Reality That Summer. We Were Refugees From Ourselves.

We Must See All Scars As Beauty. Okay? This Will Be Our Secret. Because Take It From Me, A Scar Does Not Form On The Dying. A Scar Means, 'i Survived'.

I Was Astonished To Find That The Positions My Grandfather Had Defended Were Now Overgrown And Entangled With Trees And Thorns. I Suppose I Had Developed A Sense Of Reverence For The Locations He Described In His Memoirs And Letters - The Forts And The High Emplacements. I Had Expected Them To Have Been Preserved In Some Way.

When I Reached Fort Binjemma, For Example, Where My Grandfather Was Stationed For A While, The Whole Victorian Fort Was Decaying. Barbed Wire Surrounded It, Spray Paint On The Ancient Walls Claimed It As Private Property, And The Moat Where My Grandfather And His Men Had Grown Crops - In Desperation As The Siege's Hunger Bit - Was Completely Overgrown With Bushes And Trees.