Excerpt: “What helped the Masts succeed was a set of assumptions that for many have become accepted truths: that those we kill abroad in the dead of night are terrorists, that Islam is inherently dangerous, that the courts are inherently just, that prosperity confers morality. In all the time that politicians, religious leaders, lawyers and federal and local government officials sought to help the Masts obtain custody of this baby, no one took seriously the possibility that she might have a family, and that they might care for her, too. Despite the rumors that spread through Bagram that fall, L. was not without a past or loved ones. She had relatives, and one day, they were located.”

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Image courtesy of Vanessa Saba of New York Times Magazine.