The sheikhs had little of their dignity left. Sent scurrying from their villages by the Sudanese government's campaign of aerial bombardment, they sat, stripped of their power, in cramped aid camps, left with only the traditional symbols of their withered authority – walking canes and flowing white robes stained with dust.
Now, they faced a new problem. The water pump in their corner of the Abu Shouk camp in northern Darfur was broken, and there was no one to fix it. It should have been the responsibility of international aid workers, but they had been expelled just hours before. In the desiccating heat, one man was using a spanner to hammer desperately at a pipe. "We don't know how to fix it," he said, "but we are thirsty."
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