One day when John was not very busy, a figure in a long, white robe appeared beside him as he clanged away making tools.

They were a dozen or so, and they looked truly magnificent, tall and graceful with skin of flawless black, and swathed in robes of blue, black and white.

In the hospital, after we signed the papers, I watched her change into a faded cotton gown and two pairs of socks, as If the worst injury that day would be the chill of the operating room.

Then she managed to send the robe to her sister.

Mention the Arab world and it conjures up images of people wearing white robes with red-and-white keffiyehs around their heads.