The Importance of Hopelessness in AIDS

"I was purchased for two pieces of silver by a Syrian desert chief, with my hair shorn in, but a loincloth to wear," he writes. "My master took me before his four wives and told them they could have me for a eunuch." He says the women looked at him as indifferently as if he had been a worm of the earth. The first wife spoke up: "Of eunuchs, we have plenty. But of camel tenders we have few, and they are a worthless lot".