Zaza lives in Tadmor (Palmyra) with her family. She is one of nine children; she lives in a clean home (really more a shack) with her aunt and of course her parents. Zaza is eleven and has gone to school for five years, she has friends at school and sometime gets to play with the tourists who come through her town to visit the ruins. When she has to she plays with her brothers but they don't share and never take her for rides on their camels. She often wishes she could be a selfish as the boys but as a girl she has to be "nice" and do "good" things. She has been to Damascus and when she turns twelve she gets to go to Jordan with her father and will probably stop attending school. Jordan will be great, but where she really wants to travel is to Paris, she would love to buy barrettes for her hair and beautiful clothes (even though her parents don't like seeing her in such things) One of her brothers want to go to America but Americans eat children so she wouldn't ever want to go there. In her spare time which she doesn't have much of she likes to swim in the well near her house and Zaza loves sweet and cooking. Her family has camels but what they really want is a car.

In 2020, Zaza wakes up at 5am, with the first rays of life, while Wadi is still asleep. She walks out into the morning and returns later to prepare him his breakfast which she brings to the huge pink bed. When the shuttle honked in front of the door to pick him up, she goes back to bed and plays with Zulabia.

They later go to the market together, and Zulabia gets brackets and rings for her hands and feet. There are so many things she is not supposed to do herself, but she lets Zulabia be a child. If other women complain than shall be it.

She passes the afternoon in front of TV. Sometimes a brother would pass, and take her to her parents.

She starts cooking for Wadi in the afternoon. She tries to bring Zulabia to bed before Wadi arrives - and they eat dinner quietly in front of the TV.

Zaza is now 31. Her two kids go to the company school and lead a regulated public life in the Palmyra community. Zaza has learnt to read and write with them, and also using the computre, touching up her own poor education. The house is equipped with a home hub, (installed by the company) both surveillance of their daily carbon use, but also allowing access to some key internet sites. The safety they enjoy is comforting, considering the conditions, yet remains oppressing. Zaza is still not free to move and follow her dreams, but she finally has discovered reading and writing as a refuge. She accepts her Bedouin background - a late recognition of the awareness courses she visited - and starts playing a more active role in the community. Ethnicity has become a means to finally connect in a meaningful way to the outside world. The Palmyran Bedouin Party is represented as an interest group the CRM, the Carbon Rights Movement, a key opposition to the WCO, World Carbon Organisation and she follows their activity closely on her home hub.

Zaza is now 31. Her two kids go to the company school and lead a regulated public life in the Palmyra community. Zaza has learnt to read and write with them, and also using the computre, touching up her own poor education. The house is equipped with a home hub, (installed by the company) both surveillance of their daily carbon use, but also allowing access to some key internet sites. The safety they enjoy is comforting, considering the conditions, yet remains oppressing. Zaza is still not free to move and follow her dreams, but she finally has discovered reading and writing as a refuge. She accepts her Bedouin background - a late recognition of the awareness courses she visited - and starts playing a more active role in the community. Ethnicity has become a means to finally connect in a meaningful way to the outside world. The Palmyran Bedouin Party is represented as an interest group the CRM, the Carbon Rights Movement, a key opposition to the WCO, World Carbon Organisation and she follows their activity closely on her home hub.

Zaza is now 51 but she looks older. She still lives in Palmyra. Her husband is now senior security officer of the desert police force. Since her daughter disappeared in a raid in Damascus, her hair has turned white. Azem her 12 year old grandson still walks up and down the Roman Road with her, but she feels that he will soon loose interest. Already, he spends his time gaming his head off in virtual worlds. She can't blame him. Growing up with his grandparents and greatgrandmother, without siblings, made him a strange little character. But she is glad he goes to the agricultural school where he learns doing something useful with his hands. Looking at him she sometimes remembers herself as a 12 year old girl playing near the ruins, the glamourous life she longed for. Can she be proud? Why is she not happy? The lack of freedom she felt as a girl never went away, and this is so unlike what she had in mind for herself as a Bedouin grand-dame. Suleima followed her instincts and ran away to seek her luck alone, leaving even her own child behind. But she ran into a world where there was no space anymore, where every single inch was covered by a policing system in which she got trapped. Had she forgotten to teach her what bedouins have known for centuries: That if you loose your tribe and go seek your luck on your own, you are lost?