Yes, it might be the era of the kidney transplant in America and a vaccine for polio due to arrive even in India, but here [Ethiopia] Hema felt she'd tricked time; with her twentieth-century knowledge she had travelled back to an earlier epoch. The power filtered down from His Majesty to the Rases, the Dejazmaches, and the letter nobility, and then to the vassals and the peons. Her skills were so rare, so needed for the poorest of the poor, and even at times in the royal palace, that she felt valued. Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?
A. Verghese, Cutting for stone (2009), 79
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