There are two ways to make an audience cry: an all-male group of seniors singing “Unchained Melody,” and six-year-olds performing “Amazing Grace.” Innocence and anguish, love and loss. The beauty of childhood and age. The old will speak of love and the very young atone for sins not yet committed.

Carol Berger is a Canadian anthropologist and writer. Her work has appeared in the London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Economist, and The New Yorker. She is the author of The Child Soldiers of Africa’s Red Army (London: Routledge 2022). She lives in Cairo, Egypt.