The three-year-old boy darted among the mourners, his giggles rising above the soft cadence of condolences. Women with sombre faces and bright scarves hugged his weeping mother, patting her shoulders as she stooped to pick up her remaining son. Marwan didn’t yet know that his twin brother was dead.
Omran shouldn’t have died, doctors said. The physician at his clinic outside the Sudanese capital said basic antibiotics probably would have cured his chest infection. The International Rescue Committee, which received a large amount of its funding from the United States, had been scheduled to deliver the medicines in February. Then the new US administration froze foreign aid programs, and a stop-work order came down from Washington.
Washington Post