To Burma's military leaders who have been trying to suppress Kachin State's independence movement for five decades, she is a woman who hardly exists, a mere speck of dust on their political chessboard. To soldiers in the Kachin Independence Army, she is just one of forty thousand frightened people who have recently fled from their villages to escape fresh fighting. To her husband, a pastor, she is the wife whom he has seen only twice in the past four months, as he, like most other Kachin men in the war zone, has remained behind to protect his crops. To the thirty women and children with whom she sleeps each night on the wooden floor of their common room at Jan Mai Refugee Camp, Htulum Sumlut is a godsend, a light in their darkness.