Abdul Musa Adam

FOR years, Abdul Musa Adam was afraid to sleep. In his dreams, he would see, over and over again, the burning of his home. The bodies of his family, strangers’ bodies black with flies on city streets. His torturers in a Libyan prison. Then the dreams came during his waking hours.

“When I work with horses, it gets better,” says Abdul, who now works for trainer Andrew Balding. “Horses give me a connection to my family, and a way back to the person I was.”

Abdul was born nearly 3,000 miles away from Kingsclere’s green hills near Newbury, in a tent in Darfur, a region of western Sudan. His parents were nomads, of the Zaghawa tribe, moving their herds according to the grazing and the water. His