The head that was removed from Manar had been capable of smiling and blinking but not independent life, doctors said.

This news story is so sad, yet so fascinating to me. (There is a more current story on Yahoo!News, but the one I linked is the one I read first.)

The...extra head could blink and smile. It could smile. Which suggests emotion--it could presumably see, some things made it (her?) smile, while others did not. Cognition, discrimination...Was she a sentient being, this head? Severely physically challenged individuals have abbreviated or largely useless limbs, but they are surely sentient beings. I am not saying the extra head should have been left attached--doing so would have harmed or doomed the fully developed baby, I would assume. In another vein, if they're joined at the brain, what kind of things do the two minds share and communicate? (if only we could properly investigate...)

It's just, you know. That life, profoundly different from the kind of life most of us experience, "strange" we would call it, hopefully not painful, short, and mysterious. There must be a Shakespeare quote that's apropos here, and I can't summon it.