This April 1, The New York Observer profiled a “mystery woman” of such spectacular qualities on Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff that the dateline appeared significant. Could it have been an April Fool’s hoax? Evidently not. Since then profiles of the women who inhabit “Hillaryland”, her campaign team organised around aides from her White House/ First Lady years, have left a trail of quotes that only enhance the aura of mystery surrounding Huma Abedin, Clinton’s traveling chief of staff.

Abedin, 32, born in the US to a Pakistani mother and an Indian father, enlisted on Clinton’s team as in intern in 1996. Now, as manager of every minute of the Democratic presidential candidate, her talents and attributes have been so effusively applauded that, as the Observer noted, she “has become a sort of mythical figure”.

The Observer profile did not have Abedin’s cooperation. But a lavish four-page spread in the August Vogue (“Hillary’s Secret Weapon”) did. No matter, in the quotes accompanying photographs of her in Vera Wang and Oscar de la Renta dresses, she was still better caught in others’ observations.

Examples. First, her boss, Clinton: “Huma Abedin has the energy of a woman in her 20s, the confidence of a woman in her 30s, the experience of a woman in her 40s, and the grace of a woman in her 50s. She is timeless, her combination of poise, kindness, and intelligence are matchless, and I am lucky to have had her on my team for a decade now.”

“I’m not sure Hillary could walk out the door without Huma,” Clinton’s key adviser, Mandy Grunwald, told Vogue. “She’s a little like Radar on M*A*S*H. If the air-conditioning is too cold, Huma is there with the shawl. She’s always thinking three steps ahead of Hillary.”

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