The Company We Keep (33 page)

Berkeley, California:
DAYNA

B
ob and I decide early on that we want to do an international adoption, preferably from a country we will return to as the child grows up. We also want to do the adoption ourselves—no international adoption agency, no middlemen or facilitators, no agencies that contract out to orphanages. It’s not the cost involved—we’re prepared to make a large donation. Rather, we’re determined to be very hands-on about this. Unlike a lot of couples who start down this same road, we have unusual resources in
far-flung places. Surely, we think, two operatives with nearly thirty years of experience between them can figure out how to do this on their own.

Chechnya is Bob’s idea—a war-torn country without organized international adoptions but with several large refugee camps. What could be a better fit? He gets on the phone to a KGB officer in the Caucasus, an old friend. I can hear only Bob’s end of the conversation.

“An OR-PH-AN,” he says, repeating himself for the third time. Bob listens and then gives me the thumbs-up to let me know the guy’s going to help. But when he gets off the phone, he’s laughing, a bit nervously.

“You won’t believe this one,” Bob says. “He told me that if we don’t find a Chechen orphan, he’ll make one for us.”

It’s a dumb joke, of course, but soon enough we find out Chechen adoptions are not doable. Chechens are a close-knit Muslim society where orphans are taken in and cared for by extended families. Bob hits the same wall with his other contacts. The countries he knows best are Muslim, and adoptions are rare. I find it ironic that Bob’s friends can put their hands on a stolen Russian fighter, but can’t find us an abandoned child to take in.

I’m the one who decides to look into adopting from Pakistan. It’s one of my favorite places, especially Peshawar, the dusty frontier outpost at the bottom of the Khyber Pass. I’d driven there the first time on the old Grand Trunk Road, barely surviving a terrifying game of chicken with big, colorful buses that pulled into the oncoming lane without looking. I was entranced by Peshawar’s old city, the houses and narrow streets, and the women in their colorful, head-to-toe abayas, with intricate cutouts to cover their eyes. It was all wildly exotic, a place I’d go back to in a second, given the chance.

Scouring Pakistani law to see whether adoption is possible, I come across a Muslim welfare organization called the Edhi Foundation. It’s the vision of a husband-and-wife team, Abdul Sattar
Edhi and Bilqis Edhi, who began by rescuing baby girls left in the street, taking care of them, and offering them up for adoption. Their foundation eventually turned into the largest relief organization in Pakistan, running a morgue, air ambulances, a cancer hospital, blood banks, aid for refugees, prisoner welfare services, and even an animal shelter. It also provides burials for unclaimed bodies.

Bob, I know, is going to be impressed by the fact that the Edhi Foundation took care of the remains of Danny Pearl, the
Wall Street Journal
reporter who was beheaded in Karachi in February 2002. Bob had spoken to Danny just days before the reporter left for Karachi. Maybe, I think, there’s some kind of karma going on here—a life for a death, a new beginning for a brutal murder. Weirder things have happened.

The more I read about Edhi, the more I see what it’s managed to accomplish in a country not known for its public service, the more fascinated I am. It won’t accept government funds, relying instead completely on donations. It also won’t accept donations from adoptive parents, to make absolutely certain that it won’t be dragged down into the muck of the international adoption business. Instead, it operates a “crèche” system in which parents who can’t afford to keep their babies leave them, Mrs. Edhi personally taking charge of placing them. Most end up with families outside of Pakistan, where they stand a better chance in life.

In so many ways, this is just what Bob and I have been looking for. But I soon learn from my research that there’s a serious obstacle: in Pakistan a foundling is automatically considered a Muslim. And since Christians cannot adopt a Muslim child, the chances Edhi can help us are close to zero. We send in an application anyway, but it’s beginning to look as if the most likely way for us to adopt in Pakistan is to locate a child under the care of a Christian church.

Pakistan’s population is 2 percent Christian, nearly 3 million people. They live mostly in slums in the larger urban areas, and are frequently persecuted by Islamic fundamentalists. In the upside-down way I’ve come to think about these things, that’s an attraction: yes, I’d be taking our baby away from its community, but life in the United States would offer a child a way out of a grim future.

Over the course of a week, we call everyone we know in Pakistan and make a long list of likely places that would know about orphans, from aid organizations to churches. I find a nun in Lahore who cares for abandoned Christian babies. I call every other day. She soon recognizes my voice, and after “hello,” she says, “No babies, no babies today.” After a few weeks of this, I start to realize how difficult it is not to go through an agency. And then, as so often happens with adoptions, the weeks turn into months, and the months add up to more than a year.

When we settle into our new house in Berkeley—we’ve already picked out a room for our child-to-be—I’m still nowhere with the adoption. Everyone promises to write back. Some do, most don’t. I’ve started looking at other countries when one morning I open an e-mail from one of my new correspondents, a woman whose husband works for the United Nations. Attached is a picture of a little baby girl on a
charpoy
, a reed bed that sits on four short wooden legs. I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s adorable, a little pixie with dark eyes and curly black hair. She’s wearing ragged rose-and-cream pajamas. She stares at the camera as if she knows her picture’s being taken.

“You better come look at this,” I say to Bob.

He doesn’t have to say a word. One look and we both just know.
Baby X is ten months old, her parents Christian. Her mother died two months after she was born from complications of childbirth. Her father, who already has seven children and earns only thirty dollars a month, had to abandon her at a Catholic parish in Faisalabad. I write back saying that if it’s legally possible, we’d love to adopt her.

By now I’ve learned that while Pakistan doesn’t recognize adoption, it does permit guardianship, which would allow us to take Baby X out of Pakistan. Formal adoption would then take place in the United States. We hire a lawyer, Munir, who has an office in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. He agrees to prepare the documents for the court and for a U.S. visa: the mother’s death certificate, the child’s birth certificate, a passport, and an affidavit from the father abandoning all rights to her. The parish is now caring for Baby X along with several older orphaned boys, but Munir thinks a nanny—an
ayah
, as they’re known in Pakistan—would be better for her.

One morning Munir calls to ask what name we intend to give her. He needs it because he is preparing the guardianship papers.

Why haven’t we thought about this?

That night Bob and I bat names back and forth. She was baptized as Miriam, but we both think she needs something special. Or maybe we just need it. The next morning we call Munir back with a name: Ryli—inspired by my Sarajevo alias.

As it turns out, though, the name doesn’t translate into Urdu, and on her Pakistani passport she is now Reela.

Islamabad, Pakistan:
BOB

O
ne habit I haven’t lost since leaving the CIA is combining pleasure with work. In March, I’m on the East Coast, finishing up a documentary on car bombs for British TV, while Dayna is in Corona del Mar staying with her mother. Her father is on another sailing trip with his “other daughter.” It’s the perfect time, then, for me to go to Pakistan to get a feel for how the adoption is going to work.

I haven’t been in Pakistan in almost thirty years, but it doesn’t seem that a lot has changed—at least inside Islamabad’s airport. The Pakistani customs officials, in their same starched uniforms, haven’t lost their British efficiency and politeness. The sweepers, as they have always done, mop up the floor with rags on the ends of brooms and buckets of soapy water.

As always, the order comes to a quick end when I exit the terminal. A sea of people swarm the metal barriers just outside: children
racing around, extended families, old people who should be home, hawkers selling cigarettes and flowers, shoeshine boys. Taxi drivers shove people out of the way, trying to get to me first. They call out prices, and reach to grab my sleeve.

A short man in a starched pale yellow shirt and ironed slacks is in the middle of them, timidly waving at me. “Mr. Bob?” he says. He introduces himself. It’s Rafiq, the man who’s been working with our lawyer, Munir, on the guardianship. Dayna has been exchanging e-mails with him for the last three months.

“Come see your daughter,” he says, taking my suitcase.

I follow his pale yellow shirt as he runs interference through the mob. In the parking lot just at the side of the terminal, there’s a woman in a sari, her pomaded black hair pulled back like a dancer’s. She smiles at me, and I notice she’s holding something in her arms, a bundle a little bigger than a football. She turns it around, and I see a little face with two little brown eyes staring back at me, as if deciding whether she can trust me or not.

Not until this moment do I truly start to understand the new turn my life is about to take. My days of trying to defy gravity are definitely over and done with. Just as Dayna knew she wasn’t leaving Grand Junction without that puppy last fall, I know I’m not leaving Islamabad without this little girl.

I ask the ayah how she’s doing. She smiles again and only says, “Reela,” making me realize she only speaks Urdu. She pulls the blanket back so I can see Reela better.

In the back of the car, the ayah offers to let me hold Reela, but I say no. I don’t want to risk scaring her, making her cry. I like it that she’s so quiet, especially since it must be way past her bedtime. I put my index finger in her tiny hand, and she tightens her fingers around it.

No one says anything as we drive through Islamabad, a city on the brink. There are army and police checkpoints everywhere. Concrete barriers and army checkpoints ring the parliament
building. Islamabad’s five-star hotel, the Serena, with its security fences and sodium lights, looks more like a penitentiary than a hotel.

That night I sit out on the terrace of the bungalow I’ve rented two rooms in, listening to the ayah sing the little girl to sleep. The city is still alive with late shoppers and traffic. I can see car lights ascending the road to the top of Daman-e-Koh, the mountain behind Islamabad where open-air restaurants let the locals escape the heat of the plain.

The ayah stops singing, and I hear the television go on, a program in Urdu. I’m still not tired, and go back into my bedroom to get a book. I come back out and read in the cooling night, moths mobbing the terrace light.

At about midnight the ayah turns off the television, and it’s very quiet until there’s gunfire in the distance. We’re far away from Peshawar and the tribal areas where there’s fighting between the army and the Islamic militants, so I figure it’s just a Pakistani soldier clearing his weapon.

The next morning I start a routine I soon settle into, one I’ll keep up until Dayna arrives in ten days. As soon as Reela is fed and bathed, the ayah brings her to my room to play on the floor. She can’t sit up or even crawl forward, but she gets her exercise backing around the room. The ayah stays for a while to be sure things are going well, and then leaves us alone. Reela seems pretty independent and doesn’t mind exploring on her own. In the other room I can hear the ayah talking to her sister, reassured the two are ready to come to my aid at a moment’s notice. After lunch I leave Reela with the ayah and walk to Munir’s house.

Munir is a gentleman: polite, British-educated, attentive, and sensible. He’s well read too. He lives modestly to save money to send his kids abroad to college. When I come over, he offers me
fresh-squeezed orange juice, which he makes himself. It’s followed by green tea.

Every day Munir shows me a new document he’s prepared—an affidavit from the father; a petition to the court for guardianship; an advertisement to put in the newspaper, which is required by the court. Munir offers to have the advertisement translated from the Urdu for me. But I tell him it’s OK; our fate is in his hands. When I’m ready to leave, I always ask how he thinks it’s going to go.