The Ambassador's Wife (33 page)

With her fifteen-month-old son, Kabir, Imaan sat with this aunt in a small, dark hut. On a mat in the corner lay a small baby, waving its feet and hands. “I'm looking after her for her mother, who died,” Aisha said, without further explanation. Imaan wanted to ask who the mother was, but Aisha's tone did not invite questions. She wondered what Aisha fed the child, who was surely too young for solid food. It was thin, though not as thin as most babies here. It didn't look unhealthy. Obviously, it was eating something. The baby caught hold of its foot and stared at it with amazement. Imaan remembered that age, remembered Kabir's astonishment at discovering his hands, that they belonged to him and could be commanded to do things. She hadn't realized that babies were not born knowing that their hands are theirs.

A slow walker, Kabir was still slightly unsteady on his feet. While his mother drank tea with her aunt, gossiping about upcoming weddings, he crept slowly around the inside wall of the hut, clutching his small fingers around the protuberant stones. As he neared the baby, it began to cry, whether from fear of the towering toddler or hunger or discomfort, it was difficult to tell. After a moment, Aisha rose to pick up the child. “Tch tch tch,” she clucked at the baby, jiggling it in her arms. The baby wailed more loudly, clutching at the folds of
Aisha's
abaya
. Turning its head toward her breast, it opened its mouth in a fishlike pucker, searching for a nipple. Imaan watched this with interest. Someone must be nursing this child, and it couldn't possibly be old Aisha.
“Dagiga,”
said Aisha, taking the child outside.

Imaan looked back at her son, who continued his investigation of the hut's walls. He stopped for a moment as his hand touched something unusual, a sharp fold of paper. Intrigued, he pulled at it, until it slid out from between the stones where it had been hidden, the force sending him backward onto his bottom. Waving it triumphantly, he struggled to his feet and started inching back toward his mother. “What have you found?” she said, opening her arms to her son. Kabir staggered over and pressed the paper against her knee. It was difficult for Imaan to make out the image in the dim light of the hut, but she could see it looked something like a child. A tremor of fear shuddered through her stomach. A heretical image. An actual person. It couldn't be Aisha's, could it? Could Aisha draw? She had never seen her hold a pen for any reason. The only person she knew who could draw was her cousin Nadia. She should tear up this image. But something in her maternal heart resisted damaging the depiction of a toddler. Even this odd-looking, unusually chubby little toddler. No one in this impoverished region had children so fat!

When a rustle of
abaya
announced Aisha's return, Imaan's initial impulse was to ask her about the drawing. But then suddenly she remembered something Nadia had said. The missing American was an artist. “She doesn't draw people,” Nadia had been quick to reassure her. “Just flowers and mountains and things.” The woman might say that, Imaan thought, but it didn't make it true. Quickly, she folded the paper and slipped it into her left sleeve before looking up to smile at her aunt in the doorway. Now, at least, she wouldn't have to arouse anyone's suspicions by asking about the American.

Once home, she rang Nadia. “I found a drawing,” she said. “In a house out there.” She had to be careful on the phone. Some of the camps had ways of listening in. Nadia couldn't conceal her excitement. What did the drawing look like? Nadia asked. Did the child have hair? Was it fat? “I will come Friday,” she said. “Please save it for me.” Only once Nadia had arrived and the two women were alone,
walking with the plastic jugs to fetch water, could Nadia speak privately with her cousin. “There's something else,” said Imaan. “There is a baby out there.” She described what she had seen, and Nadia looked thoughtful. “Miranda has a little girl in the city,” she says. “Maybe she was still feeding her.” The two women stared at each other in silence. Then, it was very important that she go back to Aisha, Nadia said. She must ask her what happened to the woman who drew the child. Was she still there? Could she be somewhere in the camp?

Impossible, said Imaan. Then everyone would know she had some connection to the woman, and her own family would be in danger. Those men would do anything. Aisha would wonder why she was asking, why she hadn't asked about the drawing as soon as she found it. And they didn't want to arouse the suspicions of the men, did they? Come on, you're smart, think of something, said Nadia. Think of some indirect way to ask. Imaan looked at her cousin despairingly. “I don't know,” she said. “What if these men find out we are asking? What will become of us?”

When she returned to the city, Nadia rang Tazkia, who had her brother arrange the meeting with Finn outside of the city. Maybe the drawing could help him. At least they knew now one place Miranda had been. It was possible she was still there, although Imaan had said she saw no trace of any woman, other than the unusual health of the nameless baby.

Finn had been grateful that only Tazkia saw his face when he opened the picture of his daughter. Choked by sorrow and disbelieving gratitude, he could not speak for several minutes. “Where was this?” he finally said. “Where is she?”

AUGUST 11, 2009

Miranda

The first time Miranda ever left Cressida with a babysitter for more than a half-hour was the day she finally went to the orphanage. She had been planning to go for more than a year but something
always got in the way: teaching, national days, work, pregnancy complications. There was no reason for her to be nervous about leaving Cressida; the baby adored Gabra, and there were three other women in the house to watch over her. “This baby, she has four mothers,” Negasi was always saying. But a nagging guilt persisted as Altaf steered her through the half-paved, litter-strewn streets. Should she have taken Cressida with her? Surely it would be fun for her to play with some other children. Or would it aggravate their parentless state, to see her caring for a child? And then there were the diseases to consider. Cressida had been shot up with as many vaccines as possible in London before they had flown back here to resume their lives, but she was too young to be fully vaccinated against the bacteria harbored by the less fortunate children of this country.

This train of thought was derailed by her arrival at Marguerite's. Miranda's friend was waiting in the driveway, jingling her car keys, her blond hair braided and pinned up, her eyes concealed by enormous dark glasses. “Am I late?” asked Miranda, climbing down from her car.

“Non, pas du tout,”
said Marguerite, kissing Miranda three times on her cheeks. “I just wanted to be ready when you arrived.
On y va?
”

“Oui.”

“Suis-moi.”

It would have made things so much simpler if the two women could have driven together, but Miranda was not allowed to travel in any car but her own, and Marguerite, who had no bodyguard, said she had errands to run afterward. It wasn't far to the orphanage. Fifteen minutes later they were parked outside of a walled complex and striding toward the entrance. Miranda fervently wished she could leave Bashir (today's escort) behind. She didn't want him to scare the children. She hoped his guns weren't visible.

At the entrance to the courtyard, they were greeted by a flock of
abaya
-clad women. With a chorus of birdlike chatter, they welcomed Miranda and Marguerite, leading them through a series of courtyards to the buildings where most of the children lived. Marguerite had been coming every week for several months and so knew many of the
children. “I'm glad you're here,” said Marguerite. “I don't speak Arabic, and I don't have any idea what they are telling me half the time.”

Miranda had expected something out of Dickens, a crumbling, derelict structure crowded with dirt-smeared faces and starved, stick-thin limbs. But that wasn't what she discovered. The children's rooms in the sturdy cinder-block structures were airy and spotless, with two or three single beds per room. Not mattresses on the floor but actual wooden beds. They were all neatly made up, with a folded blanket on top of each mattress. In fact, they were far lovelier rooms than Miranda had seen in many of the homes she had visited. There was also a living room, and a television in the foyer.

In the first building, the boys all ran to shake their hands, clutching her fingers with a gratitude Miranda felt she hardly deserved just for turning up. The boys were clean and neatly dressed in long pants and pressed green shirts. A woman in charge of the house came to the front room holding a tiny child wrapped in a pink polyester blanket. This was Abdul-Malik, said Marguerite. He had a thatch of shiny, dark hair and chicken pox scars covering his face. The woman handed the baby to Miranda. Immediately she could feel the unnatural heat of his body through the blankets. “Fever?” she asked. “Yes,” said the housemother. “But he is getting better.” The child felt as light as a kitten in her arms, and stared at her with blank brown eyes. “He is about two months old,” said Marguerite. “Though no one knows for sure. His mother died in childbirth.” So where is the father? Miranda wanted to ask. And the aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and grandparents? Usually there was no shortage of these here. Where did the mother die? How could this child end up with no one? But she said nothing. Where did you start?

As she cradled the limp child, the crowd of boys, who ranged in age from two to twelve, surrounded them.
“Salaama aleikum!”
they cried. Where were the women from? How old were they? What did they think of their country? They had endless questions, none of which were Where are my parents? When Miranda told them the name of her hometown, they savored it on their tongues. “See-ah-tull!” they cried. “Pretty name for a town.” They asked the questions
any child would ask. Did she like soccer? What did she like to play? Did she have a television? When Miranda said that she and her husband had no television, they stared at her with sudden sympathy. She was obviously worse off than she looked.

One of the women said that there were two other babies, and Miranda asked if she could see them. Before Cressida, Miranda had had no interest in babies or children. When friends came around to her apartment with an infant, she had to force enthusiasm, feeling bored and burdened. She had never been a natural babysitter, and as a teenager she had dreaded the nights she had to spend tucking other people's children into bed. So she hadn't been in any particular hurry to have children of her own. Not until she met Finn had the thought even crossed her mind. But watching him play with the children at their first embassy Christmas party, Miranda had caught herself thinking that raising a child with him might actually be
fun
.

Now, she hardly recognized herself. Something odd had happened, some tap opened in her soul, so that she could not see a baby without wanting to wrap herself around it and protect it forever. She had stopped reading the newspaper for fear of encountering a story about terrible things happening to infants and children. There were always terrible things happening to infants and children: wars, starvation, abusive parents, pedophiles, accidents. Finn would come home and find her weeping over a piece she had heard on BBC Radio 4, which she streamed onto her laptop. She had feared that coming here would have the same effect, that the suffering of the children would overwhelm her. But if these children were suffering terribly, they hid it well.

One of the little boys took them back through the courtyard to a neighboring building, called Dar al-Ikram. There, on the top floor, they met tiny Shafia, just six days old. Swaddled in a white cloth and cradled in the arms of another housemother, she peered out at them with large, curious eyes. Her face was still covered with downy hair. “Where is her mother?” Miranda asked.
“Mayyitah,”
the woman said. “Dead.” And the father? “No father.” Another mother who had died in childbirth, another missing father. Could these children have been born out of wedlock? It seemed impossible in this country. Maybe
they just all had terminally ill fathers? Miranda took the child and held her while her surrogate mother prepared a bottle of formula. She watched the woman measuring powder and water, fighting the impulse to simply pull down the front of her shirt and nurse the little girl. You can't save everyone, Finn was always telling her.

“What are the chances someone will adopt her?” Miranda asked the woman measuring out the formula. “Is it easier for the babies than the older children?”

The woman looked up and frowned at her. “None,” she said. “No adoption.”

Miranda looked at Marguerite with surprise. “No adoption?”

“It's illegal here,” Marguerite explained. “It is assumed that there will always be blood relatives to take in a child. Since the families are so enormous.”

“But obviously that assumption is wrong,” says Miranda. “Or they wouldn't need this orphanage.”

“Well, I'll let you explain that to them. I think it's some kind of Islamic thing. There's something called
kafala
that means you can take care of a child, but not be its legal parents. Of course I might be mixing it all up.”

Miranda was bewildered. Why on earth would anyone want to keep a child from finding a home? Why was it better for them to be here than with a couple who couldn't have their own children? She wondered if the Quran really addressed this issue. She should look it up.

They were then taken to another baby, the month-old Badai. She also had plenty of dark hair and enormous eyes. While Miranda and Marguerite cuddled the babies, small girls ran in and out of the room, staring shyly before dashing away. In this building too the rooms were tidy and clean. The girls had neatly braided hair and pretty dresses. Miranda wanted to speak with them but found herself at a loss for words. She asked the girls their names and ages—the youngest was five and oldest fourteen—and was unsure where to go from there. All the things she most wanted to know she couldn't ask. Were they happy? Did they ever know their parents? Did they worry about their future? Were they well educated? Had anyone ever hurt them?