by Esther Ahmad
We had savings, but nowhere near enough to rent a place to live on our own. We could pay for our own food, but we needed to rely on the generosity of others to put a roof over our heads. Besides, without the protection of family, we knew we could not live as a Christian couple in a Muslim area. And with names like John and Esther, people would know right away that we were not Muslims. We needed to live quietly, away from prying eyes. We needed to disappear.
†
I had spent hardly any time in a Christian neighborhood before. When I was a secret believer living at home, I would offer food and water to the Christians who swept the street. I knew they were poor and guessed that their homes were in parts of the city that people from my neighborhood would never go near. I knew a little about the conditions some of these people lived in, but I had never seen the depths of their poverty with my own eyes.
As soon as we ran out of family to stay with, I experienced it for myself.
Ali, one of John’s friends, offered to let us stay with him until the baby was born, and one afternoon when I was seven months pregnant, we made the long walk from the train station to his home. I was tired from the heat of the sun, my body protesting with all manner of aches and pains. As soon as I saw Ali’s home, I felt a whole lot worse.
There was an open sewer running outside, and the inside was not much better. The single room was dark and damp, and there was no electricity and no running water. An old, faded curtain hung limply from the ceiling. From what I gathered, this curtain would partition off the corner of the room that would be ours. The area was no bigger than the two sleeping mats that were stacked against the wall.
Nothing in my life so far had prepared me for this. I’d grown up the daughter of a successful merchant in a wealthy northern city. John’s family was not as well off as my family, but they had cars and cell phones, access to higher education, and jobs that offered stability. Neither of us had ever known hunger. Ali’s home, which he shared with his wife and four children—and now us as well—seemed to belong on a different planet.
As Christians, Ali and his neighbors were the victims of continual discrimination. They struggled to find jobs, their businesses were boycotted by Muslims, and their children were unable to access education. Even those like Ali, who had been educated before converting from Islam, were barred from employment. They were viewed as toxic in their community, living like lepers. Some families relied on the meager wage of one person working a menial job, and others had friends and family overseas who were willing to help.
Even so, they saw themselves as fortunate. Ali described a neighboring community of Christians whose homes had been bulldozed with barely any warning so a developer could build on the land. They were given no money, no support, and no help to find another place to live. All they could do was find an unused corner of a slum and try to construct new homes out of trash.
Ali also told me about one Christian man he knew of who, against the odds, had managed to get a job working in a factory. Almost all of his fellow workers were Muslims. The man was good at his job, and one day, after years of working hard, he was told he would be promoted to section manager. That night, two men with pistols shot him inside his own home. “How can a Christian manage us?” they shouted before they walked away.
The pain these Christians were living with was palpable. But their generosity was even greater. Ali and his family shared their home with John and me, and the community welcomed us warmly. Though the thought of giving birth in the middle of such poverty scared me at first, I trusted that God was in control.
†
A few weeks before giving birth to our daughter, we moved away from Ali’s home. A friend who worked at a Christian college in our home city invited us to stay in the basement while the college was closed for the students’ vacation. I was unsure about being so close to danger, but the idea of giving birth in a clean environment, close to a hospital, was appealing.
We moved in at night, being careful not to attract any attention. John was brave enough to leave the basement to run errands and visit other Christians, but I stayed inside with the door locked. There was a bed and clean water—I had all I needed.
While I was grateful to be somewhere clean, I felt incredibly alone. I missed having Christians around me, and I missed my family. I longed for my mom and my aunts, my sisters and my cousins to be with me, to fill the air with laughter and conversation. I wanted to give birth the way every other woman in my family had: surrounded by relatives.
By the time my labor started, I was beginning to feel fearful. Soon I was in agony.
John had found a Christian nurse who agreed to help me, and while I labored in pain with no sign that the birth was progressing, the nurse gave me this warning: “If something doesn’t change soon, we’ll need to go to the hospital.”
I was desperate not to go, worried that if I left the basement, I would be seen by someone who knew me. So I prayed. “God, you promised you would help. Have you left me?”
Almost that very minute, I felt something change in my body. The pain vanished, and within an hour, I was holding her—a beautiful daughter we named Amiyah. As I stared at her mop of dark hair and deep eyes, I thanked God for his assurance and his help. I knew that I had been wrong to ever doubt him.
John’s response to a daughter could not have been more different from my father’s. The moment he first held his baby girl, his face was wet with tears. “My father always wanted a daughter,” he said. “He loved his sons, but he always said that to have a daughter is a special blessing.”
The nurse left soon after, and the three of us lay on the bed for hours, soaking in God’s faithfulness in the form of this eight-pound bundle. It was dark in the basement, but I knew we were safe.
26
Two weeks after Amiyah’s birth, we had to leave the college. We were grateful that a friend of John’s arranged for us to stay with a Christian family about an hour away, but the conditions were even worse than at Ali’s.
As we tried to settle into our new life, I discovered that becoming a mother brought new worries and fears. I missed my mother more than ever. I wished I could ask for her advice about feeding and bathing, and it made me ache knowing that she would miss Amiyah’s first steps and never hear her first words. I also grew concerned that Amiyah might get ill. How would we take care of her if we were on the run and had no income? Other worries plagued me too, like the thought of what might happen to our daughter if my father tracked me down and killed both John and me.
With John’s family also at risk, we decided that if anything happened to us, the best people to look after Amiyah were the Christians we were living with. They might have been poor and on the margins of society, but I came to see how much I could learn from them. In the midst of all the hardship they faced, I discovered the truth about so many Christians in Pakistan: their faith in Jesus is strong. They have so little to eat and so little to cling to that they are forced to rely on God alone.
They taught me about being faithful, about not denying the faith. At any point, they could have converted to Islam and found their status elevated, yet they chose to remain poor followers of Jesus, even though they and their children faced a lifetime of social, emotional, and physical persecution. My suffering was small by comparison, and I believed that in time it would pass. Theirs was permanent. I was reminded once more that Christians suffer. Because of Jesus’ name, we become the recipients of hatred. This should not surprise us—after all, Jesus came from a higher place, yet he chose to humble himself. He chose to suffer here on earth.
†
We continued to move around, traveling only at night, with my face hidden beneath a veil and John’s covered by a bandanna. At times I thought about the apostles Paul and Peter, and how they went from place to place, often being smuggled in and out of cities. What was so different about what we were going through? In many ways, it was comforting to know that we were living out the truths of the Bible.
As Amiyah grew,
my understanding of God became ever stronger. Knowing the depth of my own love for my child and watching John care for his daughter gave me new insight into what the love of the heavenly Father looks like. And as difficult as it was to watch God’s people suffer, I was thankful for the privilege of learning from them how to keep the faith when hard times come. I didn’t know what lay ahead for our family, but I had a hunch this was a lesson I was going to need.
For a few precious weeks, we started to feel settled, and I wondered whether we might consider ourselves finally home. Then we received some shocking news. An old friend contacted John to tell him that his mother was dead.
My father had printed up posters with our pictures on them, along with the instruction that anyone who found us should kill us. Somehow John’s mother had seen a copy of the poster, and the shock had been too much. She had a heart attack and died soon after.
John’s grief was intensified all the more by the fact that he could not attend the funeral. I felt the weight of guilt press down on me. Marrying me had already cost him his career, his home, and the opportunity to live near his family. Now it had robbed his mother of her own life.
But John never showed any sign of resentment or regret over marrying me. With every new challenge that came, he stood by my side and made sure we faced it together.
†
Amiyah was napping when the man who had taken us into his home burst through the door, panting.
“I just saw a man . . . holding a poster . . . with your faces on it.”
“Where?” John asked.
“The train station. He’s asking everyone whether they’ve seen you.”
It was as if someone had clamped a vice around my throat, cutting off the air. We were hundreds of miles away from home, and two years had passed since I’d escaped. I desperately wanted to believe this was all some strange coincidence. I had hoped my father’s anger had mellowed over time, but clearly that was a fantasy.
“Stay here,” the man said. “Lock the door, and don’t go anywhere. We’ll keep watch outside. We won’t let them hurt you. But once they’re gone, you should leave.”
We got out of the city that night, but it took another three months for us to leave Pakistan altogether. We shuttled from one Christian community to another, all the while trying to plan an escape.
The main problem, as usual, was me. I had no passport or travel papers with me, and without them I could not leave Pakistan or enter any other country legally. In a way, though, I was grateful my father had never allowed me to have any kind of photo ID. He said he did not want his daughter to have her photograph taken and printed, and it would be up to my husband one day to decide whether I got an ID once I got married. If my father had been less militant, I might never have been able to leave Pakistan, for any formal ID would have made it clear I was a Muslim. If I had tried to get a passport with such an ID, Pakistani officials would want to know why a Muslim woman was planning to leave the country with a Christian man, especially when there was a child involved.
So I had to forget about my previous life when I went to apply for a passport. I pretended that I was a shy, illiterate girl from a remote village. I gave my thumbprint, and after waiting for several weeks, I finally received my passport.
†
Malaysia was not my first choice. I wanted to fly to a country with a large Christian population, not another Muslim country, but our choices were limited. All other doors were closed to us, so Malaysia became our new home.
On our first Sunday in the country, John, Amiyah, and I left the center for asylum seekers, where we had been given temporary accommodations, and took an hour-long journey across Kuala Lumpur. I stared openmouthed at the glass and steel high-rises and smiled at the cleanliness of the bus. But these were only brief distractions. My heart was focused on one thing: the unrelenting joy of going to church.
After more than two years of living on the run in Pakistan, the thought of being able to worship alongside a thousand other Christians was almost too much to take in. I’d attended a few church services in Pakistan, but I’d never been in a congregation close to this size. I could feel my heart racing as we approached the building, and when I saw that the pastor was greeting people at the door, I didn’t know whether to clasp my hands together and bow or giggle out of nervousness.
“Welcome!” he said, smiling broadly. “What a beautiful child you have.”
“Thank you,” John said. “This is our first time here. We’re from Pakistan.”
“Really? Then you are especially welcome. Why did you leave?”
John looked quickly at me, then back at the pastor. “My wife was a Muslim but now loves the Lord. It was safer for us to come to Malaysia.”
The pastor turned his gaze on me, his smile still wide. “Ex-terrorist!” he said, jabbing a finger toward me.
My heart stopped. I suddenly felt faint. I heard John laugh a little and wish the pastor good day, and then I felt his hand on my arm, guiding me into the building.
“People shouldn’t stereotype Muslims like that,” John said softly when we sat down. “It’s not right, and I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
Amiyah needed to visit the bathroom, and John took her. I sat in the pew alone, waves of panic tearing at my insides.
Why had the pastor said that? Had God revealed my secret to him? If he had, was he about to reveal it to the rest of the church as well? What would I do if the pastor asked me to stand up and walk forward in front of everyone? If John found out, I was sure it would mean the end of our marriage.
I sat through the whole service begging God not to let that happen. I confessed to God that I was nothing more than trash, that I had been so lost in the darkness that I was not worthy to stand and touch his feet. I was lower than everyone else in the building, but I begged to be allowed to remain there.
The pastor said nothing about me during the service, and when he said good-bye afterward, it was as if he’d never seen either of us before.
All the way back to the refugee camp, while John and Amiyah dozed in the sunlight that flooded through the bus windows, I tried to ignore the blood rushing in my ears as I thanked God for the narrow escape. However, in the silence, I sensed that God wasn’t cheering along with me. What had happened that morning was not a rescue; it was a warning. Though I wished it weren’t so, he was reminding me of a truth I had forgotten: nothing we do can ever be hidden from him.
It was a difficult revelation. I knew I could trust him to keep my family safe just as he had done so many times before. But letting go of the need for secrets was hard. I begged God not to reveal my past to others.
“Please,” I prayed. “I promise I’ll spend my whole life serving you, but I’m terrified of what might happen if people find out about me. Do they really have to know?”
27
When I was a child, my father would sometimes let me count the money he brought home after selling spices. I would sit at the table, my eyes level with the piles of bills that covered the surface like autumn leaves. At first I was only allowed to handle the low-value bills, counting them out until I had the right amount to pass over to my father. He’d roll up the pile and fasten it with a rubber band, and I’d watch him load the cash into the safe.
The more I did this, the higher the value of the bills I was allowed to handle. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that I was counting thousands of dollars’ worth of currency. I just liked being able to help my father.
Years later, when I was a secret believer, my father was out of the country on business. He and my mother each had a key to the safe, but he had accidentally taken both keys with him. I needed money to take a rickshaw to college and buy lunch before visiting John, but there was no way to open the safe to get the cash.
I had been a Christian for only a few weeks, but I knew what I needed to do. “God,” I prayed that night, “when there was no sun, you spoke and it came into being. The world started at your command. You gathered the waters and raised the
land. I have no money to get to college and visit John tomorrow, and I desperately want to study the Holy Bible more. Please, can you help?”
The next morning I woke with my hand clenched. I knew without a doubt what would be in my palm even before I peeled back my fingers. Sure enough, it was the exact amount of money I needed.
I rushed to my mother. “Did you give me money last night?” I asked.
She assured me she hadn’t. The whole incident confused her, but I knew exactly what had happened: God had provided.
I thought about that event a lot when we were getting settled in Malaysia. Even though we were no longer living in fear and poverty, we were still desperately short on money. We had used most of our savings to pay for airfare out of Pakistan, and being asylum seekers, we were not officially allowed to work, so the little cash we had left was soon gone.
In some ways, life in Malaysia was even harder than being on the run in Pakistan. Now we couldn’t run to different Christian communities for help. We were no longer unique—we were just a few out of thousands of asylum seekers, part of an anonymous invasion that many people in the country did not welcome.
Malaysia is a Muslim country, but there were some advantages to being there. Not only did this destination raise fewer suspicions for the Pakistani border guards, but we also believed we’d stand a better chance of our case being heard there than in a place like Hong Kong, which I had preferred. We knew that a complex process lay ahead of us, but we hoped we’d be granted refugee status fairly soon. After that, our goal was to apply through the United Nations to be relocated to a Christian country.
As the weeks rolled into months and our application seemed to have stalled right at the early stages, it became clear that the process was even slower and more complex than we had assumed.
We didn’t need just one miracle. We needed a series of them.
