by Robert Baer
“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.
FORTY-FOUR
As the standoff at the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, between government forces and the radical Taliban-supporting followers of Maulana Abdul Aziz and Ghazi Abdul Rasheed continues, one of the leaders of the mosque has been captured while attempting to escape, according to the BBC. Maulana Abdul Aziz was captured wearing a woman’s burka. His arrest was confirmed by the Chief Commissioner of Islamabad. “He was the last in a group of seven women all wearing the same clothes. He was wearing a burqa that also covered his eyes,” a security official told AFP.
—www.longwarjurnal.org/archives/2007/07/abdul-aziz-red-mosqu-print.php
Islamabad, Pakistan: BOB
One 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.
“It will be fine. The judge will see that you are good, honorable parents.”
One night Munir and his wife and their children take me up to Damam-e Koh for dinner. It’s just starting to cool down, but it’s still in the eighties. The terrace is full, but Munir has made a reservation for us.
Munir finally lets down his reserve when I tell him I’m thinking about taking Dayna, Reela, and the ayah up into the Hindu Kush, while we wait for a court date.
“Aha!” Munir says. “That is where the gods are!”
Munir tells me that when he was a young man, he walked Pakistan’s mountains almost every summer. The stone villages hanging on cliffs in those mountains haven’t changed since Alexander the Great, and neither have the odd languages they speak there. As he t
alks, I realize that Munir is a genuine traveler. He’s been to the United States many times, and understands Americans.
On the drive back to Islamabad, I ask Munir’s wife about Pakistan’s Christians. If Pakistan were to slide off the edge, succumb to Islamic militants, what are their chances?
Munir answers for her. “It’s a difficult question. You need to understand their mentality. For a while I represented the leader of the Red Mosque, Maulana Abdul Aziz.”
I can’t ignore this. The fight that occurred at the Red Mosque in July 2007 was a dark omen for Pakistan’s drift into Islamic militancy. Not only had Abdul Aziz been close to Osama bin Ladin, he made no secret of his desire to turn Pakistan into an Islamic republic governed by a Taliban-like regime. When the mosque armed itself, it left the government no choice. On July 3, Pakistani paramilitaries assaulted the Red Mosque, finally taking it on July 11, killing scores of people, including women and children. Abdul Aziz was arrested trying to escape dressed as a woman. He’s now in government custody, but his wife is free. Munir says he’ll arrange for me to meet her.
A taxi drops me off on a quiet, tree-lined street in front of a two-story house. There are no guards or any other sign that this is an Islamic center advocating the government’s overthrow. The man who answers the door shows me into a room with cheap wall-to-wall carpeting. The only light comes from two overhead phosphorescent tubes. I take off my shoes and sit on the carpet against a wall.
A half hour later a beefy man in a lime shirt, Dacron pants, and a cardboard belt comes to collect me, leading me to another room with more cheap carpet, more tube lighting, and more bare walls. Almost as soon as we sit down on the floor, Maulana Abdul Aziz’s wife enters, and I jump back up again. She’s dressed in a black robe, her face behind a thick black veil that betrays none of her features. She has black silk gloves on, so not the smallest part of her skin shows. I can’t say why, but I have a sense that this petite vision in black is a fierce woman.
She sits down, but rather than face me, she turns to the wall. It’s an act of Islamic propriety I’ve never seen in all the years I’ve been in the Middle East. A young boy comes in with a bag of cookies, and I take one. It’s crusty, but I eat it anyhow. Abdul Aziz’s wife takes one, but doesn’t eat it. The boy comes back with a glass of berry juice for me.
After I thank Mrs. Abdul Aziz for receiving me, I ask her about the future of the Taliban. The man with the cardboard belt translates between English and Urdu.
“We are losing because there’s no unity,” she says. “Divided people in history are doomed to lose, subjecting themselves to oppression.”
She says it curtly, almost like a catechism. It reminds me of discussing politics with Soviet diplomats. They always had a canned answer for any argument.
For the next few minutes she tells me a story about the Prophet Muhammad and a doctor. The gist is difficult to follow because she peppers her Urdu with Arabic quotations from the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet. Like many nonnative, devout Muslims, she employs an Arabic that is learned from reading and prayer rather than from speaking.
When she returns to her diatribe, I’m surprised when I catch the word “Tibet,” and ask if she can repeat what she’s just said. The translator doesn’t bother and tells me she wants to know why in the West we’re outraged about Chinese oppression against Tibetans but not against Muslims.
Mrs. Abdul Aziz doesn’t wait for my answer, launching into an attack on the United States and American foreign policy. “It was your country who provided the white phosphorous that burned alive the students at the Red Mosque,” she says, spitting out her words. “We saw it with our own eyes. And your country also gives F-16s to bomb Muslims in the tribal areas.”
I start to say something, but she cuts me off, refusing to be questioned or contradicted. Ten minutes later she pauses long enough for me to ask what she thinks will happen if Obama is elected president.
“He will invade Mecca.”
The next morning as usual I go to see Munir in his office. He tells me that just this morning he’s put a notice in the newspaper, advertising our petition for guardianship. A week from now the judge will hear our case.
I go back to my original question, asking him his gut feeling on how the guardianship hearing will go. My meeting with Maulana Abdul Aziz’s wife reminded me how precarious the country is.
“The judge is a very good man.”
“But can you be certain he’ll approve us?”
“It will be fine.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“No. In Pakistan we get our information from the wells.”
I think I’ve misheard him and ask him to explain.
“From the worms,” he says.
I have no choice but to trust Munir, and no reason not to. He’s been completely aboveboard. In an affidavit to the court he stated his fee. He’s been very particular that Reela’s father come to the hearing to tell the judge in person that he is renouncing his rights to her.
FORTY-FIVE
A baby bird is hatched while his mother is away. Fallen from his nest, he sets out to look for her and asks everyone he meets—including a dog, a cow, and a plane—“Are you my mother?”
—Amazon.com plot synopsis of P. D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother?
Islamabad, Pakistan: DAYNA
The United Airlines Boeing 777 tips its wing to put down in Kuwait, only to be met by a rising dust cloud—a khamseen, one of the dust storms that announce the arrival of summer in the Gulf. I’ve been caught in them before, and know how they can close down an airport. I keep my fingers crossed that that won’t happen now. I have a plane to catch tomorrow to see my baby for the first time.
Inside the terminal, I follow my fellow passengers to the visa counter. Almost everyone is American, mostly soldiers and contractors on their way to Iraq. Some of them take the hotel shuttle with me, but no one talks; everyone is exhausted from the fourteen-hour flight from the United States. I make a mental list of all the things I want to buy my daughter.
When I ask the receptionist at the hotel what time the stores close, she looks at me curiously, wondering, I suspect, whether I know there’s a war next door in Iraq. Kuwait’s not the sort of place where you get off the plane and rush out to go shopping. She tells me I still have three hours—good news because I won’t have time to shop in the morning before my flight to Islamabad. I take my bags upstairs and come back down to find a taxi to take me to the Salmiyah shopping district.
I still wonder what one buys for a ten-month-old. Will a toy that moves or talks scare her? Will she even care about a stuffed teddy bear? I’m sure she’s too young for sweets, but I’ll ask the ayah when I get there. Anyhow, Bob should know by now.
The taxi drives down a four-lane boulevard on the water and drops me off in front of a boxy modern building with neon store lights in the windows. The wind has died down, but I still have to cover my face to keep the grit out of my eyes and mouth. I race through the Western-style mall—Zara, Mango, Polo, Godiva—until I find a toy store and buy a play cell phone and some plastic blocks.
Just as I step back out of the mall to look for a taxi to go back to the hotel, I remember something. I go back in and buy chocolates for the ayah.
It’s Bob I see first as I push my trolley out of the arrivals hall in Islamabad. He’s pointing down at something nestled in his arm, a big grin on his face. I weave through passengers as if racing through a slalom course until I get to him. I’m immediately drawn to this tiny little brown face with black curly hair held back with tiny butterfly clips. She’s in a little salwar kameez—a tunic that goes down to the knees—with matching pants. They’re both made from a white linen fabric covered with small embroidered and beaded flowers. There’s glitter on her face—the ayah has dressed her in her best. I hug Bob, and the little bundle in his arms gets squished between us. Her black eyes look up at me calmly, probably thinking, well, now who is this?
I take her from Bob and marvel at h
er tiny little fingers and long eyelashes and latte skin. I rock her gently. I’m completely enthralled.
For the next few days Bob and I stay in the bungalow with Reela; the ayah stays next door. During the first two nights, while I get over jet lag, Reela stays with the ayah in her room. But first thing in the morning the ayah knocks on the door to come get me. She shows me how to mix the baby formula, feed Reela, and give her a bath. I watch the ayah wash her bottom with cold water and wince when she screams from the cold. When the ayah makes up for it by wrapping her in a furry blanket—outside its ninety by late morning—I think, The faster I take over, the better. I’m sure of it when I figure out that the ayah cannot read and has been diluting her formula too much. Still, I realize the ayah loves Reela, and she knows her ways. She shows me how when Reela’s tired she pinches her own neck. I look forward to the late afternoon when the ayah leaves me alone with her and we nap together on the bed.
Before I arrived, I worried that Reela would think of the ayah as her mother. But it hasn’t turned out that way at all. Reela accepts me as if she’s been with me from the beginning, and soon we’re inseparable.
Munir’s office is in a windowless basement across from the Islamabad District Court, which is at the epicenter of the judicial revolt against Pakistan’s president, Musharraf. But today there’s no sign of protesting lawyers.
Munir’s old salvaged desk is piled with papers. Bob and I sit across from Munir on wooden chairs, Reela in my arms. Munir types at an old squat computer that sits on a rickety gray metal side table on wheels. The whole thing looks as if it’s about to tumble over.
“The judge is going to give us a hard time,” Munir says, not looking up from his screen.
“Has something changed?” Bob asks, surprised.
