“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if you want to help, send money to a reputable relief organization.
Volunteer at a refugee camp. But at this point in time, we strongly discourage U.S.
citizens from attempting to adopt Afghan children.”
I got up. “Come on, Sohrab,” I said in Farsi. Sohrab slid next to me, rested his head on my hip. I remembered the Polaroid of him and Hassan standing that same way. “Can I ask you some thing, Mr. Andrews?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have children?”
For the first time, he blinked.
“Well, do you? It’s a simple question.”
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He was silent.
“I thought so,” I said, taking Sohrab’s hand. “They ought to put someone in your chair who knows what it’s like to want a child.” I turned to go, Sohrab trailing me.
“Can I ask you a question?” Andrews called.
“Go ahead.”
“Have you promised this child you’ll take him with you?”
“What if I have?”
He shook his head. “It’s a dangerous business, making promises to kids.” He sighed and opened his desk drawer again. “You mean to pursue this?” he said, rummaging through papers.
“I mean to pursue this.”
He produced a business card. “Then I advise you to get a good immigration lawyer.
Omar Faisal works here in Islamabad. You can tell him I sent you.”
I took the card from him. “Thanks,” I muttered.
“Good luck,” he said. As we exited the room, I glanced over my shoulder. Andrews was standing in a rectangle of sunlight, absently staring out the window, his hands turning the potted tomato plants toward the sun, petting them lovingly.
“TAKE CARE,” the secretary said as we passed her desk.
“Your boss could use some manners,” I said. I expected her to roll her eyes, maybe nod in that “I know, everybody says that,” kind of way. Instead, she lowered her voice. “Poor Ray. He hasn’t been the same since his daughter died.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Suicide,” she whispered.
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ON THE TAXI RIDE back to the hotel, Sohrab rested his head on the window, kept staring at the passing buildings, the rows of gum trees. His breath fogged the glass, cleared, fogged it again. I waited for him to ask me about the meeting but he didn’t.
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the closed bathroom door the water was running. Since the day we’d checked into the hotel, Sohrab took a long bath every night before bed. In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity. Now Sohrab spent almost an hour a night in the bath, soaking in the soapy water, scrubbing. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I called Soraya. I glanced at the thin line of light under the bathroom door. Do you feel clean yet, Sohrab?
I passed on to Soraya what Raymond Andrews had told me. “So what do you think?” I said.
“We have to think he’s wrong.” She told me she had called a few adoption agencies that arranged international adoptions. She hadn’t yet found one that would consider doing an Afghan adoption, but she was still looking.
“How are your parents taking the news?”
“Madar is happy for us. You know how she feels about you, Amir, you can do no wrong in her eyes. Padar... well, as always, he’s a little harder to read. He’s not saying much.”
“And you? Are you happy?”
I heard her shifting the receiver to her other hand. “I think we’ll be good for your nephew, but maybe that little boy will be good for us too.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I find myself wondering what his favorite _qurma_ will be, or his favorite subject in school. I picture myself helping him with homework...” She laughed. In the bathroom, the water had stopped running. I could hear Sohrab in there, shifting in the tub, spilling water over the sides.
“You’re going to be great,” I said.
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“Oh, I almost forgot! I called Kaka Sharif.”
I remembered him reciting a poem at our nika from a scrap of hotel stationery paper.
His son had held the Koran over our heads as Soraya and I had walked toward the stage, smiling at the flashing cameras. “What did he say?”
“Well, he’s going to stir the pot for us. He’ll call some of his INS buddies,” she said.
“That’s really great news,” I said. “I can’t wait for you to see Sohrab.”
“I can’t wait to see you,” she said.
I hung up smiling.
Sohrab emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later. He had barely said a dozen words since the meeting with Raymond Andrews and my attempts at conversation had only met with a nod or a monosyllabic reply. He climbed into bed, pulled the blanket to his chin. Within minutes, he was snoring.
I wiped a circle on the fogged-up mirror and shaved with one of the hotel’s old-fashioned razors, the type that opened and you slid the blade in. Then I took my own bath, lay there until the steaming hot water turned cold and my skin shriveled up. I lay there drifting, wondering, imagining...
OMAR FAISAL WAS CHUBBY, dark, had dimpled cheeks, black button eyes, and an affable, gap-toothed smile. His thinning gray hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore a brown corduroy suit with leather elbow patches and carried a worn, overstuffed briefcase. The handle was missing, so he clutched the briefcase to his chest. He was the sort of fellow who started a lot of sentences with a laugh and an unnecessary apology, like I’m sorry, I’ll be there at five. Laugh. When I had called him, he had insisted on coming out to meet us. “I’m sorry, the cabbies in this town are sharks,” he said in perfect English, without a trace of an accent. “They smell a foreigner, they triple their fares.”
He pushed through the door, all smiles and apologies, wheezing a little and sweating.
He wiped his brow with a handkerchief and opened his briefcase, rummaged in it for a notepad and apologized for the sheets of paper that spilled on the bed. Sitting crosslegged on his bed, Sohrab kept one eye on the muted television, the other on the harried lawyer. I had told him in the morning that Faisal would be coming and he had nodded, almost asked some thing, and had just gone on watching a show with talking animals.
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“Here we are,” Faisal said, flipping open a yellow legal notepad. “I hope my children take after their mother when it comes to organization. I’m sorry, probably not the sort of thing you want to hear from your prospective lawyer, heh?” He laughed.
“Well, Raymond Andrews thinks highly of you.”
“Mr. Andrews. Yes, yes. Decent fellow. Actually, he rang me and told me about you.”
“He did?”
“Oh yes.”
“So you’re familiar with my situation.”
Faisal dabbed at the sweat beads above his lips. “I’m familiar with the version of the situation you gave Mr. Andrews,” he said. His cheeks dimpled with a coy smile. He turned to Sohrab. “This must be the young man who’s causing all the trouble,” he said in Farsi.
“This is Sohrab,” I said. “Sohrab, this is Mr. Faisal, the lawyer I told you about.”
Sohrab slid down the side of his bed and shook hands with Omar Faisal. “Salaam alaykum,” he said in a low voice.
“Alaykum salaam, Sohrab,” Faisal said. “Did you know you are named after a great warrior?”
Sohrab nodded. Climbed back onto his bed and lay on his side to watch TV.
“I didn’t know you spoke Farsi so well,” I said in English. “Did you grow up in Kabul?”
“No, I was born in Karachi. But I did live in Kabul for a number of years. Shar-e-Nau, near the Haji Yaghoub Mosque,” Faisal said. “I grew up in Berkeley, actually. My father opened a music store there in the late sixties. Free love, headbands, tiedyed shirts, you name it.” He leaned forward. “I was at Woodstock.”
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“Groovy,” I said, and Faisal laughed so hard he started sweating all over again.
“Anyway,” I continued, “what I told Mr. Andrews was pretty much it, save for a thing or two. Or maybe three. I’ll give you the uncensored version.”
He licked a finger and flipped to a blank page, uncapped his pen. “I’d appreciate that, Amir. And why don’t we just keep it in English from here on out?”
“Fine.”
I told him everything that had happened. Told him about my meeting with Rahim Khan, the trek to Kabul, the orphanage, the stoning at Ghazi Stadium.
“God,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I have such fond memories of Kabul. Hard to believe it’s the same place you’re telling me about.”
“Have you been there lately?”
“God no.”
“It’s not Berkeley, I’ll tell you that,” I said.
“Go on.”
I told him the rest, the meeting with Assef, the fight, Sohrab and his slingshot, our escape back to Pakistan. When I was done, he scribbled a few notes, breathed in deeply, and gave me a sober look. “Well, Amir, you’ve got a tough battle ahead of you.”
“One I can win?”
He capped his pen. “At the risk of sounding like Raymond Andrews, it’s not likely. Not impossible, but hardly likely.” Gone was the affable smile, the playful look in his eyes.
“But it’s kids like Sohrab who need a home the most,” I said. “These rules and regulations don’t make any sense to me.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Amir,” he said. “But the fact is, take current immigration laws, adoption agency policies, and the political situation in Afghanistan, and the deck is stacked against you.”
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“I don’t get it,” I said. I wanted to hit something. “I mean, I get it but I don’t get it.”
Omar nodded, his brow furrowed. “Well, it’s like this. In the aftermath of a disaster, whether it be natural or man-made--and the Taliban are a disaster, Amir, believe me--it’s always difficult to ascertain that a child is an orphan. Kids get displaced in refugee camps, or parents just abandon them because they can’t take care of them. Happens all the time. So the INS won’t grant a visa unless it’s clear the child meets the definition of an eligible orphan. I’m sorry, I know it sounds ridiculous, but you need death certificates.”
“You’ve been to Afghanistan,” I said. “You know how improbable that is.”
“I know,” he said. “But let’s suppose it’s clear that the child has no surviving parent.
Even then, the INS thinks it’s good adoption practice to place the child with someone in his own country so his heritage can be preserved.”
“What heritage?” I said. “The Taliban have destroyed what heritage Afghans had. You saw what they did to the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan.”
“I’m sorry, I’m telling you how the INS works, Amir,” Omar said, touching my arm. He glanced at Sohrab and smiled. Turned back to me. “Now, a child has to be legally adopted according to the laws and regulations of his own country. But when you have a country in turmoil, say a country like Afghanistan, government offices are busy with emergencies, and processing adoptions won’t be a top priority.”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. A pounding headache was settling in just behind them.
“But let’s suppose that somehow Afghanistan gets its act together,” Omar said, crossing his arms on his protruding belly. “It still may not permit this adoption. In fact, even the more moderate Muslim nations are hesitant with adoptions because in many of those countries, Islamic law, Shari’a, doesn’t recognize adoption.”
“You’re telling me to give it up?” I asked, pressing my palm to my forehead.
“I grew up in the U.S., Amir. If America taught me anything, it’s that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts’ lemonade jar. But, as your lawyer, I have to give you the facts,” he said. “Finally, adoption agencies routinely send staff members to evaluate the child’s milieu, and no reasonable agency is going to send an agent to Afghanistan.”
I looked at Sohrab sitting on the bed, watching TV, watching us. He was sitting the way his father used to, chin resting on one knee.
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“I’m his half uncle, does that count for anything?”
“It does if you can prove it. I’m sorry, do you have any papers or anyone who can support you?”
“No papers,” I said, in a tired voice. “No one knew about it. Sohrab didn’t know until I told him, and I myself didn’t find out until recently. The only other person who knows is gone, maybe dead.”
“What are my options, Omar?”
“I’ll be frank. You don’t have a lot of them.”
“Well, Jesus, what can I do?”
Omar breathed in, tapped his chin with the pen, let his breath out. “You could still file an orphan petition, hope for the best. You could do an independent adoption. That means you’d have to live with Sohrab here in Pakistan, day in and day out, for the next two years. You could seek asylum on his behalf. That’s a lengthy process and you’d have to prove political persecution. You could request a humanitarian visa. That’s at the discretion of the attorney general and it’s not easily given.” He paused. “There is another option, probably your best shot.”
“What?” I said, leaning forward.
“You could relinquish him to an orphanage here, then file an orphan petition. Start your I-600 form and your home study while he’s in a safe place.”
“What are those?”
“I’m sorry, the 1-600 is an INS formality. The home study is done by the adoption agency you choose,” Omar said. “It’s, you know, to make sure you and your wife aren’t raving lunatics.”
“I don’t want to do that,” I said, looking again at Sohrab. “I promised him I wouldn’t send him back to an orphanage.”
“Like I said, it may be your best shot.”
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We talked a while longer. Then I walked him out to his car, an old VW Bug. The sun was setting on Islamabad by then, a flaming red nimbus in the west. I watched the car tilt under Omar’s weight as he somehow managed to slide in behind the wheel. He rolled down the window. “Amir?”
“Yes.”
“I meant to tell you in there, about what you’re trying to do? I think it’s pretty great.”