“Who is holding him, Gyan?” I asked.
He hesitated. “I have heard that it is a member of the local government,” he said. “I do not know if it is true. I am finding out. If so, he must be persuaded to give boy voluntarily, or it will be . . . difficult.”
“But you know where he is?”
“Yes, we know.”
“So we can go get him. It’s not legal, is it? To have a nine-year-old boy as a domestic slave? Your job is to enforce the law, isn’t it, Gyan? Isn’t that your job? Am I missing something?”
Gyan sighed. “Conor sir, I promise we will get this boy. You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you, it’s not the point—we need to go, right now, Gyan. We can’t leave him there. You saw what happened to the other two boys. You’re the one who found them, for God’s sake.”
“If you believe me, then please trust, Conor sir. This is complication.” He motioned that he had to go back into his office to the waiting mass of people. “Nepal is difficult, I know this. But I will get Kumar.”
I stood outside his office, seething, but I could do no more at that moment. I took the bus back to Godawari, frustrated at Nepal and everybody in it.
Back at Little Princes, I ignored Hriteek’s attempts to climb up my back onto my shoulders. Raju ran to show me a toy that he had made out of bottle caps, and I ignored him, too. Only the older boys sensed that something was wrong and stayed out of my way. I stomped into the office, sat down at my computer, and started composing an e-mail to Farid. We wrote frequently—I kept him up-to-date on everything. He was counting the days until he could get a visa into Nepal. He had rejoiced at my finding the five children. But now I had bad news for him. I had to tell him that I had information about Kumar, that I knew he was working as a domestic slave, that Gyan even knew where he was, and that I was unable to act on it. He would ask me—he would have to—why I could not get him right that moment, why I was sitting at my computer when a child was in danger. I wouldn’t have an answer.
Sitting there, wondering what to say, I came to an unpleasant realization. My foul mood was not just out of fear for Kumar’s safety. It was also from guilt. It was the thought of admitting to Farid that I had not stood up to Gyan, that I had not rescued Kumar, even after seeing the danger these children were in. That guilt made me want to bang my fists against the cement in frustration. I wanted to go back to Gyan’s office, almost two hours by bus, and demand that we go get Kumar that instant.
I found myself writing down these exact sentiments, almost word for word. Not to Farid, but in an e-mail to Liz. I told her what had happened that day. I told her I felt like I had abandoned a child for reasons that made no sense to me; that I had not pushed harder because I trusted Gyan. But what if I was wrong? What if Gyan was protecting somebody and Kumar disappeared again? The boy would spend his childhood in slavery, and it would be my fault, because I did not stand up to Gyan.
I waited a long hour until Liz wrote back; it was early morning in Washington, D.C. “First of all, I am so sorry—this must be incredibly difficult,” she wrote. “Do you really think Gyan is corrupt? Or are you just afraid that he is? Has he done anything so far that has made you doubt him? It sounds like he has been pretty faithful to everything he promised he would do for the children and for you.”
I thought about that. “I guess I am afraid he is corrupt. And no, he’s never done anything to make me doubt him,” I wrote.
“I think you’re doing a great thing, Conor,” Liz wrote back. “I think in this case, you need to have faith, and put your trust in somebody else to get the job done. I know that’s not really useful advice, since from what you said it doesn’t sound like you have a lot of good options. But it sounds like Gyan is an honest guy, and if anybody can help Kumar, it’s him. You did the right thing.”
As soon as I read that, I realized that was what I needed—somebody to tell me I had done the right thing, even if I didn’t really have much of a choice. It wasn’t easy for me to be working alone. I often wondered if I was doing a thing right, or if I was making the right decision. In this case, I had no idea if Kumar would be okay, or if someone more experienced would have done things differently. But Liz was right: Gyan had never let me down. I wrote to Farid to tell him what had happened. I told him my concerns and said I had done what I had done because Gyan had always come through for us.
Farid wrote back immediately, incredibly frustrated. I knew what he felt, but this was the right decision. I was glad he was not in the room with me; he would have seen doubt all over my face. Our conversation ended with his telling me he was confident that if I truly believed it to be right, then yes, my decision was the right call. He trusted me and asked me to keep him updated.
A week passed. I was in a perpetually foul mood. I had called Gyan every day and received the same answer every day; he told me I had to trust him. He offered no more information. It was maddening. I also wrote to Liz every day. I leaned on her for reassurance that I was doing the right thing. Any moment she would surely write back “I don’t know, Conor—you’re there, I’m not. I have no idea what you should do.”
But she never did. She encouraged me, day after day, asking if there had been any progress, telling me that it would turn out okay. Liz’s e-mails were like kindling, sparks of inspiration in a dark week.
Eight more days passed. With no news of Kumar, I wrote to Farid less. I hadn’t called Gyan in four days.
There were few places to be alone in the children’s home. On an early Sunday morning, I was almost alone on the roof. Raju was several feet away, pretending I wasn’t there but sneaking glances at me, silently willing me to come play with him. The awkward silence was broken by footsteps pounding up the concrete stairs. Hari’s head appeared, and seeing me in the far corner, he walked quickly toward me. He was trying unsuccessfully to mask a look of dismay.
“Viva calling for you, Brother,” he said nervously. Hari knew what that meant. Calls from Viva were almost universally bad news. I thanked him and took my time getting to the phone. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take.
“Conor, it’s Viva, how are you?” The line was drenched in static.
“I’m fine—what is it, Viva?” I could barely hear her. I pressed my ear against the phone.
“Listen, Conor, Gyan just brought a very nice boy to us that he says is one of yours. I’m standing next to him right now—his name is Kumar. You know him?”
The air drained from my lungs as I slumped into a chair. “Yeah, I know him,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
I looked at my watch—there was no rush. I dashed off e-mails to Farid and Liz. Then I went upstairs to find Raju standing in the same spot, chin resting on the railing, staring out at the fields. I crept up behind him, snatched him up by the waist, tossed him over my shoulder, and carried him back downstairs. I laid him out, laughing, on the sofa in the living room. Then I deliberately turned my back on him and walked slowly away, knowing that at that very moment Raju was likely climbing up onto the back of the couch. At the top, he would yell the name of some professional wrestler—probably his current favorite, The Undertaker—at the moment he leaped, giving me just enough time to brace for—
“Undy-tekkeeeaaahhh!” I spun around in time to catch Raju belly flopping into my face.
Life was good again.
By mid-November 2006, I was spending most of my time in Kathmandu. Six of the seven children were at Umbrella, and I wanted to help them adjust to their new lives. The other reason I spent so much time in the capital was that I was looking for a house that would become NGN’s children’s home. I had continued to raise money from the United States. With six thousand dollars in our bank account, I was confident enough to put the down payment on the first four months’ rent, knowing we would have enough for rent, furnishings, and support of any children we managed to rescue, starting with the six. My goal was to
have the house when Farid arrived, which would be any day now. I was talking over my plan with Jacky and Viva over one of our usual afternoon teas.
“Jacky, did you tell Conor about the house?” Viva asked. I was in their living room, the warmest room in Nepal. They had a kerosene heater on at full blast and a thick wall-to-wall carpet to insulate the floor. We could have been at their home in Northern Ireland.
I looked at Jacky. “What house?”
“Yes, Conor—we have the perfect house for you. Truly, it is perfect. It is this yellow house next door to the other Umbrella houses, you know this one? It can hold maybe twenty-five children, no problem. And it has a well in the front patio—a deep well! You can have water for free, you do not have to pay this stupid truck to come give you water,” he said. He took a drag from his cigarette and held out his arms toward Viva. “Kathmandu! It’s madness! No water! Why there is no water here?”
“They’ve overbuilt in this part of the city, they have no capacity, Jacky. I’ve been dealing with this for years. Years. You’d better get used to it because I’m tellin’ ya right now, it ain’t gonna change in our lifetime. But enough of that, my love—tell him about the house, will ya?”
“Ah oui, la maison. C’est parfait, Conor. And it is available. I spoke to the man, he can give it for a very good price. Twelve thousands rupees per month, about 160 U.S. dollars. It is very good price, believe me.”
I didn’t know the house, so when I left Jacky and Viva’s, I went to find Jagrit. He knew the neighborhood like the back of his hand. I found him sitting outside with some of the older boys, just inside the gate of one of the Umbrella homes.
“Jagrit,” I said when I got close to him. “Come over here please, bai. I need your help.” (Bai means “younger brother” and was a common term we used for the kids.)
“Yes, Conor sir! I am at your service!” he called, and he turned to the others sitting next to him and spoke to them in a mock-dramatic voice and in English, clearly for my benefit. “I am sorry, I must go. I have important work to do. Sir needs me. Without my help, he say he may even die—”
“All right, Jagrit. . . .”
“You hear his voice? It is shaking! I think he is very afraid. I must go.”
When he came close enough, a big grin on his face, I got him in a headlock, which he quickly managed to escape from. We walked back out the front gate.
Jagrit knew which house Jacky meant, and I followed him. It was only four houses away, down a small path. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was our house. It had a field right outside and a small front patio, as well as a front gate with a lock. Best of all, it was right in the neighborhood, next to the other Umbrella homes, only a couple of minutes from the small primary school and Jacky and Viva’s house. I negotiated a deal with the owner later that afternoon, using Jagrit as translator. We shook on it, and it was done. Next Generation Nepal officially had a children’s home.
I sent Farid a photo of the house. He loved it. Liz wanted to see the photo as well, so I e-mailed it to her, too. Since I was already attaching that photo, I included other photos for her as well, of Little Princes, of the six children playing together, of Kumar smiling for the first time, the day Gyan had brought him to Umbrella. In return, Liz e-mailed me a photo, the first she had ever sent. The photo showed Liz hugging a girl to whom she had become attached, a Zambian orphan of about ten years old named Basinati. I knew of the girl; Liz had described her in detail to me. In the picture, Basinati wore a simple yellow dress and a bright smile.
But all I could think about in that photo was Liz. She was gorgeous.
I was so taken aback that I wrote to ask her, as casually as I could, “Oh, is that you in the photo?”
“Yeah, Conor, that’s me, the short one in the yellow dress. No idea who the weird blond girl is hugging me,” she wrote back.
Okay, I had deserved that. But I couldn’t stop looking at the photo. This woman who had been my confidante, who had kept me going through difficult times and with whom I found myself building a real intimacy, was stunning. I put the photo on my desktop. If there had been a church nearby, I would have lit about four hundred candles.
Farid arrived in Nepal on November 21, cleaner than I’d ever seen him. That would change soon, I thought, noticing my own dust-infused fleece and worn-out trekking pants. With Farid back in Godawari, it was like a family reunion. The children were ecstatic, and I wasn’t far behind them. It never felt quite right going through all this without him.
I waited for his arrival to break the news to the children: I was moving out of Godawari, out of Little Princes. If we were going to build a new home for trafficked children in Kathmandu, then I needed to be in Kathmandu.
The children protested. Farid and I told them about the seven children and why it was important to open this new home. We explained that they were fortunate to be in a safe environment at Little Princes. They had people looking out for them, a good home, and the chance to go to school. Many other children, children just like them, were less fortunate. They needed help, and we were going to try to help them. Besides, we said, they were getting old. They hardly needed us anymore. The bigger boys were already doing a great job taking care of the younger children, just how it would be if they were back in their own villages. The older boys smiled and looked at one another, proud of their responsibility.
Farid saved the good news for last: he would be staying in Godawari for at least the next week. The children cheered. They adored Farid and had asked about him constantly when he was still in France. He was both a father and an older brother to them.
As it was a sunny November afternoon and a school holiday, Farid and I sent the children outside. The two of us sat drinking tea as the kids kicked around a half-inflated soccer ball and threw an old Frisbee that, when flung, would go either straight into the dirt, or fly in a wild arc, often landing several hundred feet from the intended target. While we watched this with amusement, Rohan, one of the youngest boys, ran up to us.
“Brother, I take Jablo, okay?”
I looked at Farid, and back at Rohan.
“You take what?”
“Jablo, Brother! Jablo!”
“I don’t think that’s a word, Rohan.”
He marched past us and into the house then the office, where I could see him digging through the box of secondhand toys. He came back out with two sticks attached by a small rope, and a yellow plastic thing that looked like a double-ended goblet or oversized hourglass.
“Jablo, Brother!” said Rohan, holding it up. “I take, okay?”
I had seen one before, but only at a Phish concert during college, where shaggy-haired young people stood around in clouds of marijuana smoke. I certainly didn’t have the faintest clue how to use it. As it turned out, neither did Rohan. He knew that the two sticks were to be used to toss the goblet up in the air. He poked at the goblet with the sticks with all the finesse of Edward Scissorhands trying to lift a teacup. No luck. Then Nishal, who had just hurled the Frisbee into a tree, saw and came running over. He grabbed the sticks from Rohan and took center stage in front of Farid and me.
“I do, Brother! Watch!”
Nishal apparently knew how this thing worked. He rolled the yellow goblet thing back and forth until it caught the rope between the sticks, at which point he kind of slid it back and forth moving his arms, and finally tossed it up. The goblet went high in the air and sliced right through the web of this bright green spider the size of a cat, sending the eight-legged beast careening down toward us, which nobody saw except Farid and me. We shrieked and tripped over each other scrambling to get out of the way. Everyone stopped what they were doing. Nishal quietly returned the Jablo to the box, where it stayed for several months.
I would later learn that the children did not want to take it out because of us; they had decided that, for some reason they would never fully understand, foreigners were terrified o
f Jablo.
Setting up the Next Generation Nepal children’s home would take time. There was no such thing as a one-stop shop in Kathmandu, an Ikea-type warehouse where you could order everything you needed. Farid and I, together with a Nepali friend of ours, drove through the alleys of Kathmandu collecting everything we needed. The wall-to-wall carpeting we bought was the only furnishing not made by hand. Thirty bunk beds? We visited a metal smith and negotiated a price. Mattresses? We had our choice of mattress stuffing: synthetic materials at the high end, straw-stuffed sheets at the low end, the same material we used in Little Princes. We chose the middle route: mattresses stuffed with coconut hair. It was not exactly comfortable, but it was a hell of a lot more comfortable than those hay-stuffed things we had in Godawari. Where they got the coconut hair was a mystery; I didn’t recall seeing even a single coconut in the country. Free-standing shelves were made by the bamboo maker. Wooden shelving was made by the local carpenter, who, per Nepalese tradition, had shaved his head and wore only white for exactly one year to mourn the passing of his father. Purchasing sheets meant negotiating a price on meters of fabric, while buying blankets required haggling over the weight and quality of the cotton inside.
I foolishly expected the blankets to be delivered to our house in normal, blanket form. Instead, a man showed up at our house the next day, not with a blanket, but with some fabric and a bag of cotton. I thought back to the conversation with the shop owner, wondering whether there had been an additional fee for actually assembling the blankets. As it turned out, the common practice was to make the blanket right on your front porch. The blanket-maker dumped the cotton into a heap about the size of an armchair. Then he took a long, thin stick and beat the cotton until it was the proper . . . I don’t know, fluffiness, maybe? He stuffed it all into the sheets that he had sewn together and voilà. A blanket was born.
Even more interesting, I learned, was what happens if, say, a year down the road, you find that the blanket has lost its fluffy factor. You simply wait for another man, who every few days patrols the neighborhood. You don’t see him coming, but you hear him—he plucks an object slung over his shoulder, something that looks like a one-stringed harp. You can hear him coming from far away. Flag him down, pay him a small fee, and he takes apart your blanket, dumps the cotton back out, and uses this harp thing to twang at the cotton until its fluff factor is back up to fluffy standards. This began an e-mail debate with Liz about how this actually worked.
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