by Robert Baer
Munir doesn’t answer and gets up to talk to an assistant who is trying to print something on a printer that looks like an old mimeograph machine. He’s in a rush to beat the next rolling blackout. You can set your watch by them, three hours on and one hour off.
Munir comes back and sits down behind his desk, then looks from Bob to me. “This judge is very cautious. He’s denied the last three cases to foreigners.”
“But you said—” Bob starts.
“He has real concerns about child trafficking.”
“Do we look like child traffickers?”
“You must bring a copy of your book to the hearing,” he says, “to establish your bona fides.”
Bob and I look at each other, thinking the same thing: giving the judge a copy of Bob’s memoir, dragging the CIA into a court system with a reputation for Islamic conservatism, can’t be a good idea. Can’t we just say that we’re writers?
“Please bring whatever you can,” Munir says.
Neither of us feels we can press it. We’re hostages in a foreign legal system, and the smartest thing to do is to follow the advice of our lawyer. Anyhow, as we agreed from the beginning, the adoption is going to be done completely aboveboard, even if it means we have to expose our past.
“Did I tell you the judge is Taliban?” Munir asks.
“There is no—” Bob starts to say, and then stops.
“He went to school in Saudi Arabia. But he’s a good man.”
We follow Munir across a dusty parking lot, then upstairs and into an office to be fingerprinted. There’s a white sheet on the wall with a strange, flowing purple design covering it. I take a closer look: it’s smears from where people have wiped the ink off their fingers. Munir seems to know everyone, clerks and lawyers alike. They all clearly respect and like him.
Afterward we go to Saeed’s, Islamabad’s best-known bookstore, and buy a copy of Bob’s memoir, See No Evil. Bob also finds a bootlegged copy of Syriana, the movie made from the memoir.
It’s already hot by ten. Rafiq eases the car into the dirt parking lot and squeezes into a place next to two banged-up taxis. Bob and I are in the back with the ayah, me holding Reela on my lap. Rafiq tells us to keep the baby in the air-conditioning. He leaves the car running, and heads off to find out when our case will be called.
He’s back in five minutes, knocking on the car window to tell us it could be a while. He passes us two bottles of chilled water. Reela’s fallen asleep. I smile at her, all bathed and dressed up for her big day.
By eleven the parking lot is packed with people milling around, vendors cooking in cut-down fifty-gallon drums, shopkeepers on the raised causeway stacking their wares in front of their stores, men squatting on their heels sipping tea and watching. Most look poor, their salwar kameezes bleached so often they’ve turned blue. The lawyers in front of the courthouse are talking animatedly on their cell phones.
I see Munir poke his head out of the colonnaded porch of the courthouse. He’s in a dark suit, a white shirt, and a narrow tie. He waves at us and smiles, and then disappears back into the darkness of the court.
When Rafiq comes back to the car, he’s with Reela’s father, Adham. I recognize him instantly from the photo attached to the e-mail Munir’s office first sent when we were still in Berkeley. He’s a slight man with a tan, weathered face, a black, well-trimmed mustache, and a hawkish nose. The picture was taken on the day he gave her up to the parish. He and Reela both stare at the camera with the same serious expression.
I get out of the car with Reela, and Adham walks shyly up to me. He is wearing a soiled white salwar kameez and sandals. He smiles warmly and offers me his hand. I want to thank him. He holds out his arms to Reela, and I hand her to him. She looks at him quizzically and reaches up to touch his mustache. But I can’t tell if she recognizes him.
“You can ask him anything you want,” Rafiq says.
But I have no idea what to ask a father who’s come here to sign papers forever giving up his child. Finally I ask, “Was her mother small?” I’m immediately embarrassed at how silly the question must sound. When Rafiq translates into Urdu, Adham nods. Then he asks something, and Rafiq laughs. “He doesn’t know where you are from, so I just told him America.”
A little later, after Adham is gone, I ask Rafiq how he felt about giving Reela up for adoption.
“He cried a little, but he knew it was best for her. He can’t feed her.”
Just then, his phone rings. “The judge is ready.”
The small courtroom is hot, packed, everyone shouting at once. Lawyers wave papers in the air, jostling to get to the clerk. The ceiling fans only stir up the stale air. A man gets up to let me sit down. I watch as three men in heavy shackles are led in by the anti-terrorism police. After ten minutes of this, Munir finally pokes his head out of an office and motions for us to come in.
The judge, sitting behind an old steel desk, doesn’t look up at us. He’s a slight man, clean-shaven, maybe in his early thirties. He’s in a pastel blue salwar kameez. A female clerk in a headscarf stands behind him, silently waiting for him to read through a document. Another lawyer stands on his left, whispering to the judge. Munir motions us to two plain wooden chairs along the wall. I’m just happy Reela isn’t crying, and soon falls back asleep.
Munir and the judge talk briefly in Urdu, and then Munir turns to Bob. “The judge would like proof of who you say you are.”
Bob pushes across the table the DVD and his book. They suddenly look very small and unimportant, as if Bob has offered the judge a piece of chewing gum.
“What is this?” he asks in English, looking at Munir.
“There is no anxiety, Your Honor,” Munir says. “Mr. Robert wrote this book, and it has no value.”
The judge picks up the DVD and then the book, turning them to look at both sides.
“Mr. Bob and his wife were in the CIA,” Munir offers helpfully.
The judge doesn’t say anything and studies Bob’s book. He looks at Munir and asks if he’d mind translating a joke. Munir does after each sentence, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t understand a thing other than it is something to do with a duck crossing the road and meeting an old friend in the middle. I only know when we’ve come to the punch line because Munir laughs, holding his sides. Bob and I decide to laugh too.
Munir exchanges a few more words with the judge, and then stands up to leave. We do too, nodding good-bye to the judge.
I’m just getting to my feet when I feel something warm and moist spreading over my whole lap. The sensation is so surprising and unfamiliar that there’s a moment of total confusion. I look down to see my salwar kameez has a huge wet spot on it, and I finally grasp that Reela has just peed all over me. Do diapers leak like this? There’s no time to think about that, and I cover myself with my scarf.
Outside in front of the court, Munir shakes Bob’s hand. “Congratulations on becoming parents,” he says. “The judge has approved your guardianship. It’s just a matter of issuing an order.”
So it’s all over? I think. As easy as that? I can’t believe I was so nervous about this all of these months.
As we drive away, everyone’s smiling. The ayah changes Reela in her lap, rolls down the window, and throws the diaper out into the street.
That night we celebrate at a little restaurant on Nazim-ud-din Road. At our invitation, Reela’s father and the pastor who cared for her join us. We sit down to large shared plates of dal, chicken kabobs, palak paneer, and rice. I start out holding Reela on my lap, but then Adham comes around the table and sits next to me. He motions that he’ll hold her so that I can eat. He bounces her on his lap and then says something to Rafiq.
“He says that you will not have any trouble with this little girl,” Rafiq says. “He also says that because she is a girl, she would grow up and leave him to live with another family anyway.”
Out by the car, I tell the pastor to tell Reela’s father that we’ll bring her back to visit with her family som
eday. He bows and makes a sign of praying with his hands.
Adham says something to the pastor. “He wants a picture of you both with her,” the pastor says, “to keep in his house.” Rafiq takes a few pictures, and then we shake hands and they drive away.
Back at the bungalow, I hold Reela and send e-mails to my father and friends telling them the good news. She’s ours, and now it’s only a matter of waiting a week for the judge to finish the written orders. We’re finally a family.
I should be joyous, and I am, but something continues to gnaw at me. It’s just, well, it’s all been so easy. Years of working for the CIA has taught me to be suspicious of easy.
FORTY-SIX
To find Osama bin Laden, try Peshawar’s smugglers’ bazaar on the road to the Khyber Pass. Walk past the small mountains of almonds and lemongrass and green tea. Turn at the stacks of duty-free TVs and cheap cosmetics. Stop at the stalls with the topless women. Down a cramped alley, bearded shopkeepers squeezed behind tiny counters offer a fine selection of fanciful sex products. “Delay sprays” carry the promise of lingering pleasure. For the discerning lover there is Lovely Curves, a product that claims to be a “bust-developing cream.” If all else fails, there is plenty of knock-off Viagra at knock-down prices. Worry not about the quality: “Made is Germany” [sic] reads the label.
—The Guardian, September 11, 2006
Peshawar, Pakistan: BOB
Like any good family with time on its hands, we take a vacation—to Peshawar, the gateway to the Khyber Pass and Pakistan’s tribal area. We’re thinking about giving Reela an even harder name to live up to, Khyber, and we figure she should at least see the place.
The newspapers are reporting that the Taliban are at Peshawar’s edge. A couple of people warn us before we leave that they could seize Peshawar anytime they want, it’s just that they don’t want to. But the drive to Peshawar seems to belie all the dark talk. Bypassing the Grand Trunk Road, we take the M-1, a modern four-lane divided highway. There’s little traffic, and no one speeds because every thirty miles or so there’s a police car on the side of the road with a radar gun.
Things get a little ragged when we get off the M-1 at Peshawar, but the Pearl Continental, the only Western-style hotel in the city, is the picture of calm. A uniformed guard at the front gate salutes us smartly as we drive through. Porters run out to help us unload, then take us to the top floor, where an efficient young lady checks us in. A crib is already in the room, and there is a plate of fresh fruit and candies on the credenza. On the wall is a flat-screen TV. That night we eat at the open-air, rooftop restaurant. We keep looking for tracers in the sky, signs of fighting, but it’s just a starry, quiet night.
In the morning we come down and I ask for the manager. He’s bound to know something about the situation. He comes out of an office and invites me in.
“Is it safe here?” I ask, sitting down in a chair across from him.
He looks out the door at Dayna, who rocks Reela in her arms, and then back at me. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Peshawar’s safe?”
“The lobby.”
I’m not going to let him off that easily. “We were thinking about going to Dera Ismail Khan,” I say in the most innocent American voice I can summon. I know perfectly well that Dera Ismail Khan is in the hands of the Taliban and off-limits to us. I’m with family, not serving my old masters in Langley, but why stop trying to elicit information?
“I used to go there a lot in the eighties,” I add. “Could the hotel arrange a driver and a car?”
“No,” the manager says, “we won’t, and you can’t go there.”
As he stands up to show me out, it’s clear that that’s all I’m going to get. Before I leave, though, he agrees to find us a driver to tour Peshawar. But he warns us not to get out of the car.
Wander only a few blocks into old Peshawar, and you step back into a dusty, medieval world. Houses centuries old lean into each other for support, their fronts decked with latticed balconies. There are spice and vegetable carts everywhere, and torsos of cows and sheep hang in butcher-shop windows, with people crowding around, bargaining for a good price. We never see another foreigner, which is something considering that not too long ago Peshawar was a tourist destination for young Westerners.
After seeing old Peshawar, I ask the driver if he knows where Osama bin Ladin’s house is, the one where he lived in the eighties during the Afghan war. I tell him I think it’s in University Town.
“I don’t know what that is,” he says, looking genuinely confused.
“University Town or bin Ladin?”
“I know University Town.”
I make him stop by Peshawar’s museum, a big, cavernous, dusty Victorian place so dark you can’t see the artifacts in their cases. It’s closed for the day, but the door is wide open. I wander around until I find the curator, who’s looking through a microscope at what looks like an eggshell. I ask him where bin Ladin’s house is.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“But you know who I’m talking about?”
“Of course I do. But you say he lived here in Peshawar?”
I promise to come back and visit the museum when it’s open.
As our driver pulls away from the museum, I find myself wondering if the curator knows where bin Ladin lived and doesn’t want to tell me, or if he really doesn’t know. Either way, I think I’m starting to understand better how this man who changed history disappeared like a diamond in an inkwell.
FORTY-SEVEN
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
—Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Islamabad, Pakistan: DAYNA
Bob is on the phone talking to Rafiq, and I can tell something is wrong. Bob’s tone is flat; he’s not joking. He keeps asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure?” I haven’t seen him this upset in a long time.
Bob gets off the phone and confirms my worst fear: the judge has turned down guardianship. I want to cry, but I don’t want Reela to see me upset. I lie on the ground with her, look into her little dark eyes, and wonder what will become of all of us.
Bob says quietly that we’ll appeal to a higher court, adding that Munir’s already preparing the paperwork. The bright spot is that the denial is only oral. There’s a possibility the judge will reconsider.
Everything seemed so clear this morning. We’d made our reservations to leave. I’d e-mailed friends. And now we’re prisoners of a legal system I don’t understand. I could kick myself. It was stupid to do this on our own, without an international adoption agency. I turn my face away from Reela and cry quietly, for both of us.
The cold truth is that there are no Christian orphanages in Pakistan for her to go to. Her father cannot take her back. I have no idea what the state would do with her. Do we live here forever with her?
The next morning Bob starts making calls as if he were a CIA operative newly arrived in Pakistan, trying to figure out who’s in charge. It’s his way of coping.
His first call is to the ABC fixer, a contact he’s arranged through our friends at ABC News in New York. The fixer doesn’t know the judge and can’t help with the court system, but his cousin is able to verify that her birth certificate is authentic. In a country awash in forged documents, it’s something.
The next appointment is with Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence. Gul was a driving force in the Afghan war, overseeing the arming and training of the Mujahidin. He tells Bob he’d be happy to help if there were a way, but Pakistan’s judiciary is notoriously independent. It would take the intervention of the head of ISI to move the courts.
Bob finally goes to see another notorious figure—Colonel Imam, onetime ISI liaison with the Taliban. Nothing comes of that either, other than Bob’s getting the man’s take on the current war in Afghanistan.
It’s fascinating, watching Bob rake the ashes of old history, but I think we both know this is action for action’s sake. No one is go
ing to intervene on our behalf. So much for a fat Rolodex. And to think this is Pakistan, a place where one assumes things like this can be fixed.
Munir meets us the next evening in front of his office. We stand in the parking lot because of the blackout. The only light is from kerosene lanterns hanging in the storefronts. While Bob talks to Munir, Rafiq tries to reassure me that Munir will win on appeal. Reela’s asleep in my arms. I keep asking what will happen to her if they say no, the same question I’ve asked over and over during the last two days. Rafiq says they’ll take care of her. But I know that’s impossible.
Finally, Munir walks over to me and says, “I’m sorry. It seems the judge won’t reconsider.”
Munir explains that the judge turned down guardianship because we don’t have permanent residence in Islamabad, and he won’t agree to hand over custody of a child to someone not living in his jurisdiction. “Legally it makes no sense,” Munir says. “If that were the law, no one could adopt from Pakistan.”
Munir offers his speculation that the judge is afraid to be caught up in a child-trafficking case and wants someone else to make the decision on guardianship. There’s no choice now but go to the appeals court, he says. A different judge.
I’m all cried out, and just listen to him. On the one hand, I’m relieved to hear that we were turned down for guardianship for a reason having no basis in law. But I also know that, legal or not, it’s not surprising that a Taliban judge would refuse to give custody of a Pakistani child to two Americans who once worked for the CIA.
“We had no choice but to go before a judge from the Taliban,” Munir says, reading my mind. “I’m sorry.”
I’m filled with second-guessing. It now seems like such a stupid mistake to have given the judge Bob’s book and the DVD. But there’s no point in telling Munir that. I ask him instead whether he thinks the appeal will work.
“I cannot know, madam. But I’ll try my absolute best.” Munir insists that he argue the appeal for free.