Little Princes (31 page)

But I could see Liz’s face. Her blond hair picked up the glow of the candlelight, which fell on her cheeks and her eyes, and her neck disappeared into the shadows. The rest of her was almost invisible, as the children were piled up on both of us as if we were couch cushions. We lay there, crushed by the children’s body mass in a way that felt so normal in Nepal; and I had the good sense to take note that, in that exact moment, with no money, no clean clothes, no electricity, no good food—just Liz and twenty-six children—I was as happy as I had ever been in my life.

Liz was able to relate to the girls in a way that I was never able to. They adored her. She was able to get them talking and interacting in ways that Farid and I were not. Besides being a rather lovely quality in a person, it was critical in helping see the children through the trauma they had so recently experienced.

No child in the house needed this attention more than little Leena. While the other children slowly cracked through their shells, Leena kept to herself. In the week that I had been watching her, she had never smiled, never spoken, never laughed, and never cried. Not once. She moved around only to follow her older sister, Kamala. Leena always did as she was asked, whether it was going to bed or doing her homework or helping with small chores around the house, but she never played with the other children.

I had never seen anything like it, but then I had never been around such severely traumatized young children. Farid and I spent many days discussing how to best care for her. Neither of us were psychologists; we had no idea what the “proper” treatment was. So we did what we always did—we came to the best decision we could agree upon and hoped for the best. In this case, all we could really do was continue to show her as much love and attention as possible, and hope that she found a way to surface out of her paralysis. Liz was wonderful with her. She spoke to her and held her, even as the little girl sat stone-faced. I loved watching Liz with Leena, watching her pour out love without expectation.

O
ver the course of the week, Liz and I had long conversations and, unsurprisingly, found that we really liked each other. I’d had long-distance relationships before, living a couple hours away from a girlfriend. These relationships endured the distance because we had built up a strong enough bond that we thought it could stand up to the test of not seeing each other except on weekends, of speaking on the phone. I had spent a little over a week with Liz. We had only just admitted our feelings for each other. Now she would go back to DC and say . . . what, exactly? That her boyfriend— this guy with no money to his name whose voice she had just heard for the first time a week ago—lived next to a children’s home in Nepal, nine thousand miles and eleven time zones away, with no immediate plans to return to the United States?

The day after she left, I wrote an e-mail to Charlie, my college buddy back in the States. I told him this: “I’m not saying I proposed to this girl I just met. But I am saying that I understand now why people get married: it’s because they meet Liz Flanagan.” Charlie’s response was simply one complete line of question marks and exclamation points.

Liz and I wrote back and forth probably a dozen e-mails per day. When the fatter monkeys weren’t bringing down my Internet cable, we also spoke on the phone. (Good old Skype!) Because of the radical time difference, I would call her at exactly 7:30
A.M.
her time each day; that call would serve as her alarm clock. We would talk again at her lunch break, when I was going to sleep. We often talked for up to three hours a day. That was our relationship.

Two weeks after Liz left, I went to an English-language bookstore in Thamel and bought a Bible. As I took the rupees from my wallet to pay for it, I told myself it was so I would get to know Liz better, maybe even impress her with some knowledge of her religion.

But as I took it home, I knew it was more than that for me. Just as living in this extreme environment had drawn Farid to Buddhism, I was being drawn to Christianity. I decided not to tell Liz that I’d bought it; contrary to my initial instincts, it was suddenly very important that she
not
think I had done this for her. Instead, I spoke to Farid about it the next day, after staying up late reading the night before.

“I think it is a very good thing that you bought a Bible, Conor,” Farid said, after we had put the Dhaulagiri children to bed and gone downstairs to make tea. “I cannot say why. But I think I know you quite well, and I can only say this makes sense to me, that you did this.”

I was happy to hear Farid say that. He was unlike any person I’d ever met. Everything he said mirrored his beliefs perfectly, and he never seemed to worry how this would sound to others. He was interested in the truth. Finding that truth was the thing that had first brought him to Buddhism, as he explained to me later that evening.

“I never understood why there was so much suffering, Conor,” he said. “Even in France, I never understood. Buddhists recognize it. They see life as purposeful. Everyone is trying to escape this . . . I think the word is cycle, yes? . . . this cycle of suffering and rebirth, to achieve this Nirvana, they call it. I never had any religion, I never thought about it. Then when I came to Nepal, I spent more time with the children and I saw so much suffering. The question reawakened in my mind. Why do we suffer? I began to learn about Buddhism, and I knew—for me—it was right. This answer to my question had always existed, but somebody had just lit a candle and showed me that answer.” He paused. “Does that make sense? I am not sure how to explain it so well in English, maybe.”

“You explained it perfectly.”

“It was the same for you? With Christianity?”

“Yes, partially,” I said. “Except for me, I already knew about Christianity. I went to church when I was little, the age of Raju and Rohan and the others. I knew there was something about it, that God was real, that this was the truth, but nobody else around me seemed to think it was the truth. Nobody I knew was a Christian, and I let that influence me for my entire life, until I came to Nepal. In Godawari, with the Little Princes, I found myself praying sometimes—did I tell you that?”

“You told me, yes.”

“And, to me, it felt right, it felt comforting. Then I met Liz, and she’s a Christian, and I thought, you know, this is a very good opportunity to rediscover God. Because I can learn more about Liz at the same time,” I said. I couldn’t help smiling at that. “That must sound strange, no? That the catalyst—the thing that turned me back toward Christianity—was a woman?”

Farid laughed. “Conor, I know you, and I believe that God must have sent Liz to you. He knew you would pay attention if she came to visit, no? I don’t think He is offended.”

“Exactly! You’re joking, but that is what I thought, too!” I said.

“I’m not joking, truly,” Farid said, still smiling. “As I said, Conor—when you bought that Bible, I knew you were doing the right thing for you. We both saw that light, I think. We just saw different things in the light.”

I liked that idea. I also liked that both of us were completely convinced that what we had seen was the Truth, and we could speak about it so openly with each other. Under this one roof, we had a Buddhist, a Christian, and two dozen little Hindus. And we couldn’t be happier.

O
n January 30 I was sitting with Leena, watching the little boys play soccer. The days were warm enough, as long as you stayed in the sun. If you ran around in a crazed pack chasing a ball, all the warmer. There is nothing quite like watching young kids play soccer. It must be the same around the world—a scrum forms around the ball, it pops out, hammered off somebody’s toe with a grunt, and the scrum swivels their collective heads around like a family of periscopes, spot the ball, and fly toward it, en masse, as if by gravitational pull.

I could not tell if Leena was finding the same enjoyment. As usual, she had not even acknowledged me when I walked into the house, nor had she responded when I picked her up and carried her outside to watch the match with me on my lap. I felt like a child with a fancy doll. She was at least watching the game, though. Any stimulation had to be a good thing, I thought. I was about to lift her onto my shoulders when my cell phone rang. It was Jacky.

“Hey, Jacky—I’m just next door at Dhaulagiri, watching the kids play socc—”

“Conor, I need you. Right now,” he said, cutting me off. He told me to meet him at Kimdol chock, an intersection of quiet streets next to us that circled Swayambhu.

It was unlike Jacky to be so abrupt and insistent. I left Leena with her big sister and ran the five minutes to the intersection. Jacky was impossible to miss, with his straggly, mildly dreadlocked graying hair among the shorter Nepalis and Tibetan monks. He saw me coming and got into the backseat of a waiting taxi. I jumped in on the other side, and the driver, already given directions, took off toward the center of Kathmandu.

“Where are we going?” I panted.

“Gyan just called—he has Bishnu,” Jacky said. “He says we must hurry.”

I could hardly believe it.

Gyan’s office at the Child Welfare Board was characteristically mobbed. He sat at his desk with an assistant leaning over his shoulder, pointing out the relevant place on a document that would help Gyan make a decision that would likely change the future of the family standing in front of him. I did not envy his job. I envied it even less because he was paid almost nothing; this was a civil service he was giving his country, a duty performed by his father before him, something expected of a man of his talents. He bore a heavy responsibility.

We waited inside the office for a few moments before Gyan noticed us. He made eye contact with me and motioned to the far corner. There, through the forest of distraught mothers and crying children, was a barrel-chested man standing in front of a chair, as if refusing to sit on principle. He had a tidy haircut and wore casual western clothes, a sign of wealth. I ducked my head to get a better look. In front of him, sitting at his feet, Indian style, was a boy of six, with sharp Tibetan features and smooth bronzed skin, gazing at the floor.

It was Bishnu.

Less than five minutes later Gyan managed to make his way over to us and pulled us into the hallway. Speaking quickly, he related the situation: Bishnu had been working for the last ten months as a domestic slave. He was sold by Golkka to a local hotel, where he worked twelve hours a day washing dishes. There, he was discovered by a bank manager who was a client of the hotel, a relatively wealthy and powerful man by Nepalese standards, who bought the boy from the hotel for the equivalent of perhaps eighty dollars. He took him to work in his own home. The story was similar in many ways to what had happened to Kumar. Gyan was vague when I asked him how he had persuaded the man to come in, and I had learned not to press him on such issues. I had to force myself to remain calm at those moments, not demand that the man be arrested for enslaving this young boy. The important thing now was getting the boy into Dhaulagiri House, where we knew he would be safe.

“Okay, we can bring Bishnu back in a taxi,” I said. “Jacky, can you wait here while I get one?”

“Wait—there may be a small problem, Conor sir,” said Gyan, putting a hand on my elbow. “The bank manager—the man in the corner, standing up—he does not want to give the boy up.”

I stared at Gyan, incredulous. “He doesn’t want to give him up? Surely that’s a nonissue, Gyan? You can compel him, can’t you? He’s already here, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, I can try to compel him. But I cannot arrest him right now; I do not have the correct papers. If I try and make force with him, he may leave this office with Bishnu now and disappear. He has already said Bishnu is better with him. It is best if we can persuade him to give the boy up by his free will,” he said.

Gyan watched my reaction. We had been through this before. Either I had faith in him or I didn’t. Gyan had done very well to get the man here in the first place. I imagined he had used some thinly veiled threats about police visiting the bank manager at his home, a public embarrassment that the man was probably eager to avoid. Maybe Gyan didn’t have the right papers to arrest the man or even compel him to release Bishnu, but he sure knew how to bluff. Whether he could convince the man to actually give Bishnu up to us was another story. We were about to find out just how far Gyan could push his bluff.

“Okay, Gyan—whatever you think is best,” I sighed.

He stepped back into his office, indicating that we should stay where we were. “I will call the man here—we will leave Bishnu inside.”

He returned a minute later with the bank manager. The man stood two inches shorter than me but a solid foot wider at the shoulders, as if he wore an ox yoke under his jacket. He did not smile when he was introduced to us, and ignored our greeting. Instead he spoke quickly to Gyan in what was clearly some kind of diatribe about western intervention in the case. Gyan declined to translate for us, opting to speak softly to the man. I started to interrupt, but Gyan, not even looking at me, lifted his hand just slightly toward me—the sign to keep my mouth shut. I realized that anything I said at this moment was only going to enrage this man. He already looked ready to pop. All we wanted was the boy, and Gyan was working on getting him for us.

This dialogue went on for ten minutes. The families inside, forced to wait, grew restless. The bank manager swayed between relative calm and severe agitation. Jacky and I leaned in, trying to glean a clue as to where the conversation was going. Gyan alone remained utterly calm, speaking in a low voice, his hand on the man’s shoulder.

Finally, after an unusually long monologue by Gyan, the man hesitated, then gave a single reluctant nod and grunt. He looked Jacky and me up and down. He had softened from his original position, that was clear. He nodded once more as Gyan continued to speak, then cut Gyan off with a single word. The manager walked back inside, helped Bishnu to his feet, and walked back out to the hall where we were waiting.

Gyan turned back to us. “He will let the boy go into your care. But he wants to see the conditions where Bishnu will live. You do not have to show him inside, just the outside of the house, so he knows you have other children and are committed to Nepal, that you are not simply taking Bishnu back to your country. Would this be acceptable?”