Little Princes (32 page)

I wondered why this man was so intent on keeping the boy. Surely Bishnu was just a servant? It gave me pause as to whether we were doing the right thing. A year ago, if I was in this position I may have decided the man could be trusted. He seemed to genuinely care what happened to the boy. I had to allow for the fact that I might have been making a mistake. Maybe Bishnu really was safe with this man. Maybe this was the boy’s one chance to have a foster home.

I couldn’t risk it. By then, I had seen too much. I had seen instances of Nepali men and women talking with pride of the poor boy or girl they had taken into their home, only to discover that yes, the child was being cared for and going to school, but was also being treated as an outsider to the family, as little more than a servant, working all hours of the day without pay, cooking and cleaning for the family. Was that wrong? Were they better off living as a servant, with the blessing of their mother or father who had given them away? Was it better to get an education than to live with one’s own family? These were the questions I had asked myself in my time in Nepal. It was, as Gyan always said, a difficult country. There were no easy answers.

But I knew one thing for sure. I knew Bishnu would be safe with us. This man might be a loving father to the boy, providing him with a home. Or he may have just been upset that we were taking his piece of property. I was not going to take the chance. We would take him with us. If that meant fulfilling Gyan’s conditions, then that was what we’d do.

I looked at Jacky. “Does that sound okay to you? He can come and see the house?”

“Yes, if that is the condition, I think it is okay, no?”

“I think so too,” I said, and turned back to Gyan. “Fine, we will go together. And then he’ll leave the boy with us?”

“Yes, he will leave Bishnu with you. He knows he may get in trouble if he does not.”

I noticed that the man was listening. He understood English, at least a little of it.

I clasped Gyan’s hand. “Thank you, Gyan. You’ve done a great thing. Really.”

“You have also, Conor sir. And you, Jacky sir. Always you do great things for children.”

I looked down at Bishnu, who was looking up at me with surprised recognition. The man, looking from Bishnu to me, spoke to me in broken English. “He say he know you,” he said. “How you know?”

“We met one year ago.” I smiled at the boy, who was now smiling openly right back. “It is very nice to see him again.”

Then the four of us—the bank manager, Bishnu, Jacky, and I—walked out of the government offices together. As I was leaving, Gyan took my arm and pulled me back and spoke in a low voice.

“Conor sir—be careful. I have seen this very often. I think he will give up the boy. But whatever happens, do not trust this man. Bishnu is not his family. You understand?” he said.

“I understand. We’ll be okay,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.

Outside the offices, there was a line of the usual beat-up taxis waiting on the street. The bank manager indicated that he would follow us, with Bishnu, on his motorcycle. I nodded and opened the door of the taxi. I was getting into the backseat when I noticed another boy, about Bishnu’s age, standing behind me. There was nobody around him, no parent or any other children. It took me a moment to realize that he was waiting to climb into the taxi with us. He clutched a tiny battered suitcase the size of a large lunchbox.

I called back to the bank manager, waiting on his motorcycle for us to lead the way.

“Dai,
you know this boy? He is your son?”

The bank manager craned his neck to see the small figure standing next to the taxi. The boy had gone around to the other side and was now reaching up, tugging at the door handle.

“I never have seen him,” he said with a shrug.

I realized what had happened; it was hardly surprising, really. With so many children coming and going in Gyan’s office, the boy had followed the wrong people out. Many children were there with distant aunts and uncles and cousins who had suddenly discovered they had guardianship of an orphaned child they had never seen before. In the confusion, the boy had likely thought the bank manager was his relative. Meanwhile, somebody upstairs was panicking. I asked Jacky to wait for a minute while I took the boy back to make sure he found his family.

Gyan was back at his desk, and now there were two new families surrounding his desk, one mother making a scene while others grew impatient waiting their turn. Bored children wandered through the legs of the adults. Gyan saw me walk back in with the boy and hurried over to me.

“Gyan, I’m really sorry, this boy followed us out—his parents must be panicked, if they even noticed he was gone for the last few minutes,” I told him, looking around the office for some sign of recognition from a mother or father.

Gyan smiled sadly. “No, Conor sir—Tilak is also from Humla. We found him living alone. He has no parents. He must have followed you when he saw you taking the other boy. . . . You can take him, perhaps?”

It was not really a question. The boy had no home. In Nepal there were no safety nets, no system where all children were cared for in an orderly manner. If we had the means to care for a child without parents, then that is what we would do. The woman who had been yelling at Gyan a moment earlier was now tugging at his arm, seconds away from turning hysterical.

I reached down my hand. Tilak took it without hesitation, completely trusting. I led him through the decrepit government hallways and back outside to where the others were waiting. We walked up to Jacky, waiting in the front seat.

“Jacky, this is Tilak. Can he come with us?” I asked.

Jacky didn’t even blink. Umbrella had rescued almost two hundred children just like this.

“
Mais bien sûr!
” he cried enthusiastically to Tilak, who clearly spoke not a word of English, let alone Jacky’s heavily accented mix of French and English. “Come, Tilak! You are sitting with me.” He lifted the boy and his suitcase into the front seat of the taxi and onto his lap. The five of us drove back to Dhaulagiri and the other Umbrella houses.

Tilak had a new home.

Things did not go as smoothly with Bishnu. After showing the bank manager the homes, we went into the small Umbrella office, next door to Dhaulagiri. Just before we went inside, I asked Farid to bring over the remaining four children who had lived with Bishnu when we first met him. In two minutes flat, Kumar, Samir, Dirgha, and Amita were running across the field toward us. They stopped short in front of Bishnu. They said nothing but only stared at him, and he stared right back. The bank manager asked the children if they knew Bishnu. They all nodded. This seemed to make the bank manager more agitated, as if he were losing his grip on the boy.

Farid took Bishnu’s hand and led him out into the field where he could play with the other children. Jacky, the bank manager, and I went inside the office to speak.

Immediately I sensed a serious problem. The man would not sit down. He paced back and forth, shaking his head at every word that came out of our mouths, then pounding on the table and pointing at us and cursing in Nepali. Jacky shot me a look; he had seen this before. He confirmed in French what I was thinking, that there was going to be a big problem. The man stopped pacing and looked at me.

“I take boy my house. He is mine, not yours,” he said. He strode toward the door. I moved so my back was against the door.

“
Dai,
” I said, respectfully, my palms facing him. “I am sorry, but this is not an option. Bishnu will stay with us. We appreciate you taking care of him for this long, but he belongs here.” I slid one foot back until it was jammed against the door.

The bank manager’s jaw tightened. He pushed my hands aside and grabbed the doorknob and yanked at it. The door moved an inch before hitting my heel. His hand came off the doorknob and he stumbled backward. Furious now, he regained his balance and flung himself against me. I was ready for this. Using the door as leverage I threw myself back against him and pinned him hard against the wall. But I was no match for his strength and weight. He grabbed my throat and slammed me back against the door. I wouldn’t let go of him, and he was pushing me against his only exit. But I had no idea what I was going to do next. I couldn’t hold him forever, he was much stronger than me. If he got out—and he would get out—he could physically grab Bishnu. Once he had the boy it would be impossible to stop him without harming the child.

Jacky, who was behind him trying to pull him off me, suddenly let go and lunged for his cell phone. With one hand gripping the man’s arm, he scrolled frantically through numbers and pressed a number. He held his phone tight as the man wrenched around trying to get us off him. After several interminable seconds, I heard Jacky say, “Yes, hello? . . . Hello? . . . Yes, sir, this is Jacky Buk, with Umbrella Foundation, we met . . . yes, exactly . . . yes, I am well, sir, but we have a situation right now and I need your help very badly—a man is here who is trying to take one of our children,” he said, panting with exertion.

The bank manager seemed oblivious to this phone call, intent only on getting out the door. But I was mesmerized by it, wondering who on earth Jacky could possibly need to call right now.

“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” Jacky panted into the phone. “Yes, sir, he is here, we are speaking with him now . . . yes, sir, I am putting him on the phone now,” Jacky said. He released the bank manager’s arm and took a step back. He touched the man on the back and held the phone out to him.

“Sir, the mayor would like to speak to you,” he said.

The struggle stopped. The bank manager pushed off me and turned toward Jacky, panting and looking between him and the phone, trying to work out if this was some kind of trick. I was trying to figure out the same thing. Still Jacky held the phone out.

The bank manager snatched the phone out of his hand and said a gruff “Hahlo?” into it. He was silent for a few seconds. He then launched into Nepali. Almost as soon as he began he was cut off by a raised voice on the other end of the line, audible from where I stood. He stared at the floor. After a couple of minutes, he said a cursory good-bye, clicked the phone closed, and placed it on the table. Without a word, he took the doorknob again. I looked at Jacky. Jacky waved me out of the way. The bank manager walked out to his motorcycle, put on his helmet, and without so much as a glance back he drove off. We never saw him again.

I walked back inside to find Jacky lighting a cigarette. We stared at each other for a second, and both burst out laughing.

“You know the mayor of Kathmandu?” I asked, collapsing onto a chair. “Are you serious?”

“
Bien sûr
—we rescue many children, Conor. The mayor approves of what we do here,” he said with a smile. “He gave me his card some months ago. But I admit, this was the first time I had called him. I am surprised he picked up. But very happy. It was a very good decision, I think, no?”

I just shook my head in wonder. Jacky had guts. Later that evening, we would learn from Gyan, who already knew what had happened, that the mayor had threatened to call the chief of police and send every single policeman in Kathmandu to descend upon that office if the bank manager did not leave immediately.

I had no more doubts. We had gambled by taking the boy, but the man’s decision to quickly flee convinced me that he had been keeping Bishnu as a servant, nothing more. Bishnu was safe at last.

I
walked outside toward where Bishnu was sitting in the field, building a small house with Dirgha and Amita. Bishnu had watched the man leave, yet had not gotten up, had not even reacted. He turned back to his old friends from that shack on the Ring Road and continued building the house. Bishnu never spoke of him again—further evidence that he had been a servant and nothing more.

Farid was watching them from a short distance away. I walked over to him, and he heard me come up.

“I don’t think that was very easy, no? I could hear you shouting from outside,” he said.

“No, not so easy,” I said.

We watched the kids try to balance a roof of heavy twigs over the tiny stone walls they had just built.

“We have all seven children,” Farid said, trying the words out, slowly, as if trying to convince himself it was really true. “Who would have believed this? You?”

“I didn’t know,” I said, truthfully. “I guess I didn’t really believe it, no.”

“I didn’t either,” he admitted. “I hoped, but I thought it might be impossible.”

I considered that. “You know who believed it?” I said to him. He shook his head. “The only person who believed this was going to happen was Liz. She kept telling me over and over.”

Farid smiled and turned back in time to see the little house crumble under the weight of the twigs.

Seven

L
iz and I continued writing, often up to twenty times a day. I wasn’t the only one interested in Liz’s life; the Dhaulagiri girls were thrilled that I was able to bring them daily news about her. They asked about her two or three times a day, always with a sly insinuation that we were more than just friends. It became their favorite topic. I assured them, in what I felt was a reasonably good lie, that of course we were just friends; otherwise we would be married. For a young Nepali girl from the village, this was airtight logic. You were unlikely to have even met your husband before your arranged marriage to him, let alone have dated him.

“Then you
want
to marry Liz Sister, yes Conor
dai
?” they crowed.

“
Friends,
girls. We’re just friends. You can ask Liz!” I said. Then I would quickly e-mail Liz and remind her to tell the kids that we were just friends when she wrote to them. The children loved it when she e-mailed them; they would scour her letters for clues that would give away our budding romance.

“Yes, Conor, I remember it from when you reminded me two days ago. And when you reminded me the day before that, and the day before that.”

The Little Princes, well, they were a different story. They knew me too well; I couldn’t keep anything from them if I tried. I tested out the same line on them, and the boys laughed as if I had just told them the single greatest joke in Nepalese history.

“Brother, your lie very terrible! We have seen many American movies now. We know not much arranged marriage in your country,” Santosh said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “We meet Liz on her visit. She very very beautiful. You very love her, Brother! You love her!”

I denied it vigorously. But the fact was, from the moment Liz left Kathmandu in January, I had been working to get her back. I went about it cautiously, being sensitive to the fact that she would have to take a week off work, buy a ticket, and fly halfway around the world. So I dropped small hints, telling her all the things that were happening with the girls, how much everybody missed her, how much warmer the weather was getting now that it was March. She responded cheerfully, but never came out and said she would come.

I had confided in Viva about the issue a couple of days earlier. Viva was like family, a cross between a mom and a big sister. She knew I was crazy about Liz, she had seen it when we all met for tea on several occasions in January. I asked Viva what she thought might be going on in Liz’s head.

“Conor, it constantly amazes me how dumb men can be,” she said in her Northern Irish brogue as she put down her tea. “For God’s sake,
tell
her you want her to visit. Women want to be pursued, not have their feelings danced around. You want her to come? Be a man. Better yet, be a French man—right, Jacky?”

“
Ah oui,
” Jacky murmured, taking a drag off his cigarette.

“Ask her to come. Demand it, from your heart. My God, how do you not
know
this stuff?”

So I did. I told her in my next e-mail that I would love it if she came to visit me. That I knew it was a long way to come and expensive and everything else, but that I really wanted to see her. The next day, she told me she had gotten the e-mail and started to check flights. I didn’t let her off the hook until she had committed to a time: mid-April. She wrote that she would love to come then. Good old Viva.

I went over to Dhaulagiri to tell Farid the good news. As I was leaving, I ran into Leena in the foyer, alone as usual, staring out the front door. She was wearing her woolen maroon hat. The house maintained its chill with remarkable efficiency, regardless of the temperature outside. The hat was clearly too big for her; it was difficult to get clothes donated that fit the children exactly right. This particular hat, though, stuck up well off the top of her head. The elastic in it, meant for clutching a much larger cranium, was pulled together at the top, in a kind of cone shape. It reminded me of a plunger, and that made it entirely too tempting to pass up. On my way out, I took it and plunged it up and down on her head, making a sucking noise.

She giggled.

I froze. It was the first sound I had ever heard her make. I whirled around to see if Farid or anybody else had heard it. But no, we were alone in the hallway. When I looked back down at her, she had moved. But not just moved—as it took me a moment to comprehend: she was running very slowly away from me, looking back and waiting for me to chase her. So I chased her. She burst out laughing and took off for real. We ran all around the house for a full ten minutes. Farid came out of his room and did a double take as she sprinted past. He too froze, not wanting to break the spell. I scooped up Leena and carried her, smiling and giggling, over to Farid, and delivered her into his arms.

Farid was wide-eyed. “That is amazing,” he said, shaking his head.

“It is amazing,” I said.

And just like that, from one day to the next, after months of not speaking, Leena had broken through her stone casing. She was a happy little girl.

I
t was May 2007, and I was going on another mission. I had planned it for just after Liz’s visit, knowing that I would be out of contact for two weeks. Our seven days together in April had passed quickly; watching her leave again was crushing. The short times together were glorious, but the oceans of time between brought me down at some point every day. But we had made a decision during her visit in April: we would commit to each other. We would try to make our relationship work, painful as the distance promised to make it.

Now I was going off, back into the wilderness to find more families, this time to the Nuwakot District, just north of Kathmandu.

As in Humla, I had many hours alone with my thoughts. I thought about the last conversation I’d had with Liz before leaving. It was tense. All we had to keep our relationship together were e-mail and phone conversations over a static-filled Internet connection. We were not sure when the next time we would see each other would be. And now I was going away for two weeks, cutting us off completely. I think we were both surprised at how deeply we were affected by the thought of not being able to speak every day. On those long treks through Nuwakot, I allowed myself to daydream about her, to replay our conversations, to think about what we would do the next time she came to Nepal, whenever that would be. She was already almost out of vacation days.

I was in love with her. I thought about her constantly. I missed her. She was my best friend. Yet I never saw her. I mulled over different solutions, different ways I might be able to get her to visit or find ways of visiting her. But in the end, we lived nine thousand miles apart, and I just didn’t know if we could ever overcome that. Worse, I was afraid she might be thinking the same thing. I knew that there were other men lobbying to date her. Rich guys, guys with impressive jobs in DC. I knew that she had turned them down, and she always told me how much she wanted to be with me, not with them. But they were there, and I wasn’t. I began to realize that love wasn’t always enough. I walked slower than usual that day, unable to shake that depressing realization.

Two weeks later, I was back in Kathmandu. In the final day of my mission, I had come to a decision that I was anxious to share with Farid. We met down at the local tea shop, where we spent most of our time when we were not with the Dhaulagiri kids. I started by filling him in on the details of the trip, about the seventeen families I’d found. Farid listened for a long time, and paused before responding, studying my expression.

“You did very well, Conor. Seventeen families. You should be happy,” he said. We had spent almost two years together in close quarters—he could tell when something was bothering me.

“It’s not that, I am happy, the trip went well—but I think that I need a break. I was thinking that I might go back to the States for a bit, maybe six weeks. There are two NGN fund-raisers going on, I could help with those,” I told him. “But what would you think? I’m worried it would be a big burden, managing everything from here alone, no?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Of course you should go, Conor! We so rarely take breaks, and you remember that I took one last month?”

He was referring to a two-week trip into the mountains he had taken to live among the Buddhists in the Khumbu region of the high Himalaya, the home to Everest, to learn more about the Buddhist culture in that beautiful mountain setting.

“I can see it, you need this break,” Farid continued. “Go visit your family. And I think you want very much to see Liz, no?”

“I really do, yeah. I think we need to have a talk.”

“So go! We are fine. We have a very good system. We have our staff. The children are fine. I am very happy to do this alone. You were here before me, you remember? It is time for your break,” he said. “And I think Liz will be very happy to see you, too.”

“She better be,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”