Time seemed to stand still as I tuned into the noise: babies crying, intermittent shrieks, some shouting, noises coming from somewhere way off. These sounds intensified as they bounced off the tiled floors like the jumbled background commotion you hear at the swimming baths. Everything seemed so loud. I heard some shouting and doors banging upstairs and wave of concern rushed through me as I just stood there, listening. Why they were screaming – I thought? My imagination began to work overtime and all I could think was – poor babies. Are they on their own? What’s the matter? Then it was the smell that hit me: disinfectant, a smell that has lingered with me to this day.
Another woman appeared at her office door, colourful and larger than life.
‘It’s so nice to see you,’ she beamed. This was Naima, the crèche manager and founder. She looked quite different to the woman I imagined when I spoke to her on the phone. She was round-figured, in her late forties, tiny in height, with the kindest oval-shaped face I had ever seen like the face of an angel. We all had to stoop as she stood on tiptoe to kiss us, in turn, on both our cheeks. I breathed in her strong, musky perfume and her face felt cool and velvety. Out the corner of my eye, I saw a young boy poke his head round a door and stare intently at us. But I didn’t get chance to see him properly, because he vanished, as quickly as he arrived, and then Naima hastily ushered us into her room.
Before our visit, Naima had told me about all the paperwork I would need. I’d logged it all neatly into a file and I was now hugging it to my chest like my life depended on it; bank statements, marriage certificates, proof of income, latest pay slips, doctors health reports, copies of our driving licenses, passports, police checks.
‘Come in. Come in,’ she said excitedly, almost jigging up and down. Her liquid brown eyes danced as she continued to smile. I noticed the dimples in her chubby cheeks and her round button nose. ‘How was your journey? How was your hotel? We are so pleased you are coming to adopt one of our boys,’ she gushed.
Boys? I thought about it, but the word didn’t immediately hit home. Maybe I was too busy taking everything else in to really understand exactly what she was saying to us. Did she not know? I’d even been shopping with a friend just before we flew out here to buy some pink things, including a pink teddy bear and a few items of pink coloured clothes. I had them with me, in a bag.
Three more women arrived in the room, dressed in headscarves, holding chairs out in front of them, which they positioned gently in a line, for each of us to sit down.
Naima seemed very positive with an amiable and bubbly personality and reassuringly, she spoke very good English, yet in the back of my mind were the horror stories I’d read about people who pay money to adopt and then get completely ripped off, and are left heartbroken.
My eyes strayed to the walls, where there was a large framed board with photographs, faces neatly pieced together, boy’s faces, trapped behind glass, some grinning innocently into the lens, others, I thought, looked quite sad. Gradually, it began to dawn on me. Boys. I also noticed the pictures on the door and next to her desk, which were all of boys too.
As she talked, I couldn’t really concentrate properly because all I could think about was ‘boys.’ Robert shuffled in his seat. Naima stood in front of her desk. She didn’t sit down to begin with.
‘Have you got all your paperwork with you?’ she enquired, snapping me out of my thoughts and evidently keen not to waste any more time on small talk.
‘Erm. Yes,’ I replied. I heard my own voice and it wasn’t normal, wasn’t mine. ‘It’s all here.’
Cautiously, I handed her my painstakingly prepared file, as if it was made of glass or china and would smash if dropped. It contained hours and hours of work. As she took the heavy plastic file in her hands, I felt sure I spotted a quizzical look in her eyes, as if she was wondering if it was mainly me who was the driving force, and she was questioning what Robert’s thoughts really were. Maybe I was just feeling over tired and sensitive. When you adopt, you are constantly standing trial, on the platform for strangers to assess your suitability and eligibility for parenthood. I do understand the need for that, but the feeling that every move is scrutinised is hard. I glanced at my husband’s expressionless face. He wasn’t speaking. In fact, he didn’t say a word. But then it’s the woman who gives birth and it’s a similar thing, I guess. I knew Robert wanted a child as much as I did and that’s all that mattered.
Naima leafed through all the paperwork, calling out the different documents, like school names on a register. I ticked them off in my mind, my heart batting against my ribcage, hoping I hadn’t left something vital behind. She was dressed in a long spotless black tunic, but wore no headscarf. Her dark bobbed hair had been lightened to a shade of caramel and she wore tawny, brown eye shadow, expertly applied.
‘You know you will have to convert to Islam,’ she said presently, smiling again.
Her words dangled in the silence of her little office. When I’d spoken to Naima before, during one of our telephone conversations, she’d told me about bringing the child up in the Muslim faith, but she hadn’t stressed we would need to actually convert ourselves.
‘I’II just call my daughter Monia,’ she said, reaching for the phone on her busy desk, not taking her eyes off us for one second. ‘She will come and take you to convert to Islam. In about twenty minutes,’ she added buoyantly.
It all suddenly seemed so rushed and I could feel a knot of apprehension in my chest and my throat felt like sandpaper again. We’d only just walked into her office and already we were being lined up to change our religion. I felt as if I’d been pinned against the wall in a clinch.
‘We have to do this now,’ she said calmly in broken English, sensing the startled ‘rabbit in headlights’ look that must have been so transparent on my tired face. I began to muse on everything that had happened to us so far. Our flight had taken an age, catching two planes and enduring lengthy delays; the hike up the hill that had seemed like forever, not to mention the prolonged, bumpy ride in a battered taxi, the breakfast that lasted an entire day and all the drawn out years of disappointment trying for a baby. But now we were caught up in a whirlwind. I thought about my Christianity and what my mum would think. She used to pack me off to Sunday school every week when I was a little girl. However, neither Robert or I actually practised religion. We didn’t attend Church, but we had faith and believe there is only one God. This is something both the Muslim and Christian world believed and we later took strength from that.
‘Now. We go look round,’ Naima announced.
She pushed open a door to a downstairs room. This was the dining room and most of the boys, aged around five years old, were congregated in it. There was a hatch connecting it to the kitchen and a door that led outside to the small, enclosed play yard. There were about twenty boys, the boys who had slipped through the net, the lost boys and the thought instantly crossed my mind, that in the eyes of these children, Robert and I must look like potential parents standing here in the doorway.
They were dressed in bright, primary coloured tops, clean and smart, ready for boys’ action, but with no place to go. At once, most of them started to shuffle towards us and huddle round, their arms outstretched, and making noises. Others came and just stood quietly alongside us, longing for association and a place to belong. Some just stared, searching our eyes to see if we might yet be an answer to their prayers, while others grinned, cheekily, tugging playfully on our sleeves, every fibre in their tiny bodies aching to be touched back. One boy in particular was desperate to be picked up, but I didn’t pick anybody up. A couple of the little boys didn’t seem to have quite the same sense of hope anymore and I noticed they refused to acknowledge our presence in the room, preferring to hang back, in the corner. So what? They seemed to say without speaking, they’d been in this situation a million times before. They knew the routine. A man and woman arrive who stand and watch for a few moments, and then they disappear, never to be seen again. I felt a stab of guilt, as if our quest for a little, bouncing baby girl was written all over our faces. I felt they all knew. They weren’t silly. They all knew we were probably going to go and look at the babies, in another room, closing the door self-consciously on our way out. I sensed they were intuitive and had learnt to read adult faces and see signs other children their age would never see and that broke my heart. I couldn’t bear it. But I didn’t cry then. I couldn’t.
‘They’re lovely,’ both Robert and I said to Naima, through thin smiles. And they were lovely and we meant it but the room started to close in on me.
I stood frozen to the spot. I couldn’t touch any of them back. In fact, I had an overwhelming urge to get out and get away from that look in their eyes. I think they all had the same sad look in their eyes – a look that will haunt me forever.
