I caught a glimpse of one of the boys leaving the room, probably to get away from the crowd. He went to sit on his own, on the bottom step of the stairs in the hallway, in front of the light blue prettily painted wooden stair gate. I could see him out the corner of my eye as I stood in the doorway, half in the hall and half in the room. He started to bang the stair gate. I could hear the thud, as it echoed around the building. He started to bang it really hard, with his back. At this point, I definitely couldn’t concentrate on the room, because I could hear and see the boy who sat on the step, bashing the gate with the full force of his short and sturdy body. He had podgy knees and a faraway almost defiant look in his brown eyes as he sat hunched, rocking backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. One of the nurses eventually rushed towards him, uttering something in Arabic, and pulled him away from the gate and out of sight. I didn’t want to stay in the room with all the boys. To be honest, I didn’t feel comfortable with the older boys at first. I found it a little bit scary. I was uneasy, because they all seemed quite intense and I wasn’t prepared. My chest felt tight and my forehead was hot. I knew they just wanted love. Children thrive on love and one-to-one attention. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t pick any of them up, because I didn’t know where to start. They all wanted to be picked up, all twenty of them. They all wanted parents. I felt like I was being pushed. I probably wasn’t, but that’s how I felt. When they’re all coming towards you, it’s overpowering.
I glanced at Robert to see if he felt the same. He appeared relaxed, while all I wanted to do was get out. We were perhaps in that room no more than fifteen minutes, but it felt like eternity.
It was the morning, so some of the children were still busy in the bathroom, washing and brushing their teeth. Naima led us into the television room next, which was virtually deserted. There was a large wooden, painted cot in the corner, pushed up snug against the wall and inside was a seven-year old boy, lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, kicking the wall repeatedly with his right leg. Thump. Thump, he went. He didn’t notice us arrive and he didn’t see us leave and I later discovered he was autistic. There was another boy in there too, sitting in an alcove, in a pushchair. He just sat there, quietly staring into space.
Our little group moved on swiftly into a bedroom. It was clean, light and tidy. Each little bed had a pretty patterned quilt placed neatly on top, but it all happened so quickly, there wasn’t enough time to stop and properly take everything in. There were toys scattered around and some children were lying on the floor, doing some colouring in. In another room, a small group of boys were engrossed in their schoolwork.
‘Come. We go upstairs,’ said Naima breathily, plodding up the stairs ahead of us, her skirt swishing as she pressed her dainty feet clad in embroidered ballet shoes on the cool tiled floors. We followed silently behind her, as if following a mother superior on her guided tour of a convent or a cathedral, or some historic monument, my heart getting heavier with each step. The ceiling rose high, bright white with elaborate light blue plasterwork.
Upstairs, we were met with another spacious hall area. The setting felt cheery and active; a shelter from the dusty unrelenting streets of Tangier as benevolent looking nursery nurses or volunteers went about their duties, moving from room to room. There was a plastic dining table with six matching chairs in the centre, the type of set that wouldn’t look out of place on a patio back home. I saw a few baby walkers, but there were no children in them. Naima led us into another room, with cots lined up around the edge and there was a large multi-coloured play mat in the middle. Straightaway, I smelt that comforting, sweet familiar smell of baby lotion, a scent normally associated with the baby bedroom in homes, with mums and dads. It made me think, that no matter how bright and cheerful a building is, no matter how many nice staff circulate, caring and feeding, changing nappies, changing sheets, you cannot escape the institutional feel and the soul-wrenching fact that it is impossible to give each abandoned baby the proper stimulation and love they crave. It’s a hole all around that’s impossible to fill. I felt this in this one particular room. The babies were all over six months old and some were nearly toddler age.
All the babies were in their cots, eleven of them. Some of them sensed us approach and clambered awkwardly onto their hands and knees, moving like clockwork toys, and started to rock, backwards and forwards. They were either lying there, lifelessly, looking up at the ceiling, asleep or rocking. I guessed the lifeless ones had given up crying. I felt nauseous and began to wonder what we were doing, what we were walking into. I knew babies did that unnerving rocking motion at a certain age through lack of stimulation, because I’d read about it in one of the numerous books I’d devoured about children recently. I’d read so many books, both factual and fiction, some about adoption, others about fostering, but all with the same theme of looking after children.
I was surprised to see two baby girls in the room. ‘They’re being adopted,’ Naima said briskly. She obviously wanted to make it clear, before my hopes were raised, that little girls were few and far between, and highly sought after, and that it was the boys who needed homes. Of course, I couldn’t help but gaze at the girls though. One of them was quite European looking, with fair skin and jet-black hair.
Robert and I paced the room, backwards and forwards, about four times, but we didn’t lift any up out of their beds. We just looked on quietly as Naima pointed out the babies that were going to be adopted soon. One was going to Spain, another to Switzerland, another to Belgium. As she spoke, a shadow of despondency crept over me. ‘There aren’t any babies left,’ I laughed, nervously, trying to ease the tension that was building up all around us, but I didn’t realise there was another room.
Inside the final bedroom, we saw fifteen small cots, like little metal supermarket baskets, packed in, side by side, around the perimeter of the room. The first thing that hit me was the fact they were all babies, very tiny babies, who had no parents and they were just lying there in cots and that their lives just consisted of feeding, changing and sleeping. Naima hovered behind us, watching us, like a guardian angel. There was a nurse in the room when we walked in, cradling a baby in her broad arms that she was feeding with a bottle. She looked up, half smiled, and scurried away. Every cot had a baby in it; some only weeks old, some only a few inches long, others barely a few months out the womb. But part of me was thrilled to see so many very young babies.
Again, we both moved round the room methodically, starting from the right and ending on the left and then we went all the way round and back again, retracing our steps. Some were lying there, motionless, dressed in pastel baby grow outfits that were too big for them. Their skin was red and mottled and their eyes wrinkled and shut tight. They had manoeuvred themselves into uncomfortable-looking twisted positions and stayed there – fast asleep, oblivious to the world.
Others were wide-eyed and eerily silent, staring into a world only a baby sees, while others whimpered softly. It was an unsettling feeling, to sense some of their gazes fixed on me, as we walked slowly round the room, on the most surreal journey of our lives.
But I still didn’t pick up any of the babies, I couldn’t, even though my heart ripped in two, watching them, lying there, wriggling their bodies and kicking the air futilely with their thin limbs, yearning to be held, loved, like newborn babies do, but not really knowing what that is. I touched some of them this time though, gently on their soft cheeks, under their chins, tracing their tiny little chests with my finger. They all looked premature. I just kept thinking to myself, this is so impossible, how could I choose? How could I choose from all of these? All I could think was, they all need mums and dads and they all looked sad and alone. How can you choose because none of them have parents? After eight years on the desperate trail of motherhood, suddenly, things started moving very fast, when we never believed they could. Could it now all be within reach?
‘I think this is the one for you,’ announced Naima, out of the blue, striding over to the final cot we looked in. She pointed to the little boy inside; this tiny bundle, wide awake, just staring into space and not making a single sound.
‘You can pick him up. He looks very European,’ she added. He did look pasty, but then he’d never been outside. He was dressed in a pale blue baby grow with a little red emblem of a flower on it. The baby grow was terry towelling and I as I touched his little chest, the fabric felt course, probably from being washed many times. My hands shook, as I awkwardly reached into his cot. He was small, but didn’t look skinny. Mechanically, I lifted him up and held him lightly against my shoulder and then, gaining a bit more confidence, I held him aloft. He peered into my eyes, and seemed to come alive. He gurgled and giggled and a huge, radiant smile broke on his ashen little face. I held him close to me and he nuzzled into my neck. He smelt of baby cologne.
‘See. He loves you. That’s the first time he’s smiled,’ beamed Naima.
All I could reply was: ‘he’s gorgeous.’
‘Is there something wrong with his head?’ said Robert, touching the balding patch on the back.
‘Most babies have that when they’ve been lying down a lot Robert,’ I whispered. ‘It’s normal.’
‘Put him down now,’ said Robert softly, touching my shoulder protectively.
‘I will in a minute.’
‘Put him down now,’ Robert repeated.
I put him back in his cot.
‘His name is Achraf. He’s four and a half months old,’ added Naima proudly. ‘He’s an abandoned baby.’
‘But I thought they weren’t abandoned until they were six months old,’ I said, feeling confused.
Our telephone conversation replayed in my mind. ‘It’s best to have a baby over six months old because then they are officially abandoned,’ Naima’s voice had bounced over the airwaves and around my brain ever since.
‘Yes. He will get his certificate of abandonment at six months,’ she said in positive tones.
