But we needed that certificate if we wanted to proceed with adoption. I began to feel a little insecure. I didn’t know what I was doing. Did I want to go down another potential heartache route? What if his mother came back, today, or tomorrow? And was this to be my baby anyway? Why did I pick him? Because Naima told me to? I took some comfort from the fact she did know us to an extent. Maybe she just knew instinctively what was best for both of us? There was something otherworldly about her, a feeling that she could see things. He was the only one I picked up though. Maybe I would have felt the same if I’d picked up another baby too? I just didn’t know.
It was a wrench, but we eventually left the room and Naima turned to us both and said: ‘What do you think?’
‘He’s gorgeous,’ were the only words I could find.
‘But it’s your choice,’ she added quickly. ‘You think. You look. Anyway, you go and you do your papers and convert to Islam and you come back later.’
Deep in thought, we traipsed downstairs where Monia, Naima’s daughter, was waiting for us at the bottom. It was only 11.30am. We’d been in the orphanage less than forty minutes. Outside, the rain still came down in torrents, but I was oblivious to it. I didn’t really know it then, but something inside me had lurched, something I had never felt before. My world had shifted and it would never be the same again.
Hours later, in a busy, noisy café full of men, Robert and his brother chatted over coffee. It was dingy inside and a thick layer of smoke hung in the dank chilly air. I felt shaky and shivery and the sound of the Arabic language all around us suddenly sounded so harsh. The brothers weren’t talking about anything in particular. I tried to raise the subject with Robert subtly, when Peter was ordering the ordering the drinks: ‘What do you think,’ I whispered to him: ‘He’s so lovely. Maybe we should have a boy?’ But I knew he couldn’t talk about this in front of his brother, so I clammed up. I couldn’t join in and discuss everyday things, not after such an intense day. I was nearly in tears, sitting there with Robert and his brother, but I couldn’t cry in front of Peter, I didn’t know him that well, so I said to Robert: ‘I need to call mum’ and I stepped outside onto the corner of the street. The water poured down my face and ran into my mouth and into my eyes. I fished my mobile phone from my handbag, and frantically typed in my mum’s number. As soon as she answered the phone, I burst into tears. All the emotion that had built up in me during the day came flooding out. Mums are usually around when you give birth, aren’t they – that’s the normal situation – is all I could think. Here I was, in this country, choosing a baby, and my mum was thousands of miles away.
As I paced the bustling streets outside the café, with tears streaming down my face and being hardly able to breathe properly, everyone who walked by must I have thought I was insane. I was sobbing and heaving and trying desperately to relay everything that had happened to mum, telling her about the baby boy who had melted my heart and confusion of finding so many children and the surprise of seeing all the boys. I told her I really didn’t know what to do and she just listened, taking it all in. It doesn’t matter if I don’t have a girl, I kept thinking to myself. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important that I’d bought a pink baby grow and a pink teddy. They all need a mum and dad. I was on the phone for about twenty minutes, I guess. Looking back, I didn’t actually say much, because I was crying so much. But just before I hung up, I remember mum said: ‘I love you so much Jo. Go with your heart. Your heart will tell you what to do.’
In a daze, I wandered back into the café and sat down. I couldn’t say anything. I just sat there with puffy eyes and Robert held my hand under the table.
Back at the hotel that evening, around 8pm Robert and I ordered some sandwiches, because even though neither of us had eaten all day, food was the last thing on our minds. Then Peter left us. We wanted to be alone, but we didn’t talk about the day until about an hour later. We were both emotionally shattered. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired as I did that day.
‘If this doesn’t feel right Jo we can go back home,’ Robert said eventually. We were sitting in the hotel bar, unwinding over a couple of gin and tonics.
The whole day had been so draining, a whirlwind of meetings, papers and the Islam conversion. I felt overwhelmed by the whole experience of seeing the orphanage and the sight of all those children who didn’t have parents and the sheer scale of what we’d got into. I couldn’t think straight and I kept worrying about the fact Achraf was only four and a half months old and I what if his mother turned up.
‘I think we should return to the crèche tomorrow, and spend some time with him,’ Robert suggested. ‘Naima felt he was right for us. I know it’s impossible to choose, but Niama has a lot of experience and maybe she’s right.’
That night, we both went straight off to sleep. I felt comforted and contented by our plan to go back to the crèche to see the little boy who had pulled at my heartstrings. The next day would tell, I would either be a mum or we would simply return home.
The following morning, Naima’s office door was open and she came out as soon as she spotted us loitering in the hallway. She was smiling, as she always seemed to be, and full of life.
‘You look less tired today after a good night’s sleep,’ she said, kissing us both on our cheeks. ‘Anyway. I have arranged for you to go and visit the social worker at 11am,’ she added. ‘I will go with you because she can’t speak English.’
Before our meeting with the social worker, there was no proper time to see Achraf upstairs. I was desperate to spend time with him, but there were procedures to follow, even though we hadn’t exactly decided what we were going to do. But that was how it worked and we just found ourselves going with the flow, swept along on this tide of activity that was beyond our control. But there was something strangely freeing and fatalistic about that, having everything organised for us, being led by someone else we didn’t know towards our dream. We later found out that it had to be that way. Without all the paperwork in place and the conversion to Islam, it’s impossible to proceed. There’s no point in allowing people to fall in love with a child to then have their hearts broken because they won’t convert. We walked to the social workers office, because it was only five minutes away. I remember feeling extremely nervous though because Naima had warned us that the social worker could be difficult.
We arrived at another colonial looking building, slightly run down on the outside and inside wasn’t that welcoming either. We sat in this little dark and bleak corridor, waiting for the social worker to arrive. After ten minutes, a small, thin wisp of a woman in long robes glided out of a door. Niama rose to her feet and greeted her enthusiastically, while the woman remained quite stiff. Inside her office, it was quite sparsely furnished with only a desk, a telephone, a large wooden bookcase and three chairs for us all to sit down on. I noticed the stern expression cast on her face and I felt a fresh rush of nerves bubble up in my tummy. She started talking to Naima, while we sat quietly, patiently watching and probably looking quite bemused and lost.
To this day, I don’t know what they talked about. I just took comfort from the unspoken feeling that Naima was on our side. At the time, listening to their raised voices though, echoing round the room, I started to think they were both getting quite annoyed, as if they were having an argument about something. But I soon discovered most normal conversations sounded like this in this country, because the Arabic language is quite clattering and hard. With Naima’s help, we were able to present all the information the social worker wanted, including proof of income, health certificates, marriage certificates, passports. We also showed her pictures of our home and garden in England where our little boy would live.
‘This would be his bedroom,’ I pointed out to Naima. As time passed, the lady’s demeanour began to soften and a smile began to play on her thin lips. The severe look on her face had started to fade, as she sorted through the pictures, her eyes brightening with glee and her speech lightening and quickening its pace. Niama turned to us and relayed the social worker’s words: ‘This little boy is a very lucky boy and he is going to have a lovely life!’
I felt a surge of adrenaline too. The form we filled in contained our names and the child’s name, and that it was our intention to adopt. All the paperwork was filed and left there. The social worker would then write her report recommending us as parents, and it would be sent to court. But she didn’t write her report at that moment. She could only write it after Achraf reached six months of age, when he received his official certificate of abandonment.
After an hour, we returned to the crèche, and we told Naima we wanted to spend the rest of the day with Achraf to see how we all felt.
‘Take as much time as you want,’ she said. She also advised us, that if we wanted to proceed with the adoption of Achraf, we would need to take him to an independent doctor, unconnected to the crèche, so we could obtain our own blood tests and medical for our own peace of mind.
Naima made an appointment for us for 4pm that day. We rushed up the tiled staircase to find Achraf, my heart was faster beater inside my ribcage as we went. I spotted him immediately. He was such a tiny bundle. At the age of four and half months, he weighed just nine and a half pounds, the size of many English babies that have just been born.
I held him close to me and talked quietly to him, holding his tiny hand. I looked into his big brown eyes, and there was a solemn look on his face, almost adult in its shade of sadness, but he was beautiful. Robert and I sat down on chairs alongside each other, in the open plan hall, outside Achraf’s room. We both just sat and stared at this tiny creature who stared back at us. But I could feel my heart burst and my tears start again, as I saw the magic on Robert’s face as he held him for the first time. There was no decision to make, and no words to be said, this little boy was our son, born from both our heart, not from the womb.
He was so good and at one stage, just fell asleep in my arms for an hour. Naima told us that he rarely cried and was very contented. In fact, they would feed the other baby’s first, because Achraf was always happy to wait. It was a serene, quiet time, just the three of us, like new parents just after you have given birth. We looked at his hands, and his nose. I was spellbound by this different type of joy on Robert’s face, one I hadn’t seen before and I couldn’t help but notice a striking physical resemblance between him and Achraf. It was almost uncanny. They seemed to share the same, eyes, face shape, hair and even skin tone. I told Robert this and he just smiled proudly.
The next few hours were so perfect, we wanted them to last forever, and they will, in our hearts. We fed our little boy, changed his nappy, cuddled and kissed him all the time and took lots of pictures. When we told Naima what we wanted to, I was so overwhelmed with emotion I thought I might collapse on the spot. She was delighted and hugged us tightly. ‘He looks just like his daddy,’ she beamed and it was wonderful when she called us mum and dad. All too soon we had to prepare to take him to see a doctor. A member of staff helped and she handed us a coat that was three sizes too big for him, and red woolly hat. For Achraf, it was an immense moment in his little life, his first journey into the outdoors since the day he was abandoned on November 1st 2005.
Beneath the hat, his dark eyes widened in bewilderment, as if he really sensed his big adventure was about to take place.
Robert and I remained in Morocco for five days. We spent most of that week, completing all the legal documents we needed to do to set the adoption wheels in motion. But the process could only properly begin once Achraf reached six months old, the time when he would be officially classed as an abandoned. Until that point, his mother could always take him back. Amid all the form filling, we tried to spend as much time with him as possible. We’d arrive at the crèche at 9am and not leave until 7pm. It was a truly special time in our lives, a time that will remain our most precious of memories.
On the plane home, I couldn’t stop thinking about our little baby boy. I felt so restless. Everywhere I turned I saw his smiling face. Our digital camera was loaded with lots of pictures of him, and I couldn’t wait to show the world, but there was a black cloud hanging over our joy. In order to bring our son home he needed a visa and to obtain a visa we needed a certificate of eligibility from the UK government. Naima had dropped the bombshell back in her office, within the first ten minutes of meeting her.
‘Have you got your Certificate of Eligibility?’ she’d asked.
When I’d spoken to her on the phone, we didn’t need to have the certificate. The law must have changed, literally, within days. I struggled to suppress my dismay.
‘We’re doing that now,’ I said assertively, knowing full well of our fight back home.
In order to obtain a Certificate of Eligibility, we needed to be assessed. We’d already been trying to be assessed for three years, but were hitting continuous brick walls within the unbelievably slow and ineffectual bureaucracy of Surrey Council.
But I knew from the moment we set eyes on our son, I would feel every second he remained in the orphanage. How would I cope? The clock started ticking.
